From validation of the data in the knowledge graph to further projects of data integration and dissemination, many different usages of SHACL specifications were explored…

… and more exploratory usages of SHACL are foreseen !

“

A knowledge-graph powered open data portal

The European Parliament Open Data Portal (EPODP) went live in January 2023. Its particularity is that it is not a mere aggregation of documents or dump files from business applications in custom formats; but rather a collection of datasets each extracted from a central semantic knowledge graph, itself aggregating data migrated from approximately twenty business applications. The result is a semantically interoperable open data portal : the semantic of its data model is clearly defined and documented, and reuses widely deployed existing ontologies. It already provides its data to different consumers (most notably the europarl website and the EU law tracker) in a context of cross-institutions interoperability. The data captures the activity of the parliament : as co-legislator together with the Council of the EU, the European Parliament (EP) holds plenary sittings, in which reports originating from committees, as well as motion for resolutions, are amended and voted; after the vote, the final adopted texts are published.

The focus on semantic interoperability of EPODP maximizes the potential of reuse and linkage of its datasets, and maximizes the quality of the offered data. It comes however at a cost when building the portal : deep analysis and understanding of the existing data and documents structure is required to capture the business semantic. SHACL is the way to formally encode this business semantic – but how is it deployed in practice ? how is it maintained ? what are the different types of SHACL specifications used ?

SHACL at the center of a model-driven approach

SHACL in the EPODP is at the basis of multiple model-driven usages depicted in the following diagram:

There was two key drivers for introducing the use of SHACL in the EPODP project : validation of the data in the knowledge graph, and generation of public documentations of the models. The same SHACL specification that captures the business semantic is directly actionable to be published as a documentation and to validate the data. The produced documentation is a set of public files, such as the ELI-EP application profile documentation and others accessible from the EPODP developer’s corner. The SHACL Play documentation generator is used to produce the documentation pages. Data validation happens at earlier stages, after data transformation steps.

Two additional usages of SHACL specifications were explored : one was to generate SPARQL queries to extract the content of datasets from the larger knowledge graph. The SHACL specification of a dataset content is interpreted to generate SPARQL CONSTRUCT queries, executed against the entire knowledge graph, to return a subset of data corresponding to the specification. The query generation was implemented in SHACL Play, however the EPODP chose to continue using manually crafted SPARQL queries to generate the datasets. The other usage was to complement the SHACL specifications with the mapping rules used to feed the corresponding properties or classes in the graph. This has the advantage that the mapping rules are documented and maintained alongside the specification and not in a separate document. This work is ongoing.

More exploratory usages of SHACL are foreseen : generating a query user interface based on the SHACL specification, using the Sparnatural query builder, and also input forms to facilitate the creation of DCAT datasets descriptions. Additionally, automated generation of the JSON-LD context and the JSON schema of the API are foreseen.

Not « 1 SHACL to rule them all », but application profiles, dataset definitions, and migration specifications

The definition of the EPODP knowledge graph is not captured in a single SHACL specification, but rather in three different application profiles, each being a selection of classes and properties of one sub-domain : ELI-EP covers the description of documents and activities, ORG-EP covers the definitions of EP organisations (such as committees, political groups, etc.) and members of the parliament, and SKOS-EP covers how controlled vocabularies are structured. In addition, DCAT-EP is the specification for how dataset records are described in the EPODP catalog – but this is not part of the knowledge graph per se.

Together, ELI-EP, ORG-EP and SKOS-EP specify the structure of the entire knowledge graph from which the datasets are extracted. In addition, the structure of each dataset family available in the EPODP (such as adopted texts, plenary documents, parliamentary questions, etc.) is also described in SHACL, referred to as « DSD » for « Dataset Definition ». While the application profiles describe every possible properties on generic shapes, the DSDs will specify only the subset of properties used in a dataset, with possibly different cardinalities or range. For example, ELI-EP specifies that « a Work may have the property eli:adopts«  (with no minimum cardinality (eli:adopts is defined as « Indicates that the work represents the adopted work of one or several related works »). The DSD for adopted texts datasets specifies the shape of « Adopted texts » as a subset of the Works, and indicates that the minimum cardinality of eli:adopts is 1 for this particular subset. Besides, some properties, such as eli:amends are not available for adopted texts, thus not declared in the DSD.

In addition, specifications of the conversion of some data sources are also specified in independent SHACL files. The articulations of these 3 kinds of SHACL files and the reused ontologies is depicted in the following diagram:

There is currently no reuse or reference of shapes across the different specifications. Each is independent. A nice improvement would be to study how SHACL DSDs could be derived from the application profile SHACL, without redeclaring the identical constraints.

