Semantic Wiki as a knowledge base management system

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Semantic Wiki as a knowledge base management
system

• Jiri Kopsa, Josef Holy
• Sun Microsystems, Inc.9 Nov 2006

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Agenda

• Who Are We, What We Do
• Current Issues
• Semantic Wiki
• State of Art
• Our Ongoing Work

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Who Are We

• Sun Microsystems
• SPARC, Java, Solaris, JES, NetBeans IDE
• Prague Engineering Center
• NetBeans (150 engineers)
• Other teams

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What We Do software development

• Product Management (product definition)
• User Experience Design (interaction visual
  design)
• Engineering (architecture, implementation)
• Quality Assurance (tests)
• Document Writers (help, articles)
• User Research (usability tests, surveys)
• Community
• Blogs
• Plugin development

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Current State of the Knowledge Base

• Isolated Documents or Resources

Product Definitions
Notes, Emails
Guidelines
Specifications
Study Reports
Bugs RFEs
Documentation
Visual Elements
Java Code
Resource Bundles
Help Pages
Repositories Wiki, HTML (in CVS), Issuezilla,
email (mailing lists)
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Frequent Activities

• Find (all) pieces of information
• Reflect Changes across Documents

It's not easy!
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Example Filter Button

• Show/Hide components on a diagram
• Toggled in show or hide ?

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Example Filter Button

• Mike from Petersburg calls Jirka in Prague to
  discuss the issue
• 2 x 15 minutes
• Jirka discusses the thing with other designers
• 3 x 10 minutes
• One of the designers accidentally reminds that
  there is a similar feature
• Cost 1 person/hour call
• Risks
• Issue will appear again (in a different team)
• Higher cost or wrong solution (one found by
  accident)

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Example Email

• About 3 years ago, a Sun group did research on
  Java developers, visiting them on site and
  documenting their findings with a video. I think
  Elaine Coleman was involved? Does anyone know
  where I can get a copy of this? At that time it
  was only in VHS format. Thanks.Nancy

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We need ...

• We need a system that gives answers to questions
  likeIs there any filtering feature in the Sun
  software?Should there be a confirmation
  dialog on delete action?Was there ever done a
  usability study on Web Services?
• Full text search does not help

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Semantic Wiki
Shashi Seth, Sr. Product Manager at Google
"This company runs on Wikis." (A
statement made at WikiSym 2005)
Jiri Kopsa, Member of Technical Staff at Sun
Microsystems "This company also runs
on Wikis." (A statement made at KEG seminar
2006)
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Semantic Wiki

• What is Wiki
• Semantic Wiki State of Art
• Editing Paradigms
• Subject Granularity
• Queries, Navigation
• Interoperability
• Our ongoing work

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Semantic Wiki

• Wiki (means fast)
• Content management system
• Low barrier to participate
• Edit online easily
• Hypertext
• Incremental (link to non-existing pages)
• Anyone can contribute (add, synthesize)
• Wiki syntax bold or __bold__ HomePage
• Semantic Wiki
• Not just natural language text and formatting

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State of Art Semantic Wiki

• Early 2004 First papers and projects
• Late 2005 Interest groups formed
• June 2006 1st workshop (at ESWC Budva)
• Aug 2006 2nd workshop (at WikSym)
• More then 10 implementations 5 in a demo state.

2005
2004
2006
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State of Art Semantic Wiki

• Question 1 Editing paradigm
• Semantics only
• In text (extension of Wiki syntax)
• Separate semantics typed in in separate text
  fields

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Editing Paradigm Semantics Only (COW)
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Editing Paradigm Separate (forms)

• Platypus Wiki, IkeWiki

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Editing Paradigm Integrated (in Text)

• Extension of Wiki syntax
• MediaWiki, Kaukolu, Rhizome, SemperWiki, Makna,
  IkeWikiLink to a page Liz works with
  Paul NewmanPaulNewman.Link to an
  individualLiz works with Paul Newman
  PaulNewman!relworksWith.

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State of Art Semantic Wiki

• Question 2 Subject/Object granularity
• Most systems scope to documentE.g. on a page of
  Elizabeth TaylorLiz works with Paul
  NewmanPaulNewman!relworksWith.

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State of Art Semantic Wiki

• Question 2 Subject granularity
• Only 2 systems (Kaukolu, Rhizome) support finer
  granularity (section)
• Requirement for use at Sun Microsystems
• Kaukolu Wiki (best paper on semwiki ESWC06
  workshop)
• Wiki syntax inspired by RDF N3 notationlthttp//w
  ww.dkfi.degt isSubjectURIOf DKFI.DFKI is
  aisa Company and their homepage is DFKI
  Homepagehttp//www.dfki.de .

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Common Navigation Paradigms

• Related pages
• Links links to, where the current individual is
  subject
• Backlinks linked by role of object
• Hyperlink in a free-form text
• Simple (navigational), Semantic (relational)
• AJAX-based mouseovers - showing various
  context-sensitive information IkeWiki
• Navigation through the ontology
• Explicit, Inferenced

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Navigation Example I - IkeWiki
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Makna Ajax-based link annotation
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Navigation Example II Makna

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Searching in Semantic Wiki

• Text-based search for the given string
• IkeWiki, MediaWiki - string treated as a synonym
  for some concept
• Triple-based queries SPARQL
• Imposing the knowledge of the triples concept to
  the user
• Does it make sense?
• You also don't need to know SQL in order to use
  e-shop.
• Pre-defined search filters, suitable for a given
  context Makna and MediaWiki a bit
• Ontology-based user interface

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Search Example I Text-based
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Search Example II - Triple-based
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Extendibility/interoperability

• Synonyms for semantic concepts (foaf,
  dublincore...)
• Mapping to a pre-defined set of ontologies
  CategoryPerson -gt ltrdftype
  rdfresource"http//xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person"/gt
• Problem How to add (link to) a category from
  outside?
• Can I link to a concept outside of the wiki,
  without explicit mapping (not by means of Wiki
  pages)?
• Can the ontologies in the wikis be accessed from
  outside?
• How to link to a concept from the outside?

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Our ongoing work

• Based on Kaukolu Wiki
• Ease of use
• WYSIWYG editing (incl. paste images)
• Suggestions
• Enhanced authoring / navigation UI
• hasHomePage property
• RDFa

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Our ongoing work hasHomepage

• Semantic MediaWiki subject/object is a page
• links / predicates can be followed by a browser
• Kaukolu subject/object is any uri
• No relationship between subject/object and page
• links / predicates cannot be followed by a
  browser

s
o
p
s-p-o
A href
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Our ongoing work hasHomepage

• Our enhancement hasHomepage
• Individuals can be bound to an anchor in a page
• User can use links/predicates to navigate the
  system

s
o
hasHomepage
hasHomepage
hasHomepage
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Our ongoing work

• RDFa
• Working Draft at W3C
• Syntax for expressing RDF in XHTML
• adds attributes about, property and rel
• Note SweetWiki uses RDFa, but scopes to page

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Our ongoing work RDFa

• RDFaltspan about"London"gtLondon the capital of
  lta hrefEngland relnscapitalOfgtEnglandlt/a
  gthas a population of ltspan property"population
  "gt7.5 millionlt/spangtlt/spangt

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Why RDFa? RDFa is fundamental!

• Today, semantic web apps expose the semantics as
  plain RDF or rendered to HTML (custom UI)

Web Application
RDF
text
Web UI
RDF
HTML
Web Browser
Agent
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Why RDFa? RDFa is fundamental!

• In the future we may want to have semantic web
  browsers
• Extension of current browsers
• Providing extra features for the semantic web
• Allow users to navigate / query the whole
  semantic web with single user interface
• Use new features (plugins) immediately on the
  whole semantic web
• (compared to new features provided by individual
  web applications)

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Why RDFa? RDFa is fundamental!

• RDFa makes perfect fit for semantic web browser

Web Application
RDFa XHTML RDF
RDFa or RDF
RDFa
SemanticWeb Browser
Agent
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Our ongoing work

• Current State
• Parser
• Implemented pop up dialogs to allow the user to
  add metadata
• Next steps
• Suggestions for annotations (currently only Wiki
  pages)
• Navigation UI, Drag'n'Drop
• Natural Language processing
• Bullet lists
• Shorts (e.g. AI)
• Integrate with Kaukolu Wiki

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Summary

• We have simple problems
• We need simple but working solutions
• Current Wikis are good, but ...
• Our contribution
• Subject Granularity Navigation Solved
• RDFa Fundamental
• Ease of Use

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References Semantic Wikis

• Semantic Wiki State of Art (list of
  implementations)http//ontoworld.org/wiki/Semanti
  c_Wiki_State_Of_The_Art
• Our Blog Request for Enhancementhttp//blogs.sun
  .com/rfe/

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QA

• Thank you!

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Semantic Wiki as a knowledge base management
system

• Josef Holy, Jiri Kopsa
• Sun Microsystems, Inc.