This document provides an overview of a tutorial on semantic wikis and applications. It introduces the instructors Jesse Wang and Mark Greaves from Vulcan Inc., and Justin Zhang and Ning Hu from TeamMersion LLC. The tutorial covers topics like Semantic MediaWiki (SMW), SMW+, hands-on sessions, and connecting SMW to other systems. It aims to address challenges in building large knowledge bases by acquiring knowledge at scale and lower costs.

1. Semantic Wikis
and Applications
Jesse Wang, Mark Greaves Ning Hu, Justin Zhang
Vulcan Inc. TeamMersion LLC
{jessew, markg}@vulcan.com {ning, justinzh}@teammersion.com
December 4, 2011

2. Your Instructors
Jesse Mark
Justin Ning
2

3. Who is Vulcan
3

4. What does Vulcan do
4

5. It all began with an idea…
5

6. Now the Idea Continues as Project Halo
6

7. Project Halo’s Knowledge Acquisition Goals
 Address the problems in
building Knowledge Bases
– scale
– cost
 Have high impact
KB Effort (cost, people,…)
Now
Vulcan
Future
KB size (number of assertions, complexity…)
7

8. Tutorial Structure
Part I
 Wiki and Semantics (Jesse)
 Semantic MediaWiki (Jesse)
 SMW+ (Mark)
 Hands-On Session 1 (All)
Part II
 Semantic Wikis in Practice (Mark)
 Wiki Object Model and Widgets (Jesse, Ning)
 Hands-On Session 2 (All)
 Connecting to SMW+ (Jesse, Justin)
 Wrap Up and Q&A (All)
8

9. Introduction
WIKI AND SEMANTICS

11. edit
wow. I can change the web.
let’s share and publish knowledge,
to make an [[encyclopedia]]!

13. Some Wiki Platforms
 Wikia
– Wiki communities for everyone
 PBWiki/PBWorks
– Online Collaboration that just Works
 TWiki
– the Open Source Enterprise Wiki and Web 2.0 Application
Platform
 MoinMoin
– advanced, easy to use and extensible WikiEngine
13

14. So What is a Wiki
 By Wikipedia:
– A wiki (pronounced /ˈw WIK-ee) is a website that allows the
ɪki/
easy[1] creation and editing of any number of interlinked web
pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or
a WYSIWYG text editor.[2][3] Wikis are typically powered by wiki
software and are often used to createcollaborative websites, to
power community websites, for personal note taking, in
corporate intranets, and in knowledge management systems.
14

15. What Wiki Really Is about
 Quick – from idea to result
– no need of extra software
 Easy
– Mass participation
 Collaborative Community Authoring
– Notification (Watch)
 Version Control
15

16. A Key Feature of Wiki
This distinguishes wikis from other publication tools

17. Consensus in Wikis Comes from
 Collaboration
– ~17 edits/page on average in
Wikipedia (with high variance)
– Wikipedia’s Neutral Point of View
 Convention
– Users follow customs and
conventions to engage with
articles effectively

18. Software Support Makes Wikis Successful
 Trivial to edit by anyone
 Tracking of all changes, one-
step rollback
 Every article has a “Talk” page
for discussion
 Notification facility allows
anyone to “watch” an article
 Sufficient security on
pages, logins can be required
 A hierarchy of
administrators, gardeners, and
editors
 Software Bots recognize certain
kinds of vandalism and auto-
revert, or recognize articles that
need work, and flag them for
editors

19. Success of Wikis

20. Leverage Crowd’s Wisdom

21. Wikis are great
 Enable new scale of human collaboration
 Everyone can read
 Everyone can write
 Everyone gets aggregated
 Everyone is accountable for everything
 But some things are better left to machines…

22. Wiki Clock
http://pageoftext.com/wikiclock

23. edit edit

24. Deep Info
Wikipedia has articles about…
• … all cities with info on their
populations, locations and
skyscrapers, etc.
… all German cars with engine
size, accelerating data…
Can you find:
Skyscrapers with 50+ floors
and built between 2000 and
2008 in Shanghai (or Chinese
cities with 1,000,000+
people)?
Or German(Porsche) cars that
accelerate from 0-100km/h in
5 seconds?
24

25. How Wikipedia Answers – List!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fastest_
cars_by_acceleration

26. Going Deeper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_cars

27. Deeper…

28. And Deeper…
28

29. And Now…

30. Look into List in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_cars

31. Editing Standard Wiki Article – Static List

32. Static List, Tables, …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lists_about_Oregon

33. Problems with Static Lists, Tables
 Duplicated data
 Inconsistent data
 Data may not be up-to-date
 Hard to maintain
 Considerable efforts to make new list/table

