Semantic Wiki as a knowledge base management system

Jiri Kopsa, Josef HolySun Microsystems, Inc.9 Nov 2006

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Agenda

• Who Are We, What We Do• Current Issues• Semantic Wiki• State of Art• Our Ongoing Work

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Who Are We

• Sun Microsystems> SPARC, Java, Solaris, JES, NetBeans IDE

• Prague Engineering Center> NetBeans (150 engineers)> Other teams

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What We Do – software development• Product Management (product definition)• User Experience Design (interaction & visual design)• Engineering (architecture, implementation)• Quality Assurance (tests)• Document Writers (help, articles)• User Research (usability tests, surveys)• Community

> Blogs> Plugin development

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Current State of the Knowledge Base• Isolated Documents or Resources

Notes, Emails

Product Definitions

Guidelines

Study Reports Documentation

Specifications

Visual Elements

Repositories: Wiki, HTML (in CVS), Issuezilla, email (mailing lists)

Bugs & RFEs

Java Code Resource Bundles Help Pages

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Frequent Activities

• Find (all) pieces of information • Reflect Changes across Documents

It's not easy!

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Example: Filter Button

• Show/Hide components on a diagram> Toggled in = show or hide ?

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Example: Filter Button

• Mike from Petersburg calls Jirka in Prague to discuss the issue> 2 x 15 minutes

• Jirka discusses the thing with other designers> 3 x 10 minutes

• One of the designers accidentally reminds that there is a similar feature

• Cost: 1 person/hour + call• Risks:

> Issue will appear again (in a different team)> Higher cost or wrong solution (one found by accident)

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Example: Email

• About 3 years ago, a Sun group did research on Java developers, visiting them on site and documenting their findings with a video. I think Elaine Coleman was involved?

Does anyone know where I can get a copy of this? At that time it was only in VHS format. Thanks.

Nancy

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We need ...

• We need a system that gives answers to questions like:

“Is there any filtering feature in the Sun software?”

“Should there be a confirmation dialog on delete action?”

“Was there ever done a usability study on Web Services?”

• Full text search does not help

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Semantic Wiki

Shashi Seth, Sr. Product Manager at Google: "This company runs on Wikis."

(A statement made at WikiSym 2005)

Jiri Kopsa, Member of Technical Staff at Sun Microsystems: "This company also runs on Wikis."

(A statement made at KEG seminar 2006)

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Semantic Wiki

• What is Wiki• Semantic Wiki: State of Art

> Editing Paradigms> Subject Granularity> Queries, Navigation> Interoperability

• Our ongoing work

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Semantic Wiki

• Wiki (means fast)> Content management system> Low barrier to participate

> Edit online & easily> Hypertext> Incremental (link to non-existing pages)> Anyone can contribute (add, synthesize)

> Wiki syntax: **bold** or __bold__ [HomePage]

• Semantic Wiki> Not just natural language text and formatting

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State of Art: Semantic Wiki

Early 2004: First papers and projects

Late 2005: Interest groups formed

June 2006: 1st workshop (at ESWC Budva)

Aug 2006: 2nd workshop (at WikSym)

More then 10 implementations; 5 in a demo state.

2005

`

2004 2006

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State of Art: Semantic Wiki

• Question #1: Editing paradigm> Semantics only> In text (extension of Wiki syntax)> Separate – semantics typed in in separate text fields

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Editing Paradigm: Semantics Only (COW)

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Editing Paradigm: Separate (forms)

• Platypus Wiki, IkeWiki

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Editing Paradigm: Integrated (in Text)• Extension of Wiki syntax

> MediaWiki, Kaukolu, Rhizome, SemperWiki, Makna, IkeWiki

Link to a page:

Liz works with [Paul Newman|PaulNewman].

Link to an individual:

Liz works with [Paul Newman| PaulNewman!rel#worksWith].

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State of Art: Semantic Wiki

• Question #2: Subject/Object granularity> Most systems scope to document

E.g. on a page of Elizabeth Taylor

Liz works with [Paul Newman|PaulNewman!rel#worksWith].

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State of Art: Semantic Wiki

• Question #2: Subject granularity> Only 2 systems (Kaukolu, Rhizome) support finer

granularity (section)> Requirement for use at Sun Microsystems

• Kaukolu Wiki (best paper on semwiki ESWC06 workshop)> Wiki syntax inspired by RDF N3 notation

<http://www.dkfi.de> isSubjectURIOf DKFI.

