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The Web of Data

Tom Heath

Senior Research ScientistTalis Education Ltd

July 2012, SSSW2012, Cercedilla, Spain

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This talk is about the basics!

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Overview

• Why a Web of Data is not just about data on the Web

• Building blocks of a Web of Data (i.e. Linked Data fundamentals)

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Data on the Web

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Data on the Web

• Takes many different forms

• Falls on a continuum of accessibility/usability, structure, meaning and connectedness...

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Data on the Web

PDF → HTML → Microformats → CSV/XML → Microdata →RDF

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Schema.org

• The Semantic Web has gone mainstream!

• But they're trying to create one ontology for everything!

• Is it linked to anything else?

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Issues, PDF through Microdata

• Structure, parseability– How do we validate what we're extracting?– Is there an underlying data model?

• How do we know what the data means?

• How do you relate parts of the data together?

• How do consumers discover related data?

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Data on the Web != A Web of Data

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If there are no links, it's not a Web!

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The Web of Data

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What is the Web of Data?

• A boundless graph of interconnected data available online...

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What is a Graph?

Tom

Enrico

Talis Education

Spain

SSSW2012

Cercedilla

Italy

Madrid

2012-07-08

employedBy

studentOf

tutorAt

startedOn

bornIn

locatedIn

England

near

capitalOf

locatedIn

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One Graph, Many Documents

Tom

Enrico

Talis Education

Spain

SSSW2012

Cercedilla

Italy

Madrid

2012-07-08

employedBy

studentOf

tutorAt

startedOn

bornIn

locatedIn

England

near

capitalOf

lost Euro2012Final

locatedIn

won

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SubjectObject

Predicate

The RDF Data Model: Triples

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TomTalis

employedBy

The RDF Data Model: Triples

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Why I RDF

• Clear underlying data model

• Linkability baked into the data model

• Ways to express what the data means

• Many different ways to write it (for different use cases)

• Very easily parsed (in some cases)

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RDF Serialisation Formats

• RDFa

• RDF/XML

• N-Triples

• Turtle

• RDF/JSON

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Identifying Things in the Graph

• Use URIs

• But not any old URIs

• HTTP URIs– (almost completely) distributed ownership– anyone (with a credit card) can create/own them– can identify anything– lookup mechanism is baked in

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http://tomheath.com/id/mehttp://www.talis.com/id/company

http://example.org/employedBy

HTTP URIs for Things

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Retrieving Humans over the Web

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Linked Data Hands-On Session

• Goal:– Give practical experience of working with Linked Data from

the Web– Give exposure to different application architectures

• Scenario– Building a travel guide application

• Tools– Curl, LDSpider, Fuseki, Rapper, Squin

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Questions?

• Contact Info– tom.heath@talis.com– http://tomheath.com/id/me– http://www.talis.com/– @tommyh (twitter)

• Slides– http://tomheath.com/slides/2012-07-cercedilla-

web-of-data.pdf

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