Semantic MediaWiki

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Semantic MediaWiki

Logo from Semantic MediaWiki
Basic data

developer SMW project ( developer list )
Publishing year August 5, 2005
Current  version 3.1.6
( April 19, 2020 )
Execution environment Platform independent
programming language PHP , JavaScript
category MediaWiki extension
License GPL-2.0 + ( Free Software )
German speaking Yes
semantic-mediawiki.org

Semantic MediaWiki ( SMW for short ) is a free open source software extension to MediaWiki - the wiki software that is also used by Wikipedia . It makes it possible to define and query data on a wiki page in addition to texts and media content.

The original developers are Denny Vrandečić and Markus Krötzsch .

functionality

Collection of information

Semantic MediaWiki as a semantic wiki offers two ways to make information about a page more explicit:

  1. Typed references (relations) and
  2. (Page) attributes .

For example, the Berlin side could say that Berlin is the capital of Germany . In Semantic MediaWiki, users can type (typify) the reference to Germany and thus make the relation ( capital of ) between Berlin and Germany explicit. On the Berlin side, the syntax would be as follows: … [[Hauptstadt von::Deutschland]] …This would result in the semantic statement “'Berlin' 'Capital of' 'Germany'”). The creation and use of relations is very similar to the use of page categories in Wikipedia. Relations can therefore be seen as "categories for links" that can be introduced and used as desired. As with categories, there is also an article for each relation that explains its meaning.

The “Berlin” page could still read : The city has 3393933 inhabitants . In the SMW, users can make this information explicit by … Die Stadt hat [[Hat Einwohnerzahl::3393933]] Einwohner …writing. This would result in the semantic statement "'Berlin' 'has population' '3393933'". The data type of the property can be specified on the “Attribute: Population” page . Since it is a number in this case, is [[Hat Datentyp::Zahl]]specified. The number then appears as normal text in the article and is internally interpreted as a number, which is important for size comparisons and the like.

Attributes are otherwise very similar in use to relations, but they can be used for different types of data, such as numbers, dates, temperatures, etc. The attribute must know the data type in order to support it correctly. For example, the two entries "1,000.30" and "1000.3" are different, but they refer to the same number. Each attribute has an article and the desired data type can also be specified there. Various additional functions are offered depending on the data type. For example, SMW automatically converts between many units of measurement and creates links to websites with maps for geographical coordinates.

Reuse of information

Semantic MediaWiki uses the information entered in this way in various ways. On the one hand, it is possible to send queries to the wiki based on the data. For example, if you have introduced attributes for the date of birth and death of people, you can query the list of all people who died between 1945 and 1960, sorted according to the date of death. SMW allows queries to be entered directly when editing an article, with the query results appearing in the article instead. Provided that enough articles are provided with the above-mentioned annotations, the creation of articles of the type "List of ..." can be significantly simplified. The articles would quasi update themselves and would always be consistent with the detailed articles from which they obtained their data. Overall, in this way it is possible for the entire readership of a wiki to benefit from semantic queries without having to learn the syntax of SMW beforehand.

To allow further forms of reuse, all semantic information can also be downloaded directly. The data are saved in the free RDF format and can easily be reused in external programs. This would make it possible, for example, to create a database with the core data of all German cities without reading all the relevant Wikipedia articles. Because of the compatibility with the popular RDF and OWL standards , the data can also be used directly in existing programs.

The aim is that once the information entered in the wiki is not tied to the representation in MediaWiki by technical barriers, it can also be used in many new applications. The data exchange in RDF also enables the combination of information from different sources, for example to get access to the combined content of several wikis.

More functions

Various software extensions are available that supplement the functionality of Semantic MediaWiki as required. The most important enhancements include form-based input and a number of other formats for displaying query results.

commitment

Semantic MediaWiki is currently used on over 1,600 public wikis. Well-known public wikis are, for example, the “Free Software Directory” of the Free Software Foundation , the “Web Platform Docs” platform of the World Wide Web Consortium and SNPedia, which deals with the subject of genetics , or the administrative cooperation platform and the Vienna History Wiki .

Organizations that use SMW internally include Pfizer , the Metropolitan Museum of Art , the US Department of Defense, and NASA , among others .

SMW has become particularly important in the medical and biosciences in order to jointly create bio-medical terminologies and ontologies . Examples are LexWiki, which is jointly operated by the Mayo Clinic , the National Cancer Institute (NCI) , the World Health Organization (WHO), and Stanford University , and the Concept Hub Wiki, which is operated by 3M Health Information Systems.

User community and events

An active community has formed around Semantic MediaWiki over the last few years , and it is continuously growing via two mailing lists , one for users and one for developers, and an IRC channel .

In the meantime, the Semantic MediaWiki Conference (“SMWCon”) has established itself as an event that will take place twice a year in spring in North America until 2015 and in autumn in Europe and since then annually in Europe. These are gatherings for users, developers and other Semantic MediaWiki enthusiasts with business, academic or other backgrounds. On the day before the actual conference, a day with tutorials has been held since 2011. The largest of these conferences so far was the SMWCon autumn 2013 in Berlin with almost 90 participants.

See also

literature

  • Bernhard Krabina: Datencockpit.at - Fulfillment of the documentation requirements of the GDPR. Trends and communities in legal informatics. Proceedings of the 20th International Legal Informatics Symposium (IRIS 2018).
  • Bernhard Krabina: Knowledge management for legal issues with Semantic MediaWiki. Trends and communities in legal informatics. Proceedings of the 20th International Legal Informatics Symposium (IRIS 2017). Pp. 283-286.
  • Bernhard Krabina: Knowledge Management with Wikis . In: Benedikt Lutz, (Ed.): Knowledge in dialogue . Contributions to the Krems Knowledge Management Days 2012 Edition Danube University Krems, 2013. ( online as PDF )
  • Stefan Mintert, Bastian Spanneberg: Semantic Web. Semantic extension for MediaWiki. Understand that. , In: iX - magazine for professional information technology . Number 11/2007. Heise Zeitschriften Verlag, Hanover, ISSN  0935-9680 , pages 102-105.
  • Sebastian Schaffert, Francois Bry, Joachim Baumeister and Malte Kiesel: Semantic Wiki , in: Informatik Spektrum Volume 30, Number 6, December 2007. ISSN  0170-6012 , pages 434-439.
  • Denny Vrandecic, Markus Krötzsch: Semantic MediaWiki , in: John Davies et al .: Semantic Knowledge Management. Springer-Verlag, 2009, pages 171-179.
  • Rolf Strathewerd: Structure for the Wiki , in: Linux-Magazin . Number 7/2009.
  • Andreas Blumauer, Bernhard Krabina: Potential benefits of the “Social Sematic Web” in the public sector using the example of semantic wikis. In: Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik 46 (2009) 265 , pp. 29–35.

Web links

MediaWiki: Semantic MediaWiki Extension  - Free Wiki Software
Commons : Semantic MediaWiki  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wikipedia and the Semantic Web - The Missing Links . (accessed February 1, 2019).
  2. ^ Semantic MediaWiki Version History . (accessed on February 8, 2020).
  3. ↑ github.com . (accessed April 19, 2020).
  4. ↑ The smw Open Source Project on Open Hub: Languages Page . In: Open Hub . (accessed on July 14, 2018).
  5. ↑ The smw Open Source Project on Open Hub: Languages Page . In: Open Hub . (accessed on July 16, 2018).
  6. ↑ Software extensions . Retrieved February 12, 2015 .
  7. ↑ Sites using Semantic MediaWiki , as of October 12, 2019.
  8. ↑ "Free Software Directory" restarted with Semantic MediaWiki , November 29, 2011.
  9. ↑ Wiki "Web Platform Docs" was started. Semantic MediaWiki, October 8, 2012, accessed August 9, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Platform for administrative cooperation
  11. ^ Bio-IT World 2009, Track 3
  12. ^ Bringing the Semantic Web to Museums , Paul Miller, January 27, 2009
  13. ↑ Flexible, purposive SMW use , SMWCon Spring 2010, Clarence Dillon
  14. ^ History of the EVA Wiki , SMWCon Fall 2014, Daren Welsh, James Montalvo
  15. ↑ Semantic Wikis: A Comprehensible Introduction with Examples from the Health Sciences . Maged N. Camel Boulos . Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence, Volume 1, Number 1, August 2009.
  16. ↑ "semediawiki-user" user mailing list
  17. ↑ Developer mailing list "semediawiki-devel"
  18. ↑ IRC channel "# semantic-mediawiki"
  19. ↑ SWMCon on www.semantic-mediawiki.org
  20. ↑ semantic-mediawiki.org: SWMCon autumn 2013 was a great success , October 31, 2013, accessed on August 21, 2014.