Posted:June 23, 2008

We Offer a Definition and Some Answers to Enterprise Questions

The recent LinkedData Planet conference in NYC marked, I think, a real transition point. The conference signaled the beginning movement of the Linked Data approach from the research lab to the enterprise. As a result, there was something of a schizophrenic aspect at many different levels to the conference: business and research perspectives; realists and idealists; straight RDF and linked data RDF; even the discussions in the exhibit area versus some of the talks presented from the podium.

Like any new concept, my sense was a struggle around terminology and common language and the need to bridge different perspectives and world views. Like all human matters, communication and dialog were at the core of the attendees’ attempts to bridge gaps and find common ground. Based on what I saw, much great progress occurred.

The reality, of course, is that Linked Data is still very much in its infancy, and its practice within the enterprise is just beginning. Much of what was heard at the conference was theory versus practice and use cases. That should and will change rapidly.

In an attempt to help move the dialog further, I offer a definition and Structured Dynamics’ perspective to some of the questions posed in one way or another during the conference.

Linked Data Defined

Sources such as the four principles of Linked Data in Tim Berners-Lee’s Design Issues: Linked Data and the introductory statements on the Linked Data Wikipedia entry approximate — but do not completely express — an accepted or formal or “official” definition of Linked Data per se. Building from these sources and attempting to be more precise, here is the definition of Linked Data we used internally:

Linked Data is a set of best practices for publishing and deploying instance and class data using the RDF data model, naming the data objects using uniform resource identifiers (URIs), and exposing the data for access via the HTTP protocol, while emphasizing data interconnections, interrelationships and context useful to both humans and machine agents.

All references to Linked Data below embrace this definition.

Some Clarifying Questions

I’m sure many other questions were raised, but listed below are some of the more prominent ones I heard in the various conference Q&A sessions and hallway discussions.

1. Does Linked Data require RDF?

Yes. Though other approaches can also model the first order predicate logic of subject-predicate-object at the core of the Resource Description Framework data model, RDF is the one based on the open standards of the W3C. RDF and FOL are powerful because of simplicity, ability to express complex schema and relationships, and suitability for modeling all extant data frameworks for unstructured, semi-structured and structured data.

2. Is publishing RDF sufficient to create Linked Data?

No. Linked Data represents a set of techniques applied to the RDF data model that names all objects as URIs and makes them accessible via the HTTP protocol (as well as other considerations; see the definition above and further discussion below).

Some vendors and data providers claim Linked Data support, but if their data is not accessible via HTTP using URIs for data object identification, it is not Linked Data. Fortunately, it is relatively straightforward to convert non-compliant RDF to Linked Data.

3. How does one publish or deploy Linked Data?

There are some excellent references for how to publish Linked Data. Examples include a tutorial, How to Publish Linked Data on the Web, and a white paper, Deploying Linked Data, using the example of OpenLink’s Virtuoso software. There are also recommended approaches and ways to use URI identifiers, such as the W3C’s working draft, Cool URIs for the Semantic Web.

However, there are not yet published guidelines for also how to meet the Zitgist definition above where there is also an emphasis on class and context matching. A number of companies and consultants, including Zitgist, presently provide such assistance.

The key principles, however, are to make links aggressively between data items with appropriate semantics (properties or relations; that is, the predicate edges between the subject and object nodes of the triple) using URIs for the object identifiers, all being exposed and accessible via the HTTP Web protocol.

4. Is Linked Data just another term or branding for the Semantic Web?

Absolutely not, though this is a source of some confusion at present.

The Semantic Web is probably best understood as a vision or goal where semantically rich annotation of data is used by machine agents to make connections, find information or do things automatically in the background on behalf of humans. We are on a path toward this vision or goal, but under this interpretation the Semantic Web is more of a process than a state. By understanding that the Semantic Web is a vision or goal we can see why a label such as ‘Web 3.0’ is perhaps simplistic and incomplete.

Linked Data is a set of practices somewhere in the early middle of the spectrum from the initial Web of documents to this vision of the Semantic Web. (See my earlier post at bottom for a diagram of this spectrum.)

Linked Data is here today, doable today, and pragmatic today. Meaningful semantic connections can be made and there are many other manifest benefits (see below) with Linked Data, but automatic reasoning in the background or autonomic behavior is not yet one of them.