34. Semantics Come To Rescue
To find answers like:
• All Porsche vehicles made in Germany
that accelerate from 1-100 km/h less
than 4 seconds
• Sci-Fi movies made after year 2000
that cost less than $10M and gross
more than $30M
• A map showing where all Mercedes-
Benz vehicles are manufactured
• All skyscrapers in China
(Japan, Thailand,…) of 50 (40/60/70)
floors or more, and built in year 2000
(2001/2002) and after, sorted by built
year, floors…, grouped by
cities, regions…
• And many more

35. What is a Semantic Wiki
 A wiki that has an underlying model of the
knowledge described in its pages.
 To allow users to make their knowledge explicit and formal
 Semantic Web Compatible
Semantic Wiki

36. Two Perspectives
Wikis for
Metadata
Metadata for
Wikis

37. Why Semantic Wiki?
 Annotation of existing structures with machine
readable metadata
links carry meaning, typing of links, typing of pages
 Context dependent adaptation and presentation
different domains have different ways of presenting
content, personal preferences, etc.
 Improved, “intelligent”, search and navigation
queries to the structure, visualisation of structure, derived
information
 Improved interoperability between systems
exchange of content, integration of different
systems, agents, etc.

38. What is the Promise of Semantic Wikis?
 Semantic Wikis promise
Consensus over Data
and Structure
 Combine low-expressivity
data authorship with the
best features of traditional
wikis
 User-governed, user-
maintained, user-defined
 Easy to use as an
extension of text authoring

39. Challenges on Data Consensus
 Data modeling is (seemingly) a specialized skill
 Finding disagreements in data is difficult
 Consistently revising data schemas is difficult
 Consistency of schema information
(“Population”, “Pop”, “Number_of_inhabitants”, etc...)
 Consistency of types, units of measure, application of
rules…
 Semantics/interpretation of properties need explanation for
humans
 …

40. One Key Helpful Feature of Semantic Wikis
Semantic Wikis are “Schema-Last”
Databases require DBAs and schema design;
Semantic Wikis develop and maintain the schema in the wiki

41. Basics of Semantic Wikis
 Still a wiki, with regular wiki features
– Category/Tags, Namespaces, Title, Versioning, ...
 Typed Content (built-ins + user created, e.g. categories)
– Page/Card, Date, Number, URL/Email, String, …
 Typed Links (e.g. properties)
– “capital_of”, “contains”, “born_in”…
 Querying Interface Support
– E.g. “[[Category:Member]] [[Age::<30]]” (in SMW)

42. List of Semantic Wikis
AceWiki Semantic MediaWiki - an
ArtificialMemory extension to MediaWiki that
Wagn - Ruby on Rails-based turns it into a semantic wiki
KiWi – Knowledge in a Wiki Swirrl - a spreadsheet-based
semantic wiki application
Knoodl – Semantic
Collaboration tool and TaOPis - has a semantic wiki
application platform subsystem based on Frame
logic
Metaweb - the software that
powers Freebase TikiWiki CMS/Groupware
integrates Semantic links as a
OntoWiki core feature
OpenRecord zAgile Wikidsmart - semantically
PhpWiki enables Confluence

43. Tutorial Structure
Part I
 Wiki and Semantics (Jesse)
 Semantic MediaWiki (Jesse)
 SMW+ (Mark)
 Hands-On Session 1 (All)
Part II
 Semantic Wikis in Practice (Mark)
 Wiki Object Model and Widgets (Jesse, Ning)
 Hands-On Session 2 (All)
 Connecting to SMW+ (Jesse, Justin)
 Wrap Up and Q&A (All)

44. An Extension to MediaWiki
SEMANTIC MEDIAWIKI

45. Short History of Semantic MediaWiki
 Born at AIFB
– Typed links and types and more
– Export articles as RDF
– Maximally flexible for the wiki user
 SMW 0.1 released by AIFB in Sept 2005
– Parser/storage support for typed links – [[type::link | label]]
– FactBox for semantic relations at end of article
– Special:SearchSemantic, with basic auto-completion for link types
– Simple query language (“ask”)
 Vulcan kicks off Halo Extensions to SMW project in August 2007
 SMW 1.0 released by AIFB in Dec 2007, Ontoprise releases Halo
Extension 1.0 in parallel
– “Property” instead of “Relation” and “Attribute”
– Many new datatypes/special pages/UI features

46. Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) Markup Syntax
Zhejiang University is located in
[[Has location::Hangzhou]], with
[[Has population::39000|about 39 thousands]]
students.
In page "Property:Has location”: In page "Property:Has population”:
[[Has type::Page]] [[Has type::number]]

47. Special Properties
 “Has Type” is a pre-defined “special” property for meta-
data
– Example: [[Has type::String]]
 “Allowed Values” is another special property
– [[Allows value::Low]],
– [[Allows value::Medium]],
– [[Allows value::High]]
 In Halo Extensions, there are domain and range support
– RDFs expressivity
– Semantic Gardening extension also supports “Cardinality”

48. Define Classes
Beijing is a city in [[Has
country::China]], with population
[[Has population::2,200,000]].
[[Category::Cities]]
Categories are used to define classes because they are better for class inheritance.
The Jin Mao Tower (金茂大厦) is an 88-story landmark supertall
skyscraper in …
[[Categories: 1998 architecture | Skyscrapers in
Shanghai | Hotels in Shanghai | Skyscrapers over 350 meters | Visitor
attractions in Shanghai | Landmarks in Shanghai | Skidmore, Owings and
Merrill buildings]]
Category:Skyscrapers in China Category: Skyscrapers by country

49. Database-style Query over Wiki Data
Example: Skyscrapers in China
higher than 50 stories, built between
2000 and 2008
ASK/SPARQL query target
{{#ask:
[[Category:Skyscrapers]]
[[Located in::China]]
[[Floor count::>50]]
[[Year built::<2000]]
[[Year built::>2008]]
…
}}

50. Semantic MediaWiki Software
 Open source (GPL)
– Well documented
 Active development
– Commercial support available
 World-wide community
– International Conferences
• Next SMWCon 4/25-27, 2012 in Carlsbad, CA
Very stable core, various extensions

51. SMW Extensions – Help Build Great Things
Data I/O
• Halo Extensions, Semantic Forms, Semantic Notification, …
Query and Browsing
• Semantic Toolbar, Semantic Drilldown, Enhanced Retrieval, Search…
Visualization
• Semantic Result Printers, Tree View, Exhibit, Flash charts…
Other useful extensions
• HaloACL, Deployment, Triplestore Connector, Simple Rules…
• Semantic WikiTags and Subversion Integration extensions
• Linked Data Extension, with R2R and SILK from F.U.Berlin

52. External data reuse
Export formats
 RDF/XML
 SPARQL end points
 RDFa
 CSV
 JSON
 iCal
 vCard
 Bibtex

53. Extensible architecture
 Built on MediaWiki
 Small core SMW
 Extension hooks of its own
 Allow apps on top of it

54. Tutorial Structure
Part I
 Wiki and Semantics (Jesse)
 Semantic MediaWiki (Jesse)
 SMW+ (Mark)
 Hands-On Session 1 (All)
Part II
 Semantic Wikis in Practice (Mark)
 Wiki Object Model and Widgets (Jesse, Ning)
 Hands-On Session 2 (All)
 Connecting to SMW+ (Jesse, Justin)
 Wrap Up and Q&A (All)
56

55. Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) and SMW+
 Semantic MediaWiki
– The project where the original semantic wiki ideas were developed
– A compact extension of MediaWiki that supports storage, retrieval, and use of basic data
markup in wiki pages
– Core code developed at Karlsrühe Institute of Technology beginning in 2004
 Open source (GPL), well documented, active mailing list, world-
wide community, commercial support available
 Very stable core, plus ~50 extensions that add features
– Data I/O: Semantic Forms, Semantic Notification, Linked Data…
– Query and Browsing: Halo Extensions, Semantic Drilldown, Semantic Search…
– Visualization: Semantic Result Printers, TreeView, Flash charts…
– Other useful extensions: HaloACL, Deployment, RichMedia…
 SMW+ is a commercial-grade semantic wiki based on SMW
– A GPL (open-source) package of interoperable enterprise-oriented SMW
extensions, with installer and business-critical features
– ~2K downloads/month; ~5K unique visitors/month to SMW+ Forum
– Users’ group meetings in North America and Europe (next meeting April in San Diego)
– A growing developer community at http://www.smwplus.com
– Available commercial support
57

56. The Goal of SMW+
SMW+
halo extensions

57. From MediaWiki to SMW+
Semantic
MediaWiki MediaWiki Halo Extension SMW+
 Powerful Wiki  Core Semantic  Usability extension  Shrink wrap suite of
engine Wiki engine to Semantic open source software
 Basic CMS  Authoring of MediaWiki products
feature set explicit  Increases user  Comes with ready to
knowledge in consensus use ontology
content
 Increases use of  Easy to procure and
 Basic reasoning semantic data install
capabilities
 Standard support
contract available

58. SMW+ In One (Marketing) Slide
SMW+ is a Semantic Enterprise Wiki
for agile collaboration on rich text and data
 It is a Wiki: Platform for web-based collaboration and quick
authoring of text and data content.
 It is a database: Users write data and text together on wiki pages,
and visualize the data with simple queries
 It is an integration tool: Users access data from external databases, web
services or the Semantic Web within the Wiki.
 It is enterprise-ready: Installs in 15 minutes and comes with business-
critical features. Extendible and scalable.
http://www.smwplus.com

59. Selected SMW+ Extensions for this Tutorial (1 of 4)
Faceted Search and Browsing
High speed exploration of data and text
together
 Drill-down search results by
categories, properties, and their
values
 Find relevant articles, facts, and
semantic content
 Identify suitable properties for
queries
Help: http://smwforum.ontoprise.com/smwforum/index.php/Help:Faceted_browsing_1.5.3

60. Selected SMW+ Extensions for this Tutorial (2 of 4)
Data Browser / Semantic Toolbar / WYSIWYG Editor
Flexibly create and curate data in the wiki
 Use the Data Browser as a single place to
view, create, and edit
categories, properties, subproperties, and
instances
 Use the Semantic Toolbar while editing
pages to add and browse data values
 WYSIWYG editor allows users to rapidly
create compelling pages without having to
master specialized wiki markup
Help:
http://smwforum.ontoprise.com/mwforum/index.php/Help:Description_of_the_Ontology_browser,
http://smwforum.ontoprise.com/smwforum/index.php/Help:Description_of_the_Semantic_toolbar

61. Selected SMW+ Extensions for this Tutorial (3 of 4)
Query Interface
Easy query construction with the
Query Interface GUI
 Creation, testing, loading, editing
and re-using of existing queries
 Choice of query result formatters
(visualizers)
 Handles multiple query results
and result formats
 Search over queries
Help: http://smwforum.ontoprise.com/smwforum/index.php/Query_Interface

62. Selected SMW+ Extensions for this Tutorial (4 of 4)
Semantic Forms and Automatic Semantic Forms
Create data in the wiki with easy form-based UIs
 Define form layouts, data
validation, and
 Automatically create forms
right on wiki pages, based
on the data structure currently
in the wiki
 An easy, familiar way for users
to add data to the wiki
Help: http://smwforum.ontoprise.com/smwforum/index.php/Semantic_Forms
http://smwforum.ontoprise.com/smwforum/index.php/Help:Automatic_Semantic_Forms_extension

63. SMW+ Extensions: Microsoft Office Connector
 How do we further embed semantic
wikis into corporate practice?
– Many users will not use wikis
– How do we maximally share data and
collaborate?
 Leverage the MS Office user base
 Microsoft Office Connector
– Bring semantic information into Office
applications on-demand
– Consume and contribute from the Office
suite
– Use semantic information to enable
appropriate actions
– Office 2007 and Office 2010
 Microsoft Outlook Connector
– Bring data into SMW just by emailing it
– Automatic metadata extraction
65

64. SMW+ Full Extension Suite
Starts small – grows with use
Add special purpose extensions and manage your wiki installation with
the Wiki Administration Tool

65. SMW+ Open Source Extension Library (1 of 3)
 Usability
– Collaboration – The Collaboration Extension enables commenting and rating of
wiki articles.
– WYSIWYG – The WYSIWYG Extension to MediaWiki replaces the standard
MediaWiki editor with the more user-friendly CKeditor.
– Rich Media – The Rich Media extension allows the easy upload and embedding
of media files such as documents, images, videos and audio files into the wiki.
Media files can be attached to related articles and tagged with an enhanced
meta-data set.
– Semantic Forms – Semantic Forms is an extension to MediaWiki that lets users
add and edit data using forms. It is meant to be used for structured data that has
semantic markup.
– Automatic Semantic Forms –Automatic Semantic Forms extension
automatically creates Semantic Forms based on the current Wiki ontology.
– Semantic Notifications – Keeps you informed about changes in your semantic
data and sends you notifications via email.
– User Manual – Provides direct access to help and context-sensitive selection of
help pages. Users can submit direct feedback (such as bug issues) and ask
questions in the online community.
67

66. SMW+ Open Source Extension Library (2 of 3)
 Data Processing
– Rule Knowledge – Offers a graphical rule editor for creating logical rules. Rules
allow you to state complex interrelations.
 Data Re-Use
– Data Import – Integrates external data into the wiki via Web Services (SOAP or
RESTful) or data import of e.g. CSV files or emails.
– Linked Data – Integrates access to data in the Web of Data in SMW+. Data can
be imported into the wiki's triple store and exported via RDF and a SPARQL
endpoint.
 Security
– Access Control List – Powerful access control for protecting single wiki
pages, articles in categories or namespaces and values of semantic properties.
Access can be restricted via a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for individual
users and user groups.
 Data Backend (Jena for open-source; Ontobroker for cost)
– Triple Store Connector – Adds a full standards-compliant semantic
datastore, with powerful SPARQL queries and data integration support
68

