Extension:SemanticWebBrowser

The SemanticWebBrowser extension adds capabilities to use Semantic MediaWiki as a Semantic Web Browser (SWB). SWB is similar to Shortipedia, but intended for "every-day-use":


 * Idea is to compare the content of a wiki and of the Semantic Web
 * SWB focus on browsing the Semantic Web
 * SWB only shows "official" information provided by equivalent URIs of a wiki page

Requirements
Semantic Web Browser has been run successfully with:
 * MediaWiki 1.18 or above
 * Semantic MediaWiki 1.7 or above
 * PHP 5.3 or above

Used Libraries

 * EasyRDF 0.7.2 - http://www.easyrdf.org/

Configuration parameters

 * $swbgToolboxBrowseSemWeb: The toolbox of each content page show a link to browse the semantic web of that page using Special:Browse Wiki & Semantic Web

User rights

 * none, so far

Versions

 * Version 0.4
 * Special:BrowseWiki has become Special:BrowseSW


 * Version 0.3
 * Visualizing and hiding of incoming links.


 * Version 0.2
 * Basic functionality of browsing implemented: Special Page BrowseWiki.
 * Committed to SVN


 * Version 0.1
 * Skeleton implemented

Feature List with Examples

 * One can start browsing directly from the special page: http://www.b-kaempgen.de/index.php/Special:BrowseSW
 * One can either enter any article from the wiki, e.g. http://b-kaempgen.de/index.php/Special:BrowseSW/Benedikt_K%C3%A4mpgen
 * or any URI which shall be browsed, e.g. http://b-kaempgen.de/index.php/Special:BrowseSW?title=Special%3ABrowseSW&article=http%3A%2F%2Fvavlab.ee.boun.edu.tr%2Fcarera%2Fonlira.owl%23Liver
 * Browsing a wiki article with SWB means:
 * all the semantic relationships within the wiki are shown in the same manner as using the Special:Browse page
 * if any equivalent URI is specified in the article, SWB loads and displays all the triples containing the URI as subject or object
 * At every page there is a toolbox entry "Browse Wiki & Semantic Web", so browsing an article can be done directly using that entry, e.g. http://www.b-kaempgen.de/index.php/Benedikt_K%C3%A4mpgen
 * All displayed subject or object URIs can be further browsed simply by clicking on the eye symbol next to the URI. - http://www.b-kaempgen.de/index.php/Special:BrowseSW/Benedikt_K%C3%A4mpgen
 * Blacklisted URIs (rdfs, owl) are properly handled, so far a String is shown. - http://www.b-kaempgen.de/index.php/Special:BrowseSW/Benedikt_K%C3%A4mpgen
 * Pages from any namespace can be linked via equivalent URI and are shown as pages in browser for incoming and outcoming links:
 * main namespace - http://www.b-kaempgen.de/index.php/Special:BrowseSW/Benedikt_K%C3%A4mpgen
 * category - http://b-kaempgen.de/index.php/Special:BrowseSW/The_RDF_Data_Cube_Vocabulary
 * property - http://www.b-kaempgen.de/index.php/Special:BrowseSW/Benedikt_K%C3%A4mpgen
 * A must-have example :-): Browsing FOAF file of Tim Berners-Lee: http://www.b-kaempgen.de/index.php/Special:BrowseSW?title=Special%3ABrowseWiki&article=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FPeople%2FBerners-Lee%2Fcard%23i

Bugs and Feature Requests
You can use the Semantic MediaWiki mailing list, semediawiki-user, for questions, suggestions or bug reports about Semantic Web Browser. If possible, please add "[SWB]" at the beginning of the subject line, to clarify the subject matter. Also, it may help if you add Benedikt Kämpgen, at benedikt.kaempgen -at- kit.edu to CC.

Current Bugs and Todos

 * Linking Categories to the Semantic Web does not work properly
 * It is not possible to continue browsing of URIs that contain unterlines

Planned Features

 * SWB should be more robust (e.g., if URI is not resolvable or takes too much time)
 * Allow to easily gather information from the Semantic Web into the wiki. Only clicks, no writing.
 * Also display Semantic Web data on a wiki page, e.g., in an "external" factbox.
 * Blank nodes, language tags, datatypes should be considered. Bnodes, language tags, Literal types, are ignored, at the moment.
 * Embedded RDF support. Instead of HTML file + RDF file, e.g., only RDFa file
 * e.g., Best Buy
 * Go recursively through all same-as links? This would not require to mention all equivalent uris on a page but to automatically consider those that are linked from equivalent links.
 * Highlight more important properties and values
 * Caching for faster reaction time. Caching we could possibly implement by connecting SWB to an external SPARQL store that can be stored using SPARQL update queries.
 * How to automatically identify equivalent URIs?
 * RDFa support
 * e.g., http://www.shopforia.com/cgi-bin/apf4/apf4.cgi?Operation=ItemLookup&ItemId=B002GYWHSQ
 * Link to Gender Male funktioniert nicht mit SWB http://metadataregistry.org/concept/show/id/1134.html

Acknowledgements
Part of the work on Semantic Web Browser has been carried out in the framework of the German Research Foundation (DFG) project entitled: "Entwicklung einer Virtuellen Forschungsumgebung für die Historische Bildungsforschung mit Semantischer Wiki-Technologie - Semantic MediaWiki for Collaborative Corpora Analysis" (SMW-CorA) (INST 367/5-1, INST 5580/1-1), in the domain of “Scientific Library Services and Information Systems“ (LIS). Also, work was carried out with the support of the German Research Foundation (DFG) within project I01, SFB/TRR 125 “Cognition-Guided Surgery“.