Strictly speaking, then, Linked Data represents doable best practices today within the context both of Web access and of this yet unrealized longer-term vision of the Semantic Web.

5. Does Linked Data only apply to instance data?

Definitely not, though early practice has been interpreted by some as such.

One of the stimulating, but controversial, keynotes of the conference was from Dr. Anant Jhingran of IBM, who made the strong and absolutely correct observation that Linked Data requires the interplay and intersection of people, instances and schema. From his vantage, early exposed Linked Data has been dominated by instance data from sources such as Wikipedia and have lacked the schema (class) relationships that enterprises are based upon. The people aspect in terms of connections, collaboration and joint buy-in is also the means for establishing trust and authority to the data.

In Zitgist’s terminology, class-level mappings ‘explode the domain’ and produce information benefits similar to Metcalfe’s Law as a function of the degree of class linkages [1]. While this network effect is well known to the community, it has not yet been shown much in current Linked Data sets. As Anant pointed out, schemas define enterprise processes and knowledge structures. Demonstrating schema (class) relationships is the next appropriate task for the Linked Data community.

6. What role do “ontologies” play with Linked Data?

In an RDF context, “ontologies” are the vocabularies and structures that capture the schema structures noted above. Ontologies embody the class and instance definitions and the predicate (property) relations that enable legacy schemas and data to be transformed into Linked Data graphs.

Though many public RDF vocabularies and ontologies presently exist, and should be re-used where possible and where the semantics match the existing legacy information, enterprises will require specific ontologies reflective of their own data and information relationships.

Despite the newness or intimidation perhaps associated with the “ontology” term, ontologies are no more complex — indeed, are simpler and more powerful — than the standard relational schema familiar to enterprises. If you’d like, simply substitute schema for ontology and you will be saying the same thing in an RDF context.

7. Is Linked Data a centralized or federated approach?

Neither, really, though the rationale and justification for Linked Data is grounded in federating widely disparate sources of data that can also vary widely in existing formalism and structure.

Because Linked Data is a set of techniques and best practices for expressing, exposing and publishing data, it can easily be applied to either centralized or federated circumstances.

However, the real world where any and all potentially relevant data can be interconnected is by definition a varied, distributed, and therefore federated world. Because of its universal RDF data model and Web-based techniques for data expression and access, Linked Data is the perfect vehicle, finally, for data integration and interoperability without boundaries.

8. How does one maintain context when federating Linked Data?

The simple case is where two data sources refer to the exact same entity or instance (individual) with the same identity. The standard sameAs predicate is used to assert the equivalence in such cases.

The more important case is where the data sources are about similar subjects or concepts, in which case a structure of well-defined reference classes is employed. Furthermore, if these classes can themselves be expressed in a graph structure capturing the relationships amongst the concepts, we now have some fixed points in the conceptual information space for relating and tieing together disparate data. Still further, such a conceptual structure also provides the means to relate the people, places, things, organizations, events, etc., of the individual instances of the world to one another as well.

Any reference structure that is composed of concept classes that are properly related to each other may provide this referential “glue” or “backbone”.

One such structure provided in open source by Zitgist is the 21,000 subject concept node structure of UMBEL, itself derived from the Cyc knowledge base. In any event, such broad reference structures may often be accompanied by more specific domain conceptual ontologies to provide focused domain-specific context.

9. Does data need to be “open” to qualify as Linked Data?

No, absolutely not.

While, to date, it is the case that Linked Data has been demonstrated using public Web data and many desire to expose more through the open data movement, there is nothing preventing private, proprietary or subscription data from being Linked Data.

The Linking Open Data (LOD) group formed about 18 months ago to showcase Linked Data techniques began with open data. As a parallel concept to sever the idea that it only applies to open data, François-Paul Servant has specifically identified Linking Enterprise Data (and see also the accompanying slides).

For example, with Linked Data (and not the more restrictive LOD sense), two or more enterprises or private parties can legitimately exchange private Linked Data over a private network using HTTP. As another example, Linked Data may be exchanged on an intranet between different departments, etc.

So long as the principles of URI naming, HTTP access, and linking predicates where possible are maintained, the approach qualifies as Linked Data.