67. SMW+ Open Source Extension Library (3 of 3)
 Data Consistency
– Semantic Gardening – The Gardening extension lets you detect and
clean inconsistencies via automatic bots. It further provides an export
functionality for OWL ontologies.
 Retrieval
– Enhanced Retrieval – Provides a powerful search engine with auto-
completion, spell-checking ("did you mean" feature) and advanced
search functionalities such as fuzzy and path search. The search covers
full text contents (also from uploaded PDF and Word documents) as well
as elements from the ontology
– Semantic Treeview – Automatically displays a hierarchical view of the
selected wiki elements such as categories, articles or semantically
annotated data.
– Semantic Result Formats – This extension to MediaWiki bundles a
number of result formats for inline queries. The individual formats can be
added to the installation independently.
Download from http://www.smwplus.com
69

68. Tutorial Structure
Part I
 Wiki and Semantics (Jesse)
 Semantic MediaWiki (Jesse)
 SMW+ (Mark)
 Hands-On Session 1 (All)
Part II
 Semantic Wikis in Practice (Mark)
 Wiki Object Model and Widgets (Jesse, Ning)
 Hands-On Session 2 (All)
 Connecting to SMW+ (Jesse, Justin)
 Wrap Up and Q&A (All)
70

69. Hands-on tasks
 Create account
 Create a plain new article – plain wiki text editing
 Add semantic annotations
– Plain wiki text
– Data toolbar
 Using WYSIWYG editor
– Rich text insertion
– Using Query Interface to get results
 Using Automatic Semantic Forms
 Semantic query results of our achievements
– Ontology Browser, Visualizations
71

70. Ontologies – Constituents
 Ontology entities and their counterpart in the wiki
– Category: Wiki page in namespace „Category“ Event
– Instance: Any wiki page in the main namespace Semantic Wiki Tutorial
– Property: Wiki page in namespace „Property“ attendee

71. Ontologies – Constituents
 Basic ontology statements in the wiki
– Is-a: Sub-category relation. Category page tagged with a category.
is-a
• [[Category:Event]] Workshop Event
– Instance-of: Category assertion. Wiki page tagged with a category.
• [[Category:Person]] Daniel
instance-of
Person
– Relating instances: Property on a page pointing to another page.
• [[Attendee::Daniel]] Semantic Wiki Tutorial
attendee
Daniel
– Attributes for instances: Property on a page with a data value.
• [[Budget::300000]] Project X
budget
300.000

72. Ontologies – Properties
Properties can have properties (or characteristics)
– all characteristics are specified as annotations on the property page
 Type – defines the “data type” of the property (see next slide)
 Domain - articles of this category can have values for this property.
 Range - articles of this category can be objects of this property. Only
relevant, if the property is of type is Page.
 Allowed values – Defines a set of values which are allowed for this
property.
 Minimal cardinality - The minimum number of values of the property.
 Maximum cardinality - The maximum number of values of the
property.
This is good for autocompletion, proposing values, and checking validity.

73. Ontologies – Properties
Properties have types:
 Type:Page - links to pages (the default)
 Type:String - text strings that are not longer than 250 letters
 Type:Number - integer and decimal numbers with optional exponent
 Type:Boolean - restricts the value of a property to true/false (also 1/0 or yes/no)
 Type:Date - specifies particular points in time
 Type:Text - like Type:String but can have unlimited length; the trade-off is values of
this type cannot be selection or sort criteria in queries..
 Other:
– Type:Code
– Type:Temperature
– Type:Telephone number
– Type:URL
– Type:Email
 Help:Properties_and_types_1.5.6

74. Ontologies – Properties
Properties can have properties (or characteristics)
 Subproperty of – This property is a specialization of the given property .
– On page Property:HasSubtitle: [[Subproperty of::Property:HasTitle]]
 Inverse of – This property is an inverse of the given property.
• On page Property:HasParent: [[Is inverse of::Property:HasChild]]
 Transitivity - Defines that the property is transitive. This field is only enabled, if the
property's type is Page.
– On page Property:IsRelatedTo: [[Category:Transitive properties]]
 Symmetry - Defines that the property is symmetric. This field is only enabled, if the
property's type is Page.
– On page Property:HasBorderWith: [[Category:Symmetrical properties]]
This is good for inferring new knowledge.
 Help:Specifying_property_properties_1.5.6

75. Tutorial Structure
Part I
 Wiki and Semantics (Jesse)
 Semantic MediaWiki (Jesse)
 SMW+ (Mark)
 Hands-On Session 1 (All)
Part II
 Semantic Wikis in Practice (Mark)
 Wiki Object Model and Widgets (Jesse, Ning)
 Hands-On Session 2 (All)
 Connecting to SMW+ (Jesse, Justin)
 Wrap Up and Q&A (All)
79

76. Semantic Wikis
in Practice
Mark Greaves

77. SMW Installations
 Patterns for applying SMW+
– As a flexible and user-friendly front end to large data resources
• Data is mostly provided from databases
• Wiki pages provide context for the data and associated queries
– As a collaborative knowledge management platform
• Semi-structured knowledge: text mixed with database, and user-contributed
• Encyclopedia resources for larger organizations
– Metadata and data together in one human-readable place
 On www.smwplus.com
– Repository of sample wiki apps (SCRUM, project management, etc.)
• Framework to deploy an app with its ontologies and pages
– Commercial case studies
– SMW Ambassadors
Let’s look at some selected SMW installations!
81

