General, Graph database, How to use SPARQL, Query Helper, SPARQL, Things needed, Tools, Visual SPARQL Editor, Wikibase, Wikidata

Imagine a Graph Query Helper for Graph Databases

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auf Deutsch

FactGrid is a graph database. If you run searches in such a database you should rather not think of a resource filled with tables (of people, places, organizations, documents…) that relate to each other but of something more spatial more geometric.

Think of your own knowledge. You will not be able to give a table of all the names that have a meaning in your knowledge or of all the places related to these names. Our knowledge is more like a web of interrelated objects. Nicolaus Copernicus? Is the man who wrote De revolutionibus. What else do you know?

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Quelle: https://blog.factgrid.de/archives/2636

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Datentripel, Graphdatenbank, How to use QuickStatements, How to use SPARQL, Practical, SPAQL, Things needed, Tools, Visual Editor

In einer Graph Datenbank müsste man eigentlich auch graphisch suchen können

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Das FactGrid ist eine Graphdatenbank. Das heißt, dass man sich die Datenlage in einer solchen Ressource besser nicht in Form von fünf oder zehn großen, aufeinander verweisenden Tabellen (zu Personen, Orten, Organisationen und Dokumenten etwa) vorstellt, sondern eher räumlich als eine Vernetzung von Gegenständen des Wissens.

Das Wissen besteht in einer solchen Datenbank aus Wissensgegenständen – in Wikibase-Instanzen heißen sie „Items“ – und den Beziehungen zwischen ihnen, den „Properties“, sprich Eigenschaften, die diese Gegenstände an andere (oder auch an historische Daten, Links, Bild-Dateien oder Geokoordinaten binden).

Eine solche räumlich vernetzte Beziehung zwischen zwei Gegenständen kann man mit jedem Molekülbaukasten basteln. Hier ein Objekt mit Beziehungen zu zwei anderen. Das kann eine Person (die rote Kugel) sein mit Verbindung zu ihren Eltern (den beiden blauen Kugeln). Strukturell sieht das Gefüge aber nicht anders aus, wenn zu einer Person deren zwei Kindern erfasst sind, oder zwei Universitäten, an denen sie studierte.



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Quelle: https://blog.factgrid.de/archives/2596

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Things needed

Needed thing #4: A module to state original claims (and published research)

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The Problem

Original research means that we will (also) have to deal with statements that have not been published before. So far this is a huge problem for any researcher. Should she make a claim that was never made before – minutes after she found the archival record to substantiate the spectacular claim? You better wait until your book is out – which can take a couple of years, and if you still need a database to do your research you better work on a platform where your work is invisible until then.

The platform with immediate visibility of your work is at the same moment a massive advantage: If you publish the observation minutes after you made it, you will have made your claim and you can from now onwards refer to it. That, however, means that FactGrid claim has to be made publicly, visibly connected to your research, your name, with a specific URL that comes with a publication date.

The FactGrid must be able to turn any statement which is made on the database into a micro publication. You make the claim and you give the source with all the information about you including your evaluation and the details which any future research should continue to offer.

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Quelle: https://blog.factgrid.de/archives/978

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Magnus Manske, Reasonator, Things needed

Needed thing #3: An attractive Interface for browsing and reading Wikibase information

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The Wikibase software has been designed to serve underneath the +200 Wikipedia installations, it is offering its services in SPARQL-queries but it does not aim at people interested in the facts collected on an item of knowledge.

Magnus Manske’s Reasonator is the tool which turns Wikidata information almost into articles – in any language. The page on Q13339, Johann Sebastian Bach is, as it turns out, in many ways superior to the 200+ competing Wikipedia articles on Bach: It has one sinle source to be edited by users world wide. It shows at a single view what it has to offer – you do not crawl through well balanced sentences, which might not at all offer the information you are looking for.

But the Reasonator has its fundamental drawbacks: Technically you are on a platform that uses Wikidata information – not on the global Wikidata interface. Practically and organisation-wise you are on extraterritorial space when it comes to future developments. The Reasonator is Magnus Manske’s dream child. It is not part of the package Wikimedia will develop as the universal Wikidata front-end (because any such front-end would immediately rival the 200+ Wikipedias?

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Quelle: https://blog.factgrid.de/archives/964

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ludwig wittgenstein, Things needed

Needed thing #2: A logo and our own design

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The facts all contribute only to setting the problem, not to its solution.
        Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus 6.4321

The FactGrid still needs its own cohesive design. The name is a modest allusion to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and his idea that we see the world through a grid of factual statements. It was not that difficult to correlate this thought with images – looking backwards and a across cultural borders. The blog’s main page uses these changing images with humour and as inspiration.

That, however, is all we have at the moment – leaving a lot to be done. The different software platforms – our blog (WordPress), the Wikibase installation (Wikimedia design), and Magnus’ Manske’s Reasonator child do not really go together design-wise.

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Quelle: https://blog.factgrid.de/archives/957

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Things needed

Needed thing # 1: The technical solution that enables researchers to create input forms

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Wikidata’s Wikibase installation has been filled almost entirely in massive automated data inputs. That is probably why input forms were not exactly the first priority.

Our database will focus on researchers and regular users whose tasks will call for modules which they can get used to. The historian might sit in an archive with the task to register some 200 documents of a law case. The documents have to be dated, information about authors, the institutions, and addressees has to given on each document. The private user might want to give biographical information about a distant family member with the aim to augment his family’s genealogy. Both are used to input forms. They will never have heard of “triples”, their ideas of “properties” will be inappropriate, they will not be able to use complex Excel-commands in order to prepare an input via QuickStatements.



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Quelle: https://blog.factgrid.de/archives/931

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