10. Can legacy data be expressed as Linked Data?

Absolutely yes, without reservation. Indeed, non-transactional legacy data perhaps should be expressed as Linked Data in order to gain its manifest benefits. See #14 below.

11. Can enterprise and open or public data be intermixed as Linked Data?

Of course. Since Linked Data can be applied to any data formalism, source or schema, it is perfectly suited to integrating data from inside and outside the firewall, open or private.

12. How does one query or access Linked Data?

The basic query language for Linked Data is SPARQL (pronounced “sparkle”), which bears close resemblance to SQL only applicable to an RDF data graph. The actual datastores applied to RDF may also add a fourth aspect to the tuple for graph namespaces, which can bring access and scale efficiencies. In these cases, the system is known as a “quad store”. Additional techniques may be added to data filtering prior to the SPARQL query for further efficiencies.

Templated SPARQL queries and other techniques can lead to very efficient and rapid deployment of various Web services and reports, two techniques often applied by Zitgist and other vendors. For example, all Zitgist DataViewer views and UMBEL Web services are expressed using such SPARQL templates.

This SPARQL templating approach may also be combined with the use of templating standards such as Fresnel to bind instance data to display templates.

13. How is access control or security maintained around Linked Data?

In Zitgist’s view, access control or security occurs at the layer of the HTTP access and protocols, and not at the Linked Data layer. Thus, the same policies and procedures that have been developed for general Web access and security are applicable to Linked Data.

However, standard data level or Web server access and security can be enhanced by the choice of the system hosting the data. Zitgist, for example, uses OpenLink’s Virtuoso universal server that has proven and robust security mechanisms. Additionally, it is possible to express security and access policies using RDF ontologies as well. These potentials are largely independent of Linked Data techniques.

The key point is that there is nothing unique or inherent to Linked Data with respect to access or control or security that is not inherent with standard Web access. If a given link points to a data object from a source that has limited or controlled access, its results will not appear in the final results graph for those users subject to access restrictions.

14. What are the enterprise benefits of Linked Data? (Why adopt it?)

For more than 30 years — since the widespread adoption of electronic information systems by enterprises — the Holy Grail has been complete, integrated access to all data. With Linked Data, that promise is now at hand. Here are some of the key enterprise benefits to Linked Data, which provide the rationales for adoption:

  • Via the RDF model, equal applicability to unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data and content
  • Elimination of internal data “silos”
  • Integration of internal and external data
  • Easy interlinkage of enterprise, industry-standard, open public and public subscription data
  • Complete data modeling of any legacy schema
  • Flexible and easy updates and changes to existing schema
  • An end to the need to re-architect legacy schema resulting from changes to the business or M & A
  • Report creation and data display based on templates and queries, not IT departments
  • Data access, analysis and manipulation pushed out to the user level, and, generally
  • The ability of internal Linked Data stores to be maintained by existing DBA procedures and assets.

15. What are early applications or uses of Linked Data?

Linked Data is well suited to traditional knowledge base or knowledge management applications. Its near-term application to transactional or material process applications is less apparent.

Of special use is the value-added from connecting existing internal and external content via the network effect from the linkages [1].

A Hearty Thanks

Johnnie Linked Data is starting to grow up. Our little semantic Web toddler is moving beyond ga-ga-goo-goo to saying his first real sentences. Language acquisition will come rapidly, and, like what all of us have seen with our own children, they will grow up faster than we can imagine.

There were so many at this meeting that had impact and meaning to this exciting transition point that I won’t list specific names at risk of leaving other names off. Those of you who made so many great observations or stayed up late interacting with passion know who you are. Let me simply say: Thanks!

The LinkedData Planet conference has shown, to me, that enterprises are extremely interested in what our community has developed and now proven. They are asking hard questions and will be difficult task masters, but we need to listen and respond. The attendees were a selective and high-quality group, understanding of their own needs and looking for answers. We did an OK job of providing those answers, but we can do much, much better.

I reflect on these few days now knowing something I did not truly know before: the market is here and it is real. The researchers who have brought us to this point will continue to have much to research. But, those of us desirous of providing real pragmatic value and getting paid for it, can confidently move forward knowing both the markets and the value are real. Linked Data is not magic, but when done with quality and in context, it delivers value worth paying for.

