Webscience meetup 5/02/2011 1

With the help of the Datalift teamAnd the support of the French National Research Agency

Datalift: A Catalyser for the Web of Data

François ScharffeUniversity of Montpellier, LIRMM, INRIAfrancois.scharffe@lirmm.fr@lechatpito

Datalift and Web-Science

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Datalift

A large scale Web data publication experiment.

Objectives:

- Publish reference datasets

- Automate the data publication process

- Show the interest of publishing linked data

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Datalift

Motivation:

- Two phenomena:

- Society – Open Data

- Technology – Semantic Web

Data revolution going on : the web of data is explosing as the web of documents exploded in the 90'

Datalift

Datasets publication

R&D to automate the publication process

A modular architecture to assist data publication

Training, tutorials, data publication camps

Welcome aboard the data lift

Published and interlinked data on the Web

Applications

Interconnexion

Publication infrastructure

Data convertion

Vocabulary selection

Raw data

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1st floor - Selection

Vocabulary selection

Vocabularies for linked-data● Are meant to describe resources in RDF● Are based on one of the standard W3C language RDFS

and OWL

Ø What makes a good vocabulary ?● A good vocabulary is a used vocabulary● Other usability criterias : Simplicity, visibility,

documentation, flexibility, semantic integration, social integration

Ø Types of vocabularies● Metadata, reference, domain, general

Vocabulary of a Friend

Øhttp://www.mondeca.com/foaf/voaf

ØA simple vocabulary...

ØTo represent interconnexions between vocabularies

ØA unique entry point to vocabularies and Datasets of the linked-data cloud Linked Data Cloud

ØOngoing work in Datalift

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2nd floor - Conversion

Reference datasets, URI design

● Providing reference datasets for the French ecosystem: geographical, topological, statistical, political. Ex: http://parisemantique.fr

● Providing URI design guidelines● Opaque or transparent URIs ?● Usage of accents in URIs

Convertion tools to RDF

ØHow is the raw data to be converted ?

§ Relational Database ?

§ (Semi-)structured formats ?

§ Programmatic acces (API) ?

ØThere are solutions for all cases

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3rd floor - Publication

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4th floor - Interconnexion

Towards automated interconnexion services

ØRecord linkage, entity reconciliation, instance, ontology, schema matching

§ Using alignments between vocabularies

§ Detection of discriminating properties

§ Indicating comparison methods by attaching metadata to ontologies

ØWork in progress in Datalift

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5th floor - Applications

“It is a time when, even if nets were to guide all consciousness that had been converted to photons

and electrons toward coalescing, standalone individuals have not yet been converted into data to the extent that they can form unique components of

a larger complex”

Mamoru Oshii, Ghost in the Shell