Semantic Wonder Cloud: Exploratory Search in DBpedia

Abstract

Abstract. Inspired by the Google Wonder Wheel1 , in this paper we present Semantic Wonder Cloud (SWOC): a tool that helps users in knowledge exploration within the DBpedia dataset by adopting a hybrid approach. We describe both the architecture and the user interface. The system exploits not only pure semantic connections in the underlying RDF graph but it mixes the meaning of such information with external non-semantic knowledge sources, such as web search engines and tagging systems. Semantic Wonder Cloud allows the user to explore the relations between resources of knowledge domain via a simple and intuitive graphical interface.

Word cloud visualisation of locative information

“…dBpedia, and its use of semantic web technology, provides us with a fundamental technology for the development of software that organises the material and guides a user through the amount of knowledge to be found in Wikipedia. Mirizzi et al (2010) exploit a collection of semantic and information retrieval technologies to give users a visual presentation of articles in Wikipedia and their relations to other articles. The dBpedia rdf graph structure, textual analysis of dBpedia abstracts and external information sources are used to establish connections between articles in Wikipedia.…”

LOD Explorer: Presenting the Web of Data

“…In the lookup search approach, also called keyword-based search, database systems are used to find information using keywords. This is the widely used approach in the existing Web, aka Syntactic Web, where the data sources are mainly text formats and the search elements are known [3].…”

“…The data of the Semantic Web has well-defined meanings, can be understood and processed by machines, and allows machines and people to work in collaboration [8]. The Semantic Web combines the technologies of RDF 2 , OWL 3 , and XML 4 to enable the replacement of the Syntactic Web so as to provide search engines capability to understand the meaning of data [7].…”

State of the Art Exploration Systems for Linked Data: A Review

“…SWOC is an ESS that uses DBpedia as its dataset allowing surfers to navigate through the dataset using its semantic connections [3]. On top of utilizing the DBpedia semantic properties, the system takes advantage of external resources, like search systems and social tagging approaches, to find and present the DBpedia resources.…”

“…Lookup search approaches, typically, have database systems in the background and information is retrieved based on the keywords given. In this widely used search approach, the data is mainly textual documents, and the search items are known [3].…”