To all of the fellow speakers and exhibitors, to all of the engaged attendees, and to the Juperitermedia organizers and Bob DuCharme and Ken North as conference chairs, let me add my heartfelt thanks for a job well done.

Next Steps and Next Conference

The next LinkedData Planet conference and expo will be October 16-17, 2008, at the Santa Clara Hyatt in Santa Clara, California. The agenda has not been announced, but hopefully we will see a continuing enterprise perspective and some emerging use cases.

Zitgist as a company will continue to release and describe its enterprise products and services, and I will continue to blog on Linked Data matters of specific interest to the enterprise. Pending topics include converting legacy data to Linked Data, converting relational data and schema to Linked Data, placing context to Linked Data, and many others. We think you will like the various announcements as they arise. 😉

Zitgist is also toying with the use of a distinctive icon A Linked Data iconto indicate the availability of Linked Data conforming to the principles embodied in the questions above. (The color choice is an adoption of the semantic Web logo from the W3C.) The use of a distinctive icon is similar to what RSS feeds A Linked Data iconor microformats A Linked Data iconhave done to alert users to their specific formats. Drop me a line and let us know what you think of this idea.


[1] Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system(n²), where the linkages between users (nodes) exist by definition. For information bases, the data objects are the nodes. Linked Data works to add the connections between the nodes. We can thus modify the original sense to become Zitgist’s Law: the value of a Linked Data network is proportional to the square of the number of links between the data objects.
Posted:June 14, 2008

The Flood of 2008 Brings New Perspectives

I live in Coralville, Iowa, a sister community to Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa and the Hawkeyes. Iowa City is in eastern Iowa on I-80 about one hour west of the state’s eastern border at the Mississippi River, and about 35 miles south of Cedar Rapids, home of one of the major mills for Quaker Oats. Iowa City is a very together and vibrant community of bucolic rolling hills and pretty vistas.

In between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids is my local commercial airport, the Eastern Iowa Airport, and Coralville Lake, which is an Army Corps of Engineers flood-control reservoir controlling the Iowa River that flows through Iowa City from the northwest on its way to the Mississippi. Just north of the Iowa River is the Cedar River, a major tributary to the Iowa River that flows through Cedar Rapids before joining the Iowa River southeast of our location near the Mississippi.

From the conclusion of winter we have been getting a lot of rain around here. I mean, a lot.

I am just one of the 450,000 or so residents in the broader area encompassing both of these Iowa hubs, but my experience may have some interest as I prepared for the upcoming LinkedData Planet conference in New York City. The kind of information needs posed by a natural disaster such as is now occurring with our ‘Flood of 2008‘ point to, I think, a compelling use case for Linked Data.

Cedar Rapids First to be Hit

As the rains continued and the rivers rose, local residents discussed the previous large flood that occurred in 1993. That one caused much disruption and devastation. However, the general consensus was that we were unlikely to see a repeat of that 100-yr event. But unfortunately, the rains continued, and the last week saw multiple occasions of inches of rain within 24-hr periods.

Photo Courtesy of The Register, Harry BaumertThe first issue became apparent for the Cedar River.

By Wednesday, alarm began to set in, and the floodwaters were rising at unforecasted rates. The city worked furiously, especially right around Mercy Hospital downtown, but by Thursday the cause was lost and the hospital was completely abandoned.

Thursday also saw a major railway bridge, laden down with rock-filled rail cars to keep it from floating away, collapse, which then also became a dam catching floating trailers and other portable buildings.Photo Courtesy of The Register, Harry Baumert

Meanwhile, a major employer in that city, Quaker Oats, was flooding up to the middle of its second story. It is shown at lower right, underneath the aerial Cedar Rapids city view. You can see another major thoroughfare, the north-south transiting I-380, snaking around town and next to the Quaker production complex. All grain and important machinery has been lost in that complex.

The water peaked on Friday, and the Cedar River is now very slowly receding. However, as of today, Saturday, about 25,000 city residents have been evacuated and some 450 city blocks are still underwater. Early estimates for damage run to about $1 billion.

Photo Courtesy of The Register, Harry BaumertI-380 remains the only way to cross town and all other city bridges are flooded and closed.

Getting Ready for the Conference

Meanwhile at mid-week, concerned that the footprint of flooding was spreading, I finished up my materials for duplication early for the LinkedData Planet conference and headed to downtown Coralville to get my order in.

Locally, the Iowa River flow is controlled by the local Coralville Dam and was not on the same cycle as the Cedar River.

Volunteers were busy sandbagging behind the printing business and things were holding steady on Coralville’s commercial strip. I delivered my materials and had some interactions with the business as the job was run, but basically things were calm though steady precautions were underway. The rising river was forecasted to peak in about 5-7 days as rains from the 3,000 square mile drainage continued to flow into the reservoir.

However, two events occurred late Thursday that greatly complicated matters and shifted the eye of concern to Iowa City.

Iowa City and Coralville are Next

Photo Courtesy of The Register, Harry Baumert The first event was the overflow of the Coralville Dam spillway. That had been forecasted, but its degree was not. The spillway had only breached one time before, and that was during the 1993 flood. (That earlier event also exposed a rich bed of Devonian fossils).

When it occurred in 1993, the water inflow into the river peaked at about 28,000 cfm. (The standard dam bypass had been running about half that prior to the spillway being breached, shown after breach on the left hand side of the image to the left.) As of today, the estimate is that the rate will rise to 44,000 cfm, and perhaps will actually have a 2-3 ft crest overflowing the spillway.

The second event that occurred was that a railroad embankment on the spur Clear Creek on the Coralville strip breached. Overnight the area flooded rapidly.

When I awoke Friday morning, I tried to make my way downtown to pick up my printed materials. Unfortunately, the printer’s shop was now marooned. I could see it and there was only about 50 yds of water separating it from me, but power was out and emergency personnel were preventing any access. By late afternoon, that breach also joined up with more direct overflow from the Iowa River to create the totally flooded commercial strip shown in the picture to the lower right. (The print shop is under water at the lower third on the left; I assume with my materials floating inside.)Photo Courtesy of The Register, Harry Baumert

By this point, navigating around the area was quite difficult. Most of the major bridges were now closing and the breach had caught many by surprise, so that most were at work or school for a standard business day.

As closings began and people tried to save businesses or homes, traffic got totally snarled. With some scrambling and friendly assistance from another local printer, I was able to get my job completed just as that facility announced its closing.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the community, real mobilization was occurring in earnest.

One great aspect of Iowans is their community support and spirit. The alarming rise of river levels has literally energized the entire community, not to mention the presence of the National Guard and Coast Guard. There are dozens of locations with major sandbag operations underway. My family and the university students, not to mention thousands of others, have been bagging and stacking. Much effort occurred through the entire night to Saturday morning.Photo Courtesy of Press-Citizen, Dave Schwarz

The amazing thing is that supplies and sand seem to run out well in advance of the volunteers. Local officials have continuously extended bagging efforts beyond what they anticipated (in fact, never shutting down) and all of the local TV stations have been providing nearly constant news and video coverage.

Of course, the eventual effort in clean-up and recovery will also far exceed the current frantic efforts to hold off Mother Nature today. I’m sure we will see the same can-do spirit continue until normalcy is restored.

Dealing with the Mundane

Travel is a nightmare. My flight for tomorrow (Sunday) is normally a 20-min drive from my house. However, since the reservoir is squarely in between, all bridges have been closed. If the one bridge over I-80 in Iowa City closes, our community will be completely and totally cut off from the rest of the state.

As it is, the official detour to the airport now requires a 2-hr trip west to Des Moines, an hour north, and then 2-hrs back, for about a 5-hr one way detour. (I found and discovered a shorter “secret” back road approach today, but it may also not remain open either.)

For all citizens, potable and drinking water is becoming a concern. As the University of Iowa struggles mightily with flooding, it is losing power and its major computing center and main library are at risk. A book brigade yesterday extricated all of the books from the first floor of the library. All university summer camps and current summer session classes have been cancelled. All university personnel, including my professor wife, have been ordered to secure labs and offices and depart the campus. Efforts are now focused on keeping power and operations to the University hospital, which fortunately is itself not apparently at risk of flooding.

The effects of water, travel and power go beyond the direct flooding, but of course those with homes and businesses under water are experiencing the worst and feeling much stress. Fortunately, direct injuries and loss of life has been minimal so far. It is a real mess around here.

A ‘500-Year Flood’

Photo Courtesy of The Register, Harry BaumertThe discussion is now that Iowa City is experiencing a ‘500-yr flood’ that opens new questions and new uncertainties.

Because the Iowa River cycle is later, our area is not projected to see the flood water peak until Tuesday or so. Though we have already seen major damage (as of mid-day Saturday), the crest is at least two days away. The Iowa River, presently at 30.5 feet, is expected to reach 33 feet to 34 feet, well in excess of the 25-foot flood stage.

The only bridge connecting the east and west sides of downtown Iowa City is likely to close soon. The river surged 2 feet in just 12 hours on Friday. The further projected 2-3 foot of rise is unprecedented. Major stress will be placed on the current temporary levees and sandbag banks.

We have clearly not seen the peak nor the worst. The floodwaters will also take much time to recede and recovery may be long. In 1993, for example, one of Iowa City’s major thoroughfares was closed for 82 days. This year the effects will likely be much, much worse.

When not working at the lines or directly viewing the flooding, there is a bit of a surreal quality. Up until the past half hour or so, the skies were clear, the birds were chirping, and the waters were rising all around. I grew up in Southern California and have directly experienced earthquakes, and have been trying for years to try to come to grips with tornadoes. But, creeping flooding with the occasional breach just has such a weird feeling.

And, now, as I write and the afternoon unfolds, the sky has again darkened with more severe thunderstorms forming and on the way.

The Role of Linked Data

Circumstances like this demand the ability to assemble relevant information for the topic at hand. In this case, one wants information for floods and flooding, bridge and road closings, curfews, routes, airport openings and flight delays, weather forecasts, stream and river rise forecasts, hotel room availabilities, traffic delays, closings and official announcements, photo galleries to give perspective, and the like for an area encompassing eastern Iowa and municipalities including Iowa City, Solon, Cedar Rapids and Coralville.

Of course, better information and massive human effort can not themselves hold off Mother Nature when she is angry. But, better information can enable us to mobilize and use resources more efficiently and with less loss of limb and property.

In short, that is what Linked Data is all about. It represents techniques and capabilities that exist today to appropriately tag and annotate content to make it “smarter”, to put all of the relevant information in context and on demand.

So, while we have the techniques available, we do not yet have widespread application. Linked Data is not yet of help to Iowa City.

The question of doing this is not one of technology, but of business models and incentives.

So, that is what the LinkedData Planet conference is all about: Making connections that matter, and doing so simply and in context. Assuming I’m able to wend my way to dryer ground and get on the plane, stop by Zitgist‘s booth at the Roosevelt Hotel on June 17-18. I’d love to chat and shake a dry hand!

Posted by AI3's author, Mike Bergman Posted on June 14, 2008 at 3:59 pm in Adaptive Information | Comments (1)
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Posted:June 7, 2008

A New Report from Norway Compares Topic Maps, RDF/OWL, UML and Others

No, the title does not refer to NO as in no, nyet, nein, non or ne, but NO as in Norway.

NorStella, the Norwegian Foundation for E-business and Trade Procedures, has published a 51-pp PDF report edited by Øyvind Aassve, called The SIM Report: A Comparative Study of Semantic Technologies. Though Norway is perhaps the most aggressive country in the use of topic maps, and Steve Pepper and Lars Marius Garshol of Onotopia (among the ten contributors) are also noted advocates for topic maps, the report’s treatment of its five comparative semantic technologies is balanced and informative.

This group of ten contributors formed over beers about two years ago under the banner of what they called, “Semantic Interoperability Models” (SIM). As they note in the report,

. . . we found that we as representatives for different semantic technologies were talking different languages. We were explaining our technologies with different terms to mean the same thing and the same term to mean different things, and our models for addressing the issue of semantic interoperability were so different it was hard to get our message across to people who already identified deeply with their own way of thinking. We were supposed to be experts on semantic technologies, but we experienced a complete breakdown of semantic interoperability among ourselves.

How true. It is bold of this group to recognize this gap and to commit to help bridge understanding.

As I have noted many times regarding basic semantic Web approaches, even within the fold, so to speak, there are large challenges of semantics and usage. Yet, when such perspectives are extended across multiple technologies and mindsets, the challenges become still more daunting.

The interest in this group was to find common ground to explain their different but complementary approaches to the lay public and to the enterprises to which many of them consult. The attempt correctly recognizes that there will always be competing approaches and mindsets and technologies geared to roughly the same aims, though perhaps suited for different use cases or strengths.

The group set as its objective to increase understanding of five candidate semantic technologies in order to better promote semantic interoperability. They defined semantic operability as the “ability to share information (or knowledge) based on its meaning — i.e., what it is about.” The report notes that “semantic interoperability thus focuses on the benefits that can be achieved by mediating structures, meanings and contexts within relatively confined and well-understood domains.”

As such, this report is a very effective introduction and a good explication of the issues and trade-offs in semantic representation.

And the Contestants Are . . .

The first part of the report is dedicated to a balanced discussion of the five semantic technologies chosen for comparison:

  • RDF/OWL — RDF (Resource Description Framework) and OWL (Web Ontology Language) are two of the technologies that form the foundation of the semantic Web
  • Topic Maps — a standard (ISO 13250) for describing knowledge structures based on a formal model built around topics (subjects or concepts), assertions about them, and the relationships (associations) between them
  • UN/CEFACT Core Components — the Core Component Technical Specification (CCTS) is designed for simple, transparent and effective processes for global commerce, with a focus on machine-to-machine exchange of business documents often with a transactional nature such as orders or billing
  • ISO 15926 — another standard, though with a different purpose to facilitate integration of data to support the life-cycle activities and processes of process plants, and
  • UML — the Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a standardized specification language for object modeling with current wide use in software design and object components and relationships visualization, often used for business process modeling, other modeling, flowcharts, or work or organizational structures.

Note that XML is not included in this list because it is geared to syntax representation and serialization, not the underlying semantics.

Now, Some Commonalities

Though based on different perspectives and use cases, this group found some common characteristics amongst the approaches:

  • Componentization of information elements
  • Use of unique identifiers
  • Focus on reuse of externally defined conceptual models
  • Agility

These are the commonalities explicitly listed. But, we also see in the group’s diagram an interesting commitment across these approaches to what is now recognized as the subjectpredicateobject “triple”:

Click for full size

There are real fundamental concepts and principals underlying this embracing of first-order logic and the triple diagram of object-action-referent expressed in so many different ways by philosophers and semanticists.

Sure, there are real differences (most of which are likely well beyond my ken). But, when boiled down, we can see that whether we call things “things” or objects or subjects or referents or entities or the myriad of ways that we try to discuss the same concepts or topics or subjects, everyone is still basically trying to capture the same things and meanings.

So, in our triples, we can call the relations between an object (“subject”) and its referent (“object”) by many different things: verbs, predicates, properties, associations, and, indeed, even relations. In the end, we are all simply trying to express the “facts” of our observed world, our “assertions”.

Strengths and Weaknesses

While the authors of the NO study are careful not to use these terms, they do nibble around the edges that both by design, scope or expressiveness, each of the five candidate approaches may be better suited for different uses. It is useful to understand domain and scope when choosing one of these options.

Is the purpose to model software systems or use cases? Transactions (such as order processing systems)? Knowledge representation? Visualization or analytic modeling? Use and application of controlled vocabularies? Control structures or process systems?

Of course, in the end, the market will decide about all of these approaches. But, because of unique strengths in representation or historical or local uptake, each of the five is likely to survive to some extent.

My Take

In terms of scope and coverage, I found the report’s Section 8 FAQ to be quite useful. I would have preferred more citations, especially of a reference or seminal nature, since the five approaches each had its own advocates. The earlier detailed work on RDF-Topic Maps relations and its nature [1] deserved more than a simple note in passing. And, the sections on tools were very weak.

But these are small quibbles. As the opening quote notes eloquently, our broader challenge is that we are saddled with semantic, world view, and domain differences.

I really respect and like efforts like this. There is no single truth. In the reality of the Web and our global commons, there are many approaches and viewpoints.