78. SMW Examples: OpenEI.org
82

79. SMW Examples: SNPedia

80. SMW Examples: SNPedia

81. SNPedia wins the “23 and Me” prize

82. SMW Example: Collaborative Proposal Management
Active Bid Viewer
Service Desk Selector
86

83. SMW+ with Automatic Document Annotation
87

84. Editing the Document Annotations
88

85. NYC BigApp 2.0 Prize to Revelytix and TCG

86. SMW+ Example: NYCreation
90

87. SMW+ Example: NYCMantics
91

88. SMW Example: Oh Internet
92

89. SMW Example: SCRUM Coordination Wiki
 Augment wiki
articles with data
 Automatically
populate data
tables
 Bugzilla
integration
 Calendars and
timelines
 Basic workflows
 SCRUM Reports
 Form-oriented
inputs
 Notifications via
email/RSS
 MS Office
integration
93

90. What Would an Analytic Encyclopedia Look Like?
 Back to the original vision: An SMW demo built to explore
“Semantic Wikipedia”
 Wikipedia articles merged with the power of SMW
– For Authors: tools to create more compelling articles
• Great visualizations: charts, tables, timelines, photos, analytics
• Always up-to-date across the Encyclopedia
• Encourage data consistency and find data errors
• Link in other web data sources
– For Readers:
• Enhanced articles and data interaction
• Faceted navigation
• Sophisticated queries (both standing and ad-hoc)
 Crowdsource data as well as text articles into a queryable, living
Wikipedia
 Leverage the live stream of updates from millions of Wikipedia
authors
94

91. Ultrapedia: An Analytic Encyclopedia
 Goal: Prototype a small semantic encyclopedia
– Create an semantic version of a part of Wikipedia
– Software is SMW and the Halo Extensions
– Wikipedia-based checking and corrections
– Link back to other parts of Project Halo
 Ultrapedia Prototype Details Class Articles Infobox
– Test domain is German cars Articles
– ~2500 Wikipedia pages, ~40000 triples Company 134 53
– Private versions of Wikipedia, SMW, OB,
and DBpedia hosted at wiking.vulcan.com Person 93 57
– Features Automobile 370 345
• Corrections flow from Wikipedia to Ultrapedia
in real time Auto Generation 1480 1380
• Full data source tracking from Wikipedia Engine 135 12
• Wikipedia table ingestion and parsing
Other 283 3
• Feedback (user rating) loop for data
• New visualizations for tables, charts, photos Totals 2495 1850
• External data integrated into articles
• SPARQL-based queries
• Derived assertions (via OntoBroker)

92. Extracting Structured Data from Wikipedia

93. Extracting Structured Data from Wikipedia
Title
Domain
Description specific
Data
Images
Languages
Infobox
Properties
Further Down
Web Links
Categorization

94. Extracting Data from Wikipedia Tables
Table
Data
98

95. Ultrapedia Prototype Data Flow
Real-time feed of WP changes
• Note most WP page changes will be text
and have no semantic import
Dynamic extraction of WP English Wikipedia subset
semantic data into RDF
DBpedia update stream WP updates
• WP page text updates • User-created page
• DBpedia data updates updates in Wikipedia
Enhanced Ultrapedia Usability Wikipedia-based Corrections
• Familiar WP page text and layout • UP shows the user where to correct
• Exhibit-based visualizations data in WP so that DBpedia will extract
• Dynamic tables/categories the correction
• Ultrapedia exposes the data source in
• Faceted navigation terms of where the data was extracted
• Queries (both standing and ad-hoc) from WP
• Wikitag-based MS Office augmentation • WP changes and corrections get quickly
propagated to UP

96. Demo: Ultrapedia
Ultrapedia Demo
 Domain is German cars  Things to take away
– Cars, Companies, Engines, Trans – A better Wikipedia for authors and
missions, People, etc. readers
– ~2500 pages, ~40000 triples – Interact with data as well as text
– Monitor data with standing queries
 An SMW-based encyclopedia – External data integration via web
– Similar look and feel to Wikipedia services (EBay)
– Dynamic tables and charts
– Powerful queries  Rapid to build
– Navigation beyond search – SMW platform is stable
– Trustworthy data source – Most time was spent on data
– Edit, discuss and rate data cleaning and new visualizations
– Data is validated by the Wikipedia
community
100

97. Tutorial Structure
Part I
 Wiki and Semantics (Jesse)
 Semantic MediaWiki (Jesse)
 SMW+ (Mark)
 Hands-On Session 1 (All)
Part II
 Semantic Wikis in Practice (Mark)
 Wiki Object Model and Widgets (Jesse, Ning)
 Hands-On Session 2 (All)
 Connecting to SMW+ (Jesse, Justin)
 Wrap Up and Q&A (All)
101

98. Data as Fine Objects

99. Wiki Object Model Motivation
 Strong needs for access the structured data and
unstructured data in the wiki as a data store
– From internal and external applications’ point of view
 A DOM-like approach is good choice
– Xpath is a reasonable tool and standard
 Granularity offers flexibility and power
 Easier to operate on known objects and calling REST APIs
rather than parsing and handling wiki texts
 Common gateway for both internal and external apps

100. Wiki Object Model Objects
 Page  Category
 Section  Link
 Parameter  Property
 Parameter value  Text
 Template  Magic word
 Template field  HTML tag
 Parser function  Sentence
 List item  Word*
 Table  Image
 Table cell
* Not yet implemented as of April 2011
104

101. Demo of WOM
 Demo at http://wiking.vulcan.com/dev_sandbox/
 Demo 1: APIs
 The API is part of MediaWiki API, with our additions to allow get and set
(read/write) the content of a wiki page
 http://wiking.vulcan.com/dev/index.php/Extension:Wiki_Object_Model/Api
s
 Demo 2: Inline Editor
 A simple inline editor (AJAX styled) to let user modify a specific portion of
the wiki page
 Based on
http://wiking.vulcan.com/dev/index.php/Extension:Wiki_Object_Model/Fun
ctions
105

102. A “Designer” Wiki Application Builder
106

103. Usage of SMW
 Collaboration
 Collecting structured data
 Sharing information
 Management of heterogeneous data
 Simple workflow management
 User-generated arbitrary queries
 Data analysis and information discovery

104. Common Work Items
 Schema Design
 Extension Choice
 Form Design
 Template Authoring
 Skin Customization
 Query Generation

105. The Bar to be Expert

106. Modeling = Yes Coding = No
 Most users just like to share or
collect contents
– CMS:
Drupal, WordPress, MW/SMW, …
– SNS:
MySpace, Ning, WetPaint, LinkedIn,
…
 Frameworks or applications allow
users to focus on content or data

107.  Code is essential building blocks
– Not everyone is good at writing code
 Frameworks enables “meta-data” use
– User: developers or admins
– Meta-data drive content
 Handle Content via meta-data
– Parameter configuration
Data (Content)
Metadata (Configuration)
Functions (Code)

108. Model Metadata
 Existing examples:
– “Allowed values”  Auto-completion in SF
– “has default form”  Map form to data (category)
 We want to enhance the experience
– “has range”  auto-completion in Semantic Forms
– “has domain”  auto-construct form for the domain
– “has label/description”  metadata to use in forms
– “has style”  the visual part of customization

109. A simple workflow wiki application built on top of Widget Designer

110. Tutorial Structure
Part I
 Wiki and Semantics (Jesse)
 Semantic MediaWiki (Jesse)
 SMW+ (Mark)
 Hands-On Session 1 (All)
Part II
 Semantic Wikis in Practice (Mark)
 Wiki Object Model and Widgets (Jesse, Ning)
 Hands-On Session 2 (All)
 Connecting to SMW+ (Jesse, Justin)
 Wrap Up and Q&A (All)
115

111. How to create and customize the pages

112. Recap
 Access Wiki Content as Fine Objects
 Designing via metadata modeling
 Metadata configured by UI
 Metadata, data and UI are linked
– Action Connector
 A social semantic web application in a day

113. The Inspiration
 We started with a
 Now we have an
118

114. Requirements for Wiki “Developers”
 One need not
– Write code like a hardcore programmer
– Design, setup RDBMS or make frequent
schema changes
– Possess knowledge of a senior system
admin
 Instead one need
– Configure the wiki with desired extensions
– Design and evolve the data model
(schema)
– Design Content
• Customize templates, forms, styles, skin, etc.
119

115. Effectiveness of SMW as a Platform Choice
Packaged Software SMW + Extensions Custom Development
☺Very quick to ☺ Still quick to N Slow to develop
obtain program ☺Extremely flexible
N Hard to customize ☺ Easy to customize N High cost to develop
N Expensive ☺ Low-moderate cost and maintain
 Microsoft Project  Vulcan Project Wiki  .NET Framework
 Version One  B.L.S.  J2EE, …
 Microsoft  RPI map  Ruby on rails
SharePoint
120

116. Tutorial Structure
Part I
 Wiki and Semantics (Jesse)
 Semantic MediaWiki (Jesse)
 SMW+ (Mark)
 Hands-On Session 1 (All)
Part II
 Semantic Wikis in Practice (Mark)
 Wiki Object Model and Widgets (Jesse, Ning)
 Hands-On Session 2 (All)
 Connecting to SMW+ (Jesse, Justin)
 Wrap Up and Q&A (All)
122