[DFKI] [is a|isa] [Company]; and their [homepage] is [DFKI Homepage|http://www.dfki.de] .

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Common Navigation Paradigms

• Related pages> Links – links to, where the current individual is subject> Backlinks – linked by – role of object

• Hyperlink in a free-form text> Simple (navigational), Semantic (relational)> AJAX-based mouseovers - showing various context-

sensitive information – IkeWiki• Navigation through the ontology

> Explicit, Inferenced

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Navigation Example I - IkeWiki

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Makna – Ajax-based link annotation

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Navigation Example II – Makna

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Searching in Semantic Wiki

• Text-based – search for the given string> IkeWiki, MediaWiki - string treated as a synonym for

some concept• Triple-based queries – SPARQL

> Imposing the knowledge of the triples concept to the user> Does it make sense?

> You also don't need to know SQL in order to use e-shop.

• Pre-defined search filters, suitable for a given context – Makna and MediaWiki a bit> Ontology-based user interface

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Search Example I – Text-based

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Search Example II - Triple-based

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Extendibility/interoperability

> Synonyms for semantic concepts (foaf, dublincore...)> Mapping to a pre-defined set of ontologies [[Category:Person]] -> <rdf:type rdf:resource="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person"/>

> Problem: How to add (link to) a category from outside?> Can I link to a concept outside of the wiki, without explicit

mapping (not by means of Wiki pages)?> Can the ontologies in the wikis be accessed from

outside?> How to link to a concept from the outside?

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Our ongoing work

• Based on Kaukolu Wiki• Ease of use

> WYSIWYG editing (incl. “paste images”)> Suggestions> Enhanced authoring / navigation UI> “hasHomePage” property

• RDFa

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Our ongoing work: hasHomepage

• Semantic MediaWiki: subject/object is a page> “links / predicates” can be followed

by a browser• Kaukolu: subject/object is any uri

> No relationship between subject/object and page

> “links / predicates” cannot be followed by a browser

s op

A href

s-p-o

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Our ongoing work: hasHomepage

• Our enhancement: hasHomepage> Individuals can be bound to an anchor in a page> User can use links/predicates to navigate the system

hasHomepagehasHomepage hasHomepage

so

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Our ongoing work

• RDFa> Working Draft at W3C> Syntax for expressing RDF in XHTML

> adds attributes about, property and rel> Note: SweetWiki uses RDFa, but scopes to page

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Our ongoing work: RDFa

• RDFa

<span about="London">London the capital of

<a href=”#England” rel=”ns:capitalOf”>England</a>

has a population of<span property="population">7.5 million</span>

</span>

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Why RDFa? RDFa is fundamental!

• Today, semantic web apps expose the semantics as plain RDF or rendered to HTML (custom UI)

Web Application

RDF

Web Browser

Web UI

Agent

text

RDFHTML

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Why RDFa? RDFa is fundamental!

• In the future we may want to have “semantic web browsers”> Extension of current browsers> Providing extra features for the semantic web> Allow users to “navigate / query” the whole semantic web

with single user interface> Use new features (plugins) immediately on the whole

semantic web > (compared to new features provided by individual web

applications)

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Why RDFa? RDFa is fundamental!

• RDFa makes perfect fit for “semantic web browser”

Web Application

RDFaXHTML + RDF

SemanticWeb Browser

Agent

RDFa or RDFRDFa

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Our ongoing work

• Current State> Parser> Implemented pop up dialogs to allow the user to add

metadata• Next steps

> Suggestions for annotations (currently only Wiki pages)> Navigation UI, Drag'n'Drop> “Natural Language” processing

> Bullet lists> Shorts (e.g. “AI:”)

> Integrate with Kaukolu Wiki

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Summary

• We have simple problems• We need simple but working solutions• Current Wikis are good, but ...• Our contribution

> Subject Granularity + Navigation: Solved> RDFa: Fundamental> Ease of Use

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References: Semantic Wikis

• Semantic Wiki State of Art (list of implementations)http://ontoworld.org/wiki/Semantic_Wiki_State_Of_The_Art

• Our Blog: Request for Enhancementhttp://blogs.sun.com/rfe/

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Q&A

Thank you!