What we see in these more comprehensive approaches are a reflection of other Web standards such as microformats or tagging or RDFa or, frankly, any of the means by which any of us attempt to provide structure and enhanced meaning (“metadata”) to the content we encounter and process. What I find remarkable about the methods outlined in the NO study is how many similarities there are to approach and viewpoint. Surely, we can easily overcome the differences and forgive the differences. We will also find common ground for translation and interoperability.

As the RDF-Topic Maps studies mentioned before show, in the end, I think it really does not matter what flavor of semantic technology you prefer. Speak your language and in your own way. We are now seeing the emergence of sufficiently similar frameworks such that we’ll be able to collectively figure out how to bridge differences and effectively communicate.


[1] See http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-rdftm-survey-20050329/ and http://topicmaps.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/topic-maps-and-the-semantic-web/.

Posted by AI3's author, Mike Bergman Posted on June 7, 2008 at 11:38 am in Adaptive Information, Semantic Web | Comments (0)
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Posted:June 4, 2008

The Foundational Bibliographic Ontology is Released

After a year of diligent effort, Frédérick Giasson and Bruce D’Arcus have just announced the release of the Bibliographic Ontology. The Bibliontology, or BIBO for short, is a much anticipated foundational piece for the semantic Web. It is designed to provide flexible and comprehensive RDF representation of citations and bibliographic materials and collections.

One of the very exciting parts of the project is its possible use as an underlying schema for Zotero. Those familiar with this blog know I have been a Zotero fan from practically the first day of its release, and have pointed to it repeatedly as how application-capable functionality can be incorporated as a browser plug-in (based on Firefox in the case of Zotero). I’m hoping the automatic exposure of my citation and reference information as linked data via the ontology is a day now nearly at hand.

A Zotero-BIBO-exposed linked data RDF chain would dramatically change the game and prove a powerful demo and story for how all of this linked data can truly interoperate. Moreover, once that information is related to its subject contexts using UMBEL, watch the fireworks!

So again, congratulations to Fred and Bruce for a real labor of love. And, thanks to the scores of individuals who provided review and commentary on the BIBO forum during this initial development. Now that it is out in the wild, I’m sure we will see still further development and improvements.

BTW, Zitgist has been a proud sponsor and funder of Fred’s contributions to the project.

Posted:May 23, 2008

The Pace of Change is Almost Breathtaking

Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation just posted The future of the web: semantic, or just structured? that is comprised almost in its entirety of what I had written in a post about 10 months ago. The point of my earlier post was that structured Web content, short of the full-blown aspects and aspirations of the semantic Web, is where the Web was currently at and it represented the natural transition point between documents and meaning interpretable by machines.

I’m honored with Michel’s treatment of these comments and I thank him. It is always nice to see one’s name (and words) in lights, as it were.

But, I also had forgotten about that original post and its sentiments.

This re-surfacing caused me to go back and read and think about it again. (Not too bad, if I may say!) But, with the passage of now 10 months, I also don’t think I got it exactly right. As I commented back to Michel:

But being directed to these words by my feed reader (from a basis that is now, what, 10 months ago?) also got me to thinking. I stand by the words here (and in the full article that I just re-read after a long hiatus), but I would likely say them differently today.

Linked data and the semantic Web are moving at warp speed. Linked data, in particular, is showing the way to pragmatic, meaningful connections. And, for me and my company, Zitgist, that is also leading to a quicker exploration of semantics, class relationships, ontology mappings, and much that is closer to the "semantic" end of the spectrum rather than the "structured" end of the spectrum implied by my comments above.

I frankly did not see this rapidity of uptake and it is very, very exciting.

The lesson, I think, is that structure, yes, makes sense, but, once we taste it, we want to take it further. The role of structure driving the demand for semantics is pretty compelling.

In that regard, I would not equate "premature" nearly so strongly to the semantic Web.

The freight train is now moving through the yard but without any slowdown. The train left the station quite a bit ago. Like most trends, it is hard to see the start and initial pace.

Fortunately, we are also finding that items such as context, named entities, and quality are now becoming themes within our community’s posts. I say Hear, hear!, and Rah, rah! Good show, all. The great thing about opining is that we never get it right!

Posted by AI3's author, Mike Bergman Posted on May 23, 2008 at 12:29 am in Semantic Web, Structured Web | Comments (0)
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