Keynote at Boehringer-Ingelheim workshop on "Data retrieval beyond boundaries". Learnings from other industries

1. Steffen Staab Semantic (Web) Technologies – Principles and Practice 1Institute for Web Science and Technologies · University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
Web and Internet Science Group · ECS · University of Southampton, UK &
Semantic (Web) Technologies
Principles and Practices
Steffen Staab

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Daten – Menschen
Meaning?

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Traditional Information System
Business
Logics
Structured Data
Unstructured
Data
Presentation and
Interaction
Characteristics:
• Processes are
known
• Data structures
are known
• Meaning of data
primarily in
schema and code

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Today‘s Information Eco-systems
Examples:
• Open Data
• 10000 DBs/firm
• Cloud(s)
• Ad-hoc data
Characteristics:
• Little structure
• Semi-structured
data
• Meaning of data of
primary importance!

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Principles

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Issue 1: Data Models
Data Models:
• Relational
• Tree (XML,...)
• Document oriented
• Stream
• Array
• Graph-DB
RDF
Graph data model as
common denominator

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Dealing with issue 1: RDF as data model
RDF
Graph data model as
common denominator
knows
Staab Saric
56075
hasPLZ

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Issue 2: Conceptual Models
Conceptual Models:
• ER
• UML
• ...
RDFS
Ontology as common
denominator

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Issue 2: RDFS as common conceptual meta model
RDFS
for explicit conceptual
description
knows
Staab Saric
56075
hasPLZ
Academic
Industr.
employee
typetype

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Issue 3: System boundaries
IRIs
for globally unique
referencing
o:knows
ko:Staab bi:Saric
56075
o:hasPLZ
o:Academic
o:Industr.
employee
rdf:typerdf:type
o = http://myonto.org
rdf = https://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

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Information Systems
Traditional:
• Closed world
• Known processes
• Carefully curated data
• Data storage
expensive and limited
Data = Truth
Novel:
• Open world
• Ad-hoc processes
• Error-prone data
• Data storage cheap
and almost unlimited
Data = Signal
Reality in companies: Both! Not a contradiction!

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Practices
Knowledge Graphs
• Google
• Hewlett-Packard
• Microsoft
• Samsung
• Reuters
Open Knowledge Graphs
• DBPedia
• Wikidata
• Yago
Rich Semantic Infrastructures
• BBC
• New York Times
• Elsevier
• British Museum
Semantic Thesauri
• UN FAO
• Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
• Roche
• ...

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Practices 1: Data=Signal

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Principles
http://de.slideshare.net/laroyo/lecture-6-32380702

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Principles
http://de.slideshare.net/laroyo/lecture-6-32380702

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Principles
http://de.slideshare.net/laroyo/lecture-6-32380702

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Principles
http://de.slideshare.net/laroyo/lecture-6-32380702

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Principles
http://de.slideshare.net/laroyo/lecture-6-32380702

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Practices 2: Data = Truth

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Information Architecture
Elsevier Examples
All following slides covering Elsevier
Example are courtesy by Paul Groth

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INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE DEFINITIONS
• The combination of organization, labeling, and
navigation schemes within an information system.
• The structural design of an information space to facilitate
task completion and intuitive access to content.
• The art and science of structuring and classifying web
sites and intranets to help people find and manage
information.
• An emerging discipline and community of practice
focusing on bringing principles of design and architecture
to the digital landscape.
Dillon, A. and Turnbull, D. (2006) Information
Architecture, Encyclopedia of Library and Information
Science, Marcel-Dekker.

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FOUR TASKS IN INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
1. Creating Content Organization Systems
2. Creating Semantic Organization Systems
3. Creating Navigation Systems
4. Creating Interaction Designs

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Lots of sources at Elsevier

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Documents by subject area

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ORGANIZING INFORMATION (TAXONOMIES)

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CREATING NAVIGATION SYSTEMS

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MOBILE REDESIGN

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GLOBAL DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIERS (DOI)

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ORCID: GLOBAL IDENTIFIERS FOR PEOPLE

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ARCHIVES

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Linking BBC data
Matthew Wood
http://de.slideshare.net/fantasticlife/semweb-at-the-bbc
Oliver Bartlett
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/af6b613e-6935-3165-
93ca-9319e1887858

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bbc.co.uk was incoherent…

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Saturday Kitchen Episode Page Saturday Kitchen Recipe
About 10 years ago

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Unless we link our data…
• global visual language
• common navigation patterns
• technology refresh
• page assembly layers
• “common platforms”
…are all treating the symptoms, not the illness

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ProgrammesMusic
Topics
Users
Events
News Food
Gardening
The BBC from 10,000 feet

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What BBC has done:
• Moved to MusicBrainz as music metadata supplier
• Designed and built /programmes according to linked
data principles
• Published the Programmes Ontology
• Used the Music Ontology to publish RDF for /music
• Experimented with pushing programme ontology
data over XMPP

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What else?
• RDF on /programmes
• RDFa on /programmes and /music
• Wikipedia/Dbpedia for topic aggregations on
/programmes
• Using MusicBrainz <> Dbpedia linked data
equivalency to aggregate artist information at /music
• /events as linked data

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Practices 3:
Data = Truth + Signal

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Google for „Vincent van Gogh“
Screenshot by
Kingsley Idehen

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Van Gogh on Facebook

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Facebook Data Object
Screenshot by
Kingsley Idehen

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Van Gogh on Wikipedia

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DBPedia Data Object
Note: DBPedia harvests knowledge from Wikipedia
Screenshot by
Kingsley Idehen

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Freebase Data Object
Note: MetaWeb producing Freebase is a Semantic Web
company bought by Google in 2010; Freebase is now
donated to WikiData
Screenshot by
Kingsley Idehen

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Google Search with Google Knowledge
Graph

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Google knowledge graph API
1st API: Search
2nd API: Knowledge
Graph
....among thousands of
APIs used in Google!
https://developers.googl
e.com/knowledge-
graph/
Schema.org types
JSON-LD Syntax
Usage: e.g. named
entity spotting

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Yet another challenge /
opportunity:
Open Practices

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Semantics at Scale: Linked Open Data Cloud
Linking Open Data cloud diagram, by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch. http://lod-cloud.net/
Explicit meaning:
Re-used ontologies
Implicit meaning:
Linking of data
Meaning through
social contexts

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ProgrammesMusic
Topics
Users
Events
News Food
Gardening

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Semantics at Scale: Linked Open Data Cloud
Linking Open Data cloud diagram, by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch. http://lod-cloud.net/
Explicit meaning:
Re-used ontologies
Implicit meaning:
Linking of data
Meaning through
social contexts
Why should a for-profit (pharmaceutical) company think about opening
data?
• Not all data is competitive advantage, but all data implies costs
• Sharing of – some (!) – data is inevitable

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• Semantic Web Technologies
– Simple ideas
– Infrastructures supported by key players
– More technologies to talk about:
• SPARQL, RDF-A, Schema.org, SKOS, PROVO, R2RML...
• Tim Berners-Lee:
„Linked Data is 'the web done right.‘“
http://www.zdnet.com/article/tim-berners-lee-talks-cranberry-sauce-and-linked-data-in-new-york-city/
• Watch 10 Minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga1aSJXCFe0
Conclusion

61. Steffen Staab Semantic (Web) Technologies – Principles and Practice 64Institute for Web Science and Technologies · University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
Web and Internet Science Group · ECS · University of Southampton, UK &
Thank you for your attention!