We are proud to announce DBpedia Archivo – an augmented ontology archive and interface to implement FAIRer ontologies. Each ontology is rated with 4 stars measuring basic FAIR features. We discovered 890 ontologies reaching on average 1.95 out of 4 stars. Many of them have no or unclear licenses and have issues w.r.t. retrieval and parsing. 

DBpedia Archivo: Community action on individual ontologies

We would like to call on all ontology maintainers and consumers to help us increase the average star rating of the web of ontologies by fixing and improving its ontologies. You can easily check an ontology at https://archivo.dbpedia.org/info. If you are an ontology maintainer just release a patched version – archivo will automatically pick it up 8 hours later. If you are a user of an ontology and want your consumed data to become FAIRer, please inform the ontology maintainer about the issues found with Archivo.

The star rating is very basic and only requires fixing small things. However, the impact on technical and legal usability can be immense.

Community action on all ontologies (quality, FAIRness, conformity)

Archivo is extensible and allows contributions to give consumers a central place to encode their requirements. We envision fostering adherence to standards and strengthening incentives for publishers to build a better (FAIRer) web of ontologies.

1. SHACL (https://www.w3.org/TR/shacl/, co-edited by DBpedia’s CTO D. Kontokostas) enables easy testing of ontologies. Archivo offers free SHACL continuous integration testing for ontologies. Anyone can implement their SHACL tests and add them to the SHACL library on Github. We believe that there are many synergies, i.e. SHACL tests for your ontology are helpful for others as well. 
2. We are looking for ontology experts to join DBpedia and discuss further validation (e.g. stars) to increase FAIRness and quality of ontologies. We are forming a steering committee and also a PC for the upcoming Vocarnival at SEMANTiCS 2021. Please message hellmann@informatik.uni-leipzig.de if you would like to join. We would like to extend the Archivo platform with relevant visualisations, tests, editing aides, mapping management tools and quality checks. 

How does DBpedia Archivo work?

Each week Archivo runs several discovery algorithms to scan for new ontologies. Once discovered Archivo checks them every 8 hours. When changes are detected, Archivo downloads and rates and archives the latest snapshot persistently on the DBpedia Databus.

Archivo’s mission

Archivo’s mission is to improve FAIRness (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability) of all available ontologies on the Semantic Web. Archivo is not a guideline, it is fully automated, machine-readable and enforces interoperability with its star rating.

– Ontology developers can implement against Archivo until they reach more stars. The stars and tests are designed to guarantee the interoperability and fitness of the ontology.

– Ontology users can better find, access and re-use ontologies. Snapshots are persisted in case the original is not reachable anymore adding a layer of reliability to the decentral web of ontologies.

Please find the current paper about DBpedia Archivo here: https://svn.aksw.org/papers/2020/semantics_archivo/public.pdf 

Let’s all join together to make the web of ontologies more reliable and stable.

Yours,

Johannes Frey, Denis Streitmatter, Fabian Götz, Sebastian Hellmann and Natanael Arndt

The post DBpedia Archivo – Call to improve the web of ontologies appeared first on DBpedia Association.

Today’s post features an interview with Dan Weitzner from WPSemantix who talks about timbr-DBpedia, which we blogged about recently, as well as future trends and challenges of linked data and the semantic web.

Dan Weitzner is co-founder and Vice President of Research and Development of WPSemantix. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Florida Atlantic University. In collaboration with DBpedia, he and his colleagues at WPSemantix launched timbr, the first SQL Semantic Knowledge Graph that integrates Wikipedia and Wikidata Knowledge into SQL engines.

Can you tell us something about your research focus?

WPSemantix bridges the worlds of standard databases and the Semantic Web by creating ontologies accessible in standard SQL. 

Our platform – timbr– is a virtual knowledge graph that maps existing data-sources to abstract concepts, accessible directly in all the popular Business Intelligence (BI) tools and also natively integrated into Apache Spark, R, Python, Java and Scala. 

timbr enables reasoning and inference for complex analytics without the need for costly Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) processes to graph databases.

How do you personally contribute to the advancement of semantic technologies?

We believe we have lowered the fundamental barriers to adoption of semantic technologies for large organizations who want to benefit from knowledge graph capabilities without firstly requiring fundamental changes in their database infrastructure and secondly, without requiring expensive organizational changes or significant personnel retraining.  

Additionally, we implemented the W3C Semantic Web principles to enable inference and inheritance between concepts in SQL, and to allow seamless integration of existing ontologies from OWL. Subsequently, users across organizations can do complex analytics using the same tools that they currently use to access and query their databases, and in addition, to facilitate the sophisticated query of big data without requiring highly technical expertise.  
timbr-DBpedia is one example of what can be achieved with our technology. This joint effort with the DBpedia Association allows semantic SQL query of the DBpedia knowledge graph, and the semantic integration of the DBpedia knowledge into data warehouses and data lakes. Finally, timbr-DBpedia allows organizations to benefit from enriching their data with DBpedia knowledge, combining it with machine learning and/or accessing it directly from their favourite BI tools.Which trends and challenges do you see for linked data and the semantic web?

Currently, the use of semantic technologies for data exploration and data integration is a significant trend followed by data-driven communities. It allows companies to leverage the relationship-rich data to find meaningful insights into their data. 

One of the big difficulties for the average developer and business intelligence analyst is the challenge to learn semantic technologies. Another one is to create ontologies that are flexible and easily maintained. We aim to solve both challenges with timbr.

Which application areas for semantic technologies do you perceive as most promising?

I think semantic technologies will bloom in applications that require data integration and contextualization for machine learning models.

Ontology-based integration seems very promising by enabling accurate interpretation of data from multiple sources through the explicit definition of terms and relationships – particularly in big data systems,  where ontologies could bring consistency, expressivity and abstraction capabilities to the massive volumes of data.As artificial intelligence becomes more and more important, what is your vision of AI?

I envision knowledge-based business intelligence and contextualized machine learning models. This will be the bedrock of cognitive computing as any analysis will be semantically enriched with human knowledge and statistical models.

This will bring analysts and data scientists to the next level of AI.

What are your expectations about Semantics 2019 in Karlsruhe?

I want to share our vision with the semantic community and I would also like to learn about the challenges, vision and expectations of companies and organizations dealing with semantic technologies. I will present “timbr-DBpedia – Exploration and Query of DBpedia in SQL”

The End

Visit SEMANTiCS 2019 in Karlsruhe, Sep 9-12 and find out more about timbr-DBpedia and all the other new developments at DBpedia. Get your tickets for our community meeting here. We are looking forward to meeting you during DBpedia Day.

Yours DBpedia Association

The post SEMANTiCS Interview: Dan Weitzner appeared first on DBpedia Association.