Semantic Technologies for Data Integration and

Service Interoperability

Emanuele Della Valle DEIB - Politecnico di Milano http://emanueledellavalle.org

Comitato Italo-Svizzero per la Geoinformatica Como, 30-31.10.2014

Once upon a time … …, in an happy organization, users were happy of the application the IT department prepared for them, but …

application

[…]

… the organization was not alone. Another organization developed a complementary application …

complementary application

[…]

… so, one day, the two organizations decided to integrate the two applications.

Organizational boundaries

application

[…]

complementary application

[…]

Organizational boundaries

application

[…]

?

Having much to gain the happy organization decided to invest in a bi-lateral solution

complementary application

[…]

Organizational boundaries

application

[…]

adapter !

E. Della Valle

… and this went on for a while, but …

[…]

!

… the more bi-lateral integrations, the sadder the organizations became.

[…]

[…]

[…]

[…]

[…]

[…]

!

!

! !

! !

!

! !

? ! ?

! ?

! OK !! Good !!! Very Good !?! Very Good … ?!? Have I done the right thing?

??? Does it make sence? ?#@ Why am I doying it!!!

Legend

E. Della Valle

… So, they standardized and … […]

[…]

[…]

[…]

[…]

[…]

[…]

… and they lived happily ever after! E. Della Valle

Well, not really :-( Actually … […]

[…]

[…]

[…]

[…]

[…]

[…]

KEEP CALM

AND WAIT FOR 1 YEARS 10 100

E. Della Valle

E.g., Open Geospatial Consortium 20 years of activity more than 400 organizations 30 standards Standard 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 GML Geography Markup Language

v1.0

v2.0

v3.0

v3.1

v3.2

.1

WFS Web Feature Service

v1.0

V1.

1

V2.

0

WMS Web Map Service

v1

v1.1

v1.1

.1

v1.3

E. Della Valle

Why? The Standardization dilemma!

Comprehensive Handles all use cases

Good High quality

Timely Completed quickly

E. Della Valle

Standards are like plumbs There are a variety of them and …

E. Della Valle

standards are like plumbs … sometime the variety is required

E. Della Valle

standards are like plumbs … sometime it is an obstacle, thus …

E. Della Valle

standards are like plumbs … thus translation is needed

E. Della Valle

Translation is unavoidable!

Com

preh

ensi

ve

0%

100%

Time

Standard

E. Della Valle

So What?!? “It is not necessarily the strongest of the species that survives nor the most intelligent, but the one that is most responsive to change.”

--- Charles Darwin

“The Origin of Species”

E. Della Valle

Semantic Technologies embrace change

subject object property

Proposing a simple data model: RDF E.g., Flexible enough to represent: Tables

Italy Switzerland bordersOn

Trees Graphs

E. Della Valle

Providing a powerful query language: SPARQL E.g., what does Italy border on? ?x={Switzerland, Austria, Vatican, San Marino, France and Slovenia} Flexible enough to query RDF data even without knowing the schema E.g., can you describe Italy? ?p={bordersOn} ?x={Switzerland, Austria, Vatican, …} ?p={hasCapital} ?x={Rome} ?p={timeZone} ?x={UTC+1} …

Semantic Technologies embrace change

Italian border ?x

bordersOn

Italy ?x ?p

E. Della Valle

Providing a formal language for conceptual modelling: OWL E.g., Corine Land Covers Types OWL is a modular standard that offers different trade-offs OWL-QL OWL-RL OWL-EL

Semantic Technologies embrace change

Artificial areas

Inland Water

Semi-natural Vegetation

Forest Land

Terms Data

Terms

Data Terms

Data

E. Della Valle

Semantic Technologies embrace change

Standard in OWL

[…]

Ontology Based Data Access as a prototypical solution to interoperability problems

<XML>

Translator Translator Translator

E. Della Valle

Semantic Technologies embrace change

Standard in OWL

[…]

SPARQL Queries

Ontology Based Data Access as a prototypical solution to interoperability problems

RDBMS <XML>

Translator Translator Translator

E. Della Valle

Semantic Technologies embrace change

Standard in OWL

Results { , , }

Ontology Based Data Access as a prototypical solution to interoperability problems

[…] RDBMS <XML>

Translator Translator Translator

E. Della Valle

Those ideas at work on scale Google for "restaurants in nyc central park"

One model: Google knowledge graph Little spatial reasoning A variety of sources: •  thecentralparkboathouse.com •  viewmenu.com •  opentable.com •  plus.google.com

E. Della Valle

Thank you! Any Question?

Emanuele Della Valle DEIB - Politecnico di Milano http://emanueledellavalle.org