117. Connecting to SMW+ and Consuming Data
 Wiki - Microsoft Office Connector
– As known as WikiTags
– Access wiki content in your Microsoft Office applications
 Motivation
 Background
– Scrum wiki for Agile Software Development
 Demo
123

118. SMW:: powerful tools and contents
Semantic MediaWiki and related extensions have more potential power

119. Need Release :: The Power
 Be used by more
people
 Content in more
places
 Accessible via more
applications
 Enhanced with more
semantics

120. Need :: Workflow Integration + Usability Enhancements
 Infrequent Wiki users frequently forget where the wiki
pages are located
 Search is a break from current workflow
 Search result can be noisy or irrelevant
 Usability:
– Wiki/Template/SF markup syntax is not extremely hard, but
enough to turn off many users
– To locate and consume info in SMW is just not easy
enough, need something better
 Why don’t we leverage Microsoft Office suite?

121. Microsoft Office :: The Most Popular Productivity Suite
500m users worldwide
>90% market share
Users live in the “suite”
Outlook always open
Potential for SMW

122. MICROSOFT OFFICE CONNECTOR :: How It Works
 Leverage Microsoft Office
Add-ins technology
 Bring SMW info to Office
applications on-demand
 API for semantic data I/O
 Utilize semantics to
improve relevance
 Smart actions for
semantic properties

123. Before the demo, let’s look a data wiki
AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT

124. Wiki :: Agile Project Management – Scrum++
Project Wiki
for
Milestones, Use
r
Stories, Develo
per Tasks, etc.
Page is form-
based, with
queries and
semantics built-
in

125. For more info, go to
http://wiking.vulcan.com/dev/
Now see the demo
LIVE ACTIONS

126. Backstage::Semantic Wiki Object Model
 Wiki Validation  To get page info
 Authentication  Get all forms related info
 To get the categories  Edit and save page w/ form
– And descriptions  Change a property
 To get the article titles  Set form of a page
 To get the semantic  Create form templates
properties  To upload into the Wiki
http://wiking.vulcan.com/dev/index.php/SMW_Webservice_APIs

127. Microsoft Office Connector Smart Connections
• Consume relevant, targeted information
– With the tools you are already familiar with
– In the context – better relevance and productivity
– In place – no search overhead to break workflow
– In real time – data from wiki is live
– Automatically – linking to wiki
• Let you contribute to Wiki
– Without knowing where the content is
– Without learning wiki/template syntax

128. Tutorial Structure
Part I
 Wiki and Semantics (Jesse)
 Semantic MediaWiki (Jesse)
 SMW+ (Mark)
 Hands-On Session 1 (All)
Part II
 Semantic Wikis in Practice (Mark)
 Wiki Object Model and Widgets (Jesse, Ning)
 Hands-On Session 2 (All)
 Connecting to SMW+ (Jesse, Justin)
 Wrap Up and Q&A (All)
135

129. Openness of SMW as a Platform
136

130. Summary: SMW and Applications
 Semantic MediaWiki combines the power of semantics with
wiki’s usability and social ingredients
 Semantic MediaWiki + wide range of extensions make it a
great choice for knowledge management and acquisition
 Semantic MediaWiki evolves into a potential application
development platform for social semantic web
– Fits into cost-effective sweet spot
137

131. Questions?
138

132. Backup slides start here…
139

133. Questions about SMW in Enterprise and Government
 SMW in a multi-datasource environment
– Microsoft Office plugin experience?
 Usability
– User-level authoring of ontology information – useful?
– What is the next necessary visualization?
– How do you manage ontology/data evolution
 Deployability in the enterprise
 Is the current level of security sufficient?
 Where is SMW weakest?
140

134. Wikipedia for Porsches (Acceleration Data Example)
 Information Need: All Porsche models that accelerate 0-
100kph in under 5, 6, and 7 seconds

135. More Porsche Acceleration Data in Wikipedia

136. Ultrapedia Main Page
Main Page

137. Semantics for Improved Wiki Navigation
Tree View Control Abstract/Summary quick preview

138. The Porsche 996 Acceleration Table In Ultrapedia

139. Same Table as a Query

140. Dynamically-Generated Tables forfast?
Which Porsches accelerate
Queries
 Information Need: All Porsche models that accelerate 0-
100kph in under 5, 6, and 7 seconds

141. Graph Views of the Acceleration Data

142. External Data via a Live Ebay Query

143. Linking to External Ebay Data

144. Photos in Mercedes-Benz E-class W212 Gallery Section
Wiki Articles as Data

145. Timelines from Data Production Timeline View
Volkswagen

146. Dynamic Mapping and Charting