Linking of data can be very successful, if it is not restricted to RDF
enthusiasts. In this case the
vocabulary can grow extremely. Consider e.g. integration of healthcare data.
Existing vocabularies like SNOMED
CT
http://www.ihtsdo.org/news/article/view/snomed-ct-and-interoperable-healthcare-conference-tutorials-tuesday-1st-july-2008/
contain about 400000 concepts with increasing tendency.
So if the vocabulary is huge, it is not adequate, that the browser software
knows about the information for
human readable representation, but it could know how to download this
information from the web using the
linked data concept.
If http URIs are used as identifier, it is possible to store the information
for human readable representation
at the location where the http URI points to.
Are there up to now rules for this?
Best
Wolfgang
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Cyganiak" <rich...@cyganiak.de>
To: "Matthias Samwald" <samw...@gmx.at>
Cc: <public-lod@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 12:46 PM
Subject: Re: Making human-friendly linked data pages more human-friendly (was:
dbpedia not very visible, nor
fun)
Hi Matthias,
Please allow me to present a contrarian argument.
First, there are some datasets that combine linked data output with a
traditional website, e.g., by
embedding some RDFa markup. Of course, in that case, all the rules of good web
design and information
presentation still apply, and the site has to first and foremost fulfill the
visitor's information needs in
order to be successful. That's self-evident and not what we are talking about
here.
Most linked data is different. The main purpose is not to create a web site
where visitors go to look up
stuff. The main purpose is to publish data in a re-usable way, in order to
allow repurposing of the data
in new applications.
In that case, the "audience" for the human-readable versions of the RDF data
is *not* a visitor that came
to the site while googling for some bit of information. It's more likely to be
a data analyst, mashup
developer, or integration engineer. So what I suggest is to think of these
pages not as something that end
users see, but rather as something akin to Javadoc. Javadoc pages are
auto-generated pages that describe a
public interface of your system. Linked data pages are the same, but rather
than a Java API, they describe
your URI space. And unlike Javadoc, they are directly connected to the
documented artifacts (URIs).
I think that the pages should mostly answer the following questions: What
concept is identified? What
*exactly* is the URI of this concept (careful with /html or #this at the end)?
Who curates this identifier?
Can I trust it to be stable? Most linked data pages actually do a fairly
decent job at answering these.
Every data publisher has limited resources, and spending them on prettifying
the HTML views is very
low-impact. It's much more important to increase data quality, publish more
data, improve other
documentation, and create compelling demos/apps on top of the data. The "namespace
documentation" is
usually good enough, and the geekiness of the pages actually helps to drive
home the point that it's about
*re-using this data elsewhere*, rather than looking at the data in the boring
old web browser.
That being said, of course nicer-looking pages that present information in a
more useful way are of course
always better, but that's a somewhat secondary problem in the linked data
context.
Best,
Richard
On 15 Sep 2009, at 10:08, Matthias Samwald wrote:
A central idea of linked data is, in my understanding, that every resource has
not only a HTTP -
resolvable RDF description of itself, but also a human-friendly rendering that
can be viewed in a web
browser. With the increasing popularity of RDFa, the URIs of these resources
are not only hidden away in
triplestores, but become increasingly exposed on web pages. People want to
click on them, and, hopefully,
not all of these people come from the core community of RDF enthusiasts.
This means that the HTML rendering of linked data resources might need to look
a bit sexier than it does
today. I dare to say that the Pubby-esque rendering of DBpedia pages such as
http://dbpedia.org/page/Primary_motor_cortex
is helpful to get a quick overview of the RDF triples about this resource, but
non-RDF-enthusiasts would
not find it very inviting.
This could be improved by changes in the layout, and possibly a manually
curated ordering of properties.
For example,
http://d.opencalais.com/er/company/ralg-tr1r/f8a13a13-8dbc-3d7e-82b6-1d7968476cae.html
definitely looks more inviting than the typical DBpedia page (albeit still a
bit sterile).
In the case of DBpedia, it might be better to expose the excellent
human-readable Wikipedia page for each
resource, plus a prominently positioned 'show raw data' tab at the top. For
other linked data resources
that are not derived from existing human-friendly web pages, a few stylistic
changes (ala OpenCalais)
already might improve the situation a lot.
Note that this comment is not intended to be a criticism of DBpedia, but of
all Linked Data resources that
expose HTML descriptions of resources. DBpedia is just the most popular
example.
Cheers,
Matthias Samwald
DERI Galway, Ireland
http://deri.ie/
Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution & Cognition Research, Austria
http://kli.ac.at/
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Danny Ayers" <danny.ay...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 4:03 AM
To: <public-lod@w3.org>
Subject: dbpedia not very visible, nor fun
It seems I have a Wikipedia page in my name (ok, I only did fact- check
edits, ok!?). So tonight I went looking for the corresponding triples,
looking for my ultimate URI...
Google "dbpedia" => front page, with news
on the list on the left is "Online Access"
what do you get?
[[
The DBpedia data set can be accessed online via a SPARQL query
endpoint and as Linked Data.
Contents
1. Querying DBpedia
1.1. Public SPARQL Endpoint
1.2. Public Faceted Web Service Interface
1.3. Example queries displayed with the Berlin SNORQL query explorer
1.4. Examples rendering DBpedia Data with Google Map
1.5. Example displaying DBpedia Data with Exhibit
1.6. Example displaying DBpedia Data with gFacet
2. Linked Data
2.1. Background
2.2. The DBpedia Linked Data Interface
2.3. Sample Resources
2.4. Sample Views of 2 Sample DBpedia Resources
3. Semantic Web Crawling Sitemap
]]
Yeah. Unless you're a triplehead none of these will mean a thing. Even
then it's not obvious.
Could someone please stick something more rewarding near the top! I
don't know, maybe a Google-esque text entry form field for a regex on
the SPARQL. Anything but blurb.
Even being relatively familiar with the tech, I still haven't a clue
how to take my little query (do I have a URI here?) forward.
Presentation please.
Cheers,
Danny.
--
http://danny.ayers.name
