A Survey on User Interaction with Linked Data

Since the beginning of the Semantic Web and the coining of the term Linked Data in 2006, more than one thousand datasets with over sixteen thousand links have been published to the Linked Open Data Cloud. This rising interest is fuelled by the benefits that semantically annotated and machine-readable information can have in many systems. Alongside this growth we also observe a rise in humans creating and consuming Linked Data, and the opportunity to study and develop guidelines for tackling the new user interaction problems that arise with it. To gather information on the current solutions for modelling user interaction for these applications, we conducted a study surveying the interaction techniques provided in the state of the art of Linked Data tools and applications developed for users with no experience with Semantic Web technologies. The 18 tools reviewed are described and compared according to the interaction features provided, techniques used for visualising one instance and a set of instances, search solutions implemented, and the evaluation methods used to evaluate the proposed interaction solutions. From this review, we can conclude that researchers have started to deviate from more traditional visualisation techniques, like graph visualisations, when developing for lay users. This shows a current effort in developing Semantic Web tools to be used by lay users and motivates the documentation and formalisation of the solutions encountered in the studied tools. Copyright (c) 2021 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

A comparative study of state-of-the-art linked data visualization tools

Data visualization tools are of great importance for the exploration and the analysis of Linked Data (LD) datasets. Such tools allow users to get an overview, understand content, and discover interesting insights of a dataset. Visualization approaches vary according to the domain, the type of data, the task that the user is trying to perform, as well as the skills of the user. Thus, the study of the capabilities that each approach offers is crucial in supporting users to select the proper tool/technique based on their need. In this paper we present a comparative study of the state-of-the-art LD visualization tools over a list of fundamental use cases. First, we define 16 use cases that are representative in the setting of LD visual exploration, examining several tool's aspects; e.g., functionality capabilities, feature richness. Then, we evaluate these use cases over 10 LD visualization tools, examining: (1) if the tools have the required functionality for the tasks; and (2) if they allow the successful completion of the tasks over the DBpedia dataset. Finally, we discuss the insights derived from the evaluation, and we point out possible future directions

A framework for integrating syntax, semantics and pragmatics for computer-aided professional practice: With application of costing in construction industry

Producing a bill of quantity is a knowledge-based, dynamic and collaborative process, and evolves with variances and current evidence. However, within the context of information system practice in BIM, knowledge of cost estimation has not been represented, nor has it been integrated into the processes based on BIM. This paper intends to establish an innovative means of taking data from the BIM linked to a project, and using it to create the necessary items for a bill of quantity that will enable cost estimation to be undertaken for the project. Our framework is founded upon the belief that three components are necessary to gain a full awareness of the domain which is being computerised; the information type which is to be assessed for compatibility (syntax), the definition for the pricing domain (semantics), and the precise implementation environment for the standards being taken into account (pragmatics). In order to achieve this, a prototype is created that allows a cost item for the bill of quantity to be spontaneously generated, by means of the semantic web ontology and a forward chain algorithm. Within this paper, ‘cost items’ signify the elements included in a bill of quantity, including details of their description, quantity and price. As a means of authenticating the process being developed, the authors of this work effectively implemented it in the production of cost items. In addition, the items created were contrasted with those produced by specialists. For this reason, this innovative framework introduces the possibility of a new means of applying semantic web ontology and forward chain algorithm to construction professional practice resulting in automatic cost estimation. These key outcomes demonstrate that, decoupling the professional practice into three key components of syntax, semantics and pragmatics can provide tangible benefits to domain use

Clover Quiz: a trivia game powered by DBpedia

Producción CientíficaDBpedia is a large-scale and multilingual knowledge base generated by extracting structured data from Wikipedia. There have been several attempts to use DBpedia to generate questions for trivia games, but these initiatives have not succeeded to produce large, varied, and entertaining question sets. Moreover, latency is too high for an interactive game if questions are created by submitting live queries to the public DBpedia endpoint. These limitations are addressed in Clover Quiz, a turn-based multiplayer trivia game for Android devices with more than 200K multiple choice questions (in English and Spanish) about different domains generated out of DBpedia. Questions are created off-line through a data extraction pipeline and a versatile template-based mechanism. A back-end server manages the question set and the associated images, while a mobile app has been developed and released in Google Play. The game is available free of charge and has been downloaded by more than 5K users since the game was released in March 2017. Players have answered more than 614K questions and the overall rating of the game is 4.3 out of 5.0. Therefore, Clover Quiz demonstrates the advantages of semantic technologies for collecting data and automating the generation of multiple choice questions in a scalable way.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Projects TIN2017-85179-C3-2-R and RESET TIN2014-53199-C3-2

Querying industrial stream-temporal data: An ontology-based visual approach

An increasing number of sensors are being deployed in business-critical environments, systems, and equipment; and stream a vast amount of data. The operational efficiency and effectiveness of business processes rely on domain experts’ agility in interpreting data into actionable business information. A domain expert has extensive domain knowledge but not necessarily skills and knowledge on databases and formal query languages. Therefore, centralised approaches are often preferred. These require IT experts to translate the information needs of domain experts into extract-transform-load (ETL) processes in order to extract and integrate data and then let domain experts apply predefined analytics. Since such a workflow is too time intensive, heavy-weight and inflexible given the high volume and velocity of data, domain experts need to extract and analyse the data of interest directly. Ontologies, i.e., semantically rich conceptual domain models, present an intelligible solution by describing the domain of interest on a higher level of abstraction closer to the reality. Moreover, recent ontology-based data access (OBDA) technologies enable end users to formulate their information needs into queries using a set of terms defined in an ontology. Ontological queries could then be translated into SQL or some other database query languages, and executed over the data in its original place and format automatically. To this end, this article reports an ontology-based visual query system (VQS), namely OptiqueVQS, how it is extended for a stream-temporal query language called STARQL, a user experiment with the domain experts at Siemens AG, and STARQL’s query answering performance over a proof of concept implementation for PostgreSQL

Development of self-archiving tools to support archiving, analysis and re-use of qualitative data

The potential to share and re-use qualitative archived data has garnered much interest in recent years. This increased attention can be attributed mainly to advances in both data documentation standards and digital archiving technologies, which provide users with the ability to archive, share and disseminate qualitative research materials. However, there remain theoretical and epistemological barriers to and implications for the sharing and re-use of qualitative study data. One way to address these issues is by studying research practices (with practitioners’ active involvement), in combination with developing software tools that support digital archiving of qualitative studies. Semantic technologies, combined with metadata standards and documentation schemas have the potential to enhance qualitative data documentation, archiving and analysis. In fact, it has been established that data documentation is one of the key elements that enables data archiving. The use of appropriate standard documentation frameworks is crucial to data archives’ exposure and has a direct impact on the discoverability, search and retrieval of archived data. The technological aspect of this study has been the development of a self-archiving toolkit that makes use of such technologies. The purpose of this work was to allow users, with varying levels of research experience (e.g. from undergraduate student researchers up to more experienced senior researchers) to avail of the benefits offered by qualitative digital archiving. To complement the technological developments undertaken, the present study also explored the practices of different researchers: undergraduate student researchers, researchers involved in teaching research-oriented modules, as well as senior researchers. This exploration focused on the collection, organisation, analysis and presentation of qualitative data and how these relate to and can be supported by digital archiving to enable researchers to organise, disseminate, and visualise research collections