Editing SHACL in spreadsheets

In total 16 SHACL specifications are currently published in the EPODP, and around 80 are used to validate data migrated from each individual sources. The first step in the specification of each model is the design in a diagram such as the ones visible in the public documentations of the models. The EPODP team is then using spreadsheets to encode the specifications, adapted from the one provided in the SHACL Play suite. The spreadsheet is converted to SHACL using the xls2rdf converter. Spreadsheets provide a simple editing solution, with an easy learning curve, made even easier with a few formulas to compute cell values automatically. It even provides ways for editing advanced patterns (such as the ability to directly turtle lists for sh:or, or blank nodes for property paths), but of course still limits the expressivity. The following screenshot shows how property shapes look like in the spreadsheet:

Results and future perspectives

The EPODP use-case shows how SHACL can be applied in a systematic way in a data integration and dissemination project : at the data transformation step, at the knowledge graph level, and at the data dissemination. Public documentation, data validation, data extraction are tasks that can be be automated based on a SHACL specification. While the context is one of a large public institution, the same approach can be applied in industrial contexts. The SHACL specifications are a cornerstone of such projects, enabling semantic interoperability at large and a mutual understanding between business experts, data analysts, developers, and data consumers.

”

Veronika’s book will be divided into three parts :

1. Back to Basics
Introduction to logic and RDF, brief skimming of the topics. Also covering various world assumptions.

2. Getting to know the stuff
Introduction to SHACL, including core, sh-sparql, advanced features.

3. Working with the stuff
SHACL Stories. Use cases, user stories and implementations.

Image : © European Union, [2024] – EP

Cet article European Parliament Open Data Portal : a SHACL-powered knowledge graph est apparu en premier sur Sparna Blog.

Paired with the CIDOC-CRM in a federated way, OpenArchaeo aims at :

• making available the archaeological datasets produced by the MASAplus consortium’s partners on the semantic web, in the form of a triplestore with data aligned with the ontology and its extensions dedicated to archaeology ;
• providing an intuitive query interface for archaeological data.

The latter query interface integrates the Sparnatural knowledge graph exploration component. The UI of this component was heavily inspired by the British Museum’s ResearchSpace semantic search feature, as the system proposes the user to build his own queries based on the CIDOC-CRM model underlying the data.

About ResearchSpace platform

Initiated in 2009 by a cross-disciplinary team at the British Museum, ResearchSpace is « A full CIDOC-CRM authoring and search system, based on an exhaustive collection of forms that reflects all applicable relationships from the CIDOC CRM ontology. »

Among a wide range of semantic tools to create, manipulate, analyse and visualise data, the platform provides a semantic structured search component based on categories and relations.

While open source, ResearchSpace’s code didn’t fit our architecture : we just chose to follow the simple visual elements of ResearchSpace’s query interface to develop our own Sparnatural query builder for OpenArchaeo, and set up a system of icons to identify the main components of the archaeological data.

ResearchSpace has recently (december 2024) released a brand new 4.0.0 version. This latest can be installed easily and now comes with a default setup of forms based on the CIDOC-CRM. It enables image annotations, knowledge maps creations, semantic narratives writing, timeline productions, and more semantic tools.

Sparnatural’s first use-case was OpenArchaeo’s CIDOC-CRM model !

The structure of the knowledge graph of OpenArchaeo relies on the CIDOC-CRM and some of its extension (CRMarchaeo, CRMsci and CRMba). It is a generic model that covers the basic concepts found in most archaeological corpuses (site, operation, structure, feature, wall, burial, stratigraphic unit and artifact).

Here a focus on Class S19 :

Several external thesauri were added too for querying the datasets : PACTOLS thesaurus for archaelogy, but also Geonames and Periodo for spatial and temporal searches.

This way, when users wish to connect two elements (artifact and site for example), the interface automatically suggests the available relationships between these entities, enabling users to formulate their request in a simple way without having to know either the entities and properties of CIDOC CRM, or the structure of the system : the SPARQL queries that correspond to the sentences visually built by users will be automatically computed. In addition, the usage of thesauri allows the users to cross-reference easily multiple datasets through the different widgets proposed in Sparnatural.

Get the latest release of Sparnatural !

Since it was created for OpenArchaeo in 2019, Sparnatural UI has been fully redesigned. It now offers a large panel of features, from different widgets for value selection (dropdown lists, ordered by occurrence count or alphabetically, autocomplete search fields, date pickers, tree widgets…) to brand new result display plugins : the default visualisation is a table of results, but if the results are geolocalized they can be shown in a map. Also grid, stats, pie or bar charts, and a timeline plugin have been made available and documented.

To go further on OpenArchaeo’s platform …

See a presentation of the project on the CIDOC Museum Documentation Channel
(« Semantic modelling of archaeological data online workshop series »)

The platform : http://openarchaeo.huma-num.fr/

The project : https://masa.hypotheses.org/openarchaeo

Read full research paper about the project : https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2375/paper1.pdf

Image : Vestiges of a large villa in Courbehaye « les Deux Muids / le Moulin de Mongé », photo Alain Lelong (2003), Atlas des Établissements Ruraux de Beauce Antique, licence CC BY-NC-SA

Cet article The Genesis of Sparnatural in the context of the OpenArchaeo platform est apparu en premier sur Sparna Blog.

Voilà maintenant près d’un an et demi que FranceArchives, le Portail national des Archives de France, a annoncé le déploiement de l’outil « Supernatural » (comprendre Sparnