CS AKTiveSpace: Building a Semantic Web Application Hugh Glaser, Harith Alani, Les Carr, Sam Chapman, Fabio Ciravegna, Alexiei Dingli, Nicholas Gibbins, Stephen Harris, m.c. schraefel and Nigel Shadbolt

AKT Advanced Knowledge Technologies Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Sheffield, Southampton, Open UniversityAberdeen, Edinburgh, Sheffield, Southampton, Open University Could have had more authors!Could have had more authors! And other projects and peopleAnd other projects and people

Context - then (3/4 years ago) (or now?) Knowledge Life-cycle - all aspects (including maintenance, scale)Knowledge Life-cycle - all aspects (including maintenance, scale) Tools & theories developmentTools & theories development Not much RDF out thereNot much RDF out there Scalable toolsScalable tools Technology interceptsTechnology intercepts Emergent applicationsEmergent applications Interdisciplinary - need very wide buy inInterdisciplinary - need very wide buy in

Lessons learnt?Lessons learnt? Historical viewHistorical view Component details not unique to usComponent details not unique to us SociologySociology ScruffyScruffy Technology Integration ExperimentTechnology Integration Experiment

Ontologies Developed own!Developed own! –good exercise –our domain Then adoptedThen adopted –AKT Reference Ontology Any sufficiently expressiveAny sufficiently expressive But performance (fit for purpose)But performance (fit for purpose)

Harvesting Whatever tool appropriateWhatever tool appropriate –Dome –perl –sed Wherever appropriateWherever appropriate –No cooperation (expected) –Effort/Value balance –Some UK CS departments –Funding agencies - fixed data and variable –Geographical (ISO 3166) –General web

Where to put it?Where to put it? –430MB, 10 million triples, 800,000 instances –3store? - cache! –CVS? Push and PullPush and Pull –Who will push - please?

Dome Dome –Engine room

Visualisation hyphen ( (

3store 10 -> 15 -> 25M triples RDQL or OKBC Linearish performance Knows source (provenance)

Armadillo Acquisition on demand Natural Language –(unstructured) Asynchronous service Referential integrity aware Uses Google Tomorrow 11:30!

ONTOCOPI Another service Explores formal relations to find informal relations Fixed parameters to flexible software –(Protégé plugin) Useable service

Referential Integrity Heterogeneous data sources Resolve –Lexical –COP –People Everything –which University of Southampton?

UI mSpace 2D cross-section/projection Explore without clicking Never empty Graphical element

Last slide Shift researchers view, application to serviceShift researchers view, application to service Co-reference resolutionCo-reference resolution Scale required - data requiredScale required - data required Semantic Web needs a UI ;-)Semantic Web needs a UI ;-) Can we prime a social activity?Can we prime a social activity? –Initiate self-sustaining community process Provenance & trust needs detailed dataProvenance & trust needs detailed data http GET is goodhttp GET is good Data protection?Data protection?

Very Last Slide :-) Ontology-mediated application Recruiting in Dynamic fashion, Large Scale, Heterogeneous information resources Presented tractably and efficiently Semantic Web Application end to end