freebase, rdf and the semantic web

SF Semantic Web Meet-up May 2009 Colin Evans + Jamie Taylor

A socially managed semantic database

A Brief History of Data Modeling

Photo CC-BY: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:McDonalds_on_Interstate_44.jpg

Ugly Tabular Data

A Simple Restaurant Schema

A Simple Restaurant Schema

A Big, Ugly Schema

What Went Wrong?

• Things change

• Requirements change

• User expectations change

• Data structures change

• Our data models aren’t keeping up

Using Graphs to Model Data

Metadata is Data

• Relationships are represented explicitly

• Schema can be represented as a graph

• Data integration is the union of two graphs

• This makes creating, extending, and combining data much easier than before

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B

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EF

E

D

C

B

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Data Integration

• Semantics facilitate shared meaning through

• Subject Identity

• Strong and Consistent Semantics

• Open APIS + Open Data

• These principles make it much easier to extend, combine, and integrate data

Why Does This Work?

What is Freebase?

• Structured Database

• Strong Collaboratively Edited Subjects

• Strong Collaboratively Developed Semantics

• Open API + Open Data

Freebase is a database of things.

5,203,825 Topics

14,110,006 Named Entities

Users can write to Freebase+ add entities+ add properties+ create data models!

All objects in Freebase have strong identifiers!

/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000000009d0e

/business/cik/0000012927

/wikipedia/en_id/3709

/wikipedia/en/Boeing

/en/boeing

NYSE: BATYO: 7661

http://blog.kiwitobes.com/?p=57

Topics in Freebase are Unique(no two Topics represent the same thing)

BoeingMarket Capitalization

CEO

Airc

raft

Man

ufac

ture

d Ticker Symbol

Subsidiaries

CIK Code

SIC Code

Operating IncomeDate Founded

Hea

dqua

rter

sP

olitica

l Contrib

utio

ns

Rock

ets

Manufa

cture

d

Once you access an object in Freebase you have access to all facets of information

What are people doing with the results?

Microsoft Political Blog

What else can you do with Freebase?

Use Freebase to publish into the LOD Cloud

<fb:people.sibling_relationship rdf:about="http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/guid.9202a8c04000641f8000000004598a74"> <fb:people.sibling_relationship.sibling

rdf:resource="http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/en.carlene_barous"/> <fb:people.sibling_relationship.sibling

rdf:resource="http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/en.terri_brosius"/> </fb:people.sibling_relationship>

http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/en.terri_brosius

RDFa

<span xmlns:v="http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/" typeof="v:Review">

<span rel="v:itemReviewed"> <span about="http://komalavilas.com" property="v:name" typeof="v:Restaurant">Komala Vilas</span> </span>

<span rel="v:reviewer"> <span about="http://rdf.freebase.com/ns/en.s_meenakshi_ammal" property="v:name">Meenakshi Ammal</span> </span>

<span property="v:rating" >3.7</span> <span property="v:date">1st April 2005</span> <span property="v:summary">

Best south Indian vegetarian food in the bay area</span>

</span>

An example of an RDFa Restaurant Review

5,203,825 Topics

14,110,006 Named Entities

Freebase Suggest

http://code.google.com/p/freebase-suggest/

ACRE: The Freebase Javascript Development Environment

The Acre application environment

A source of Vocabularies

Freebase is a database of types.

A source of Vocabularies

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Can’t find a vocabulary you need?

Write your own!

sameas.freebase.com

/en/ibm

sameas.freebase.com

CIK0000051143

GovTrack

MQL: Metaweb Query Language

{ “id”:”/en/ibm”, “type”:”/business/company”, “founded”:null}

Query:

July 15, 1916

MQL Extensions + sameAs Map

{ “id”:”/en/ibm”, “type”:”/business/company”, “lod”:[{ }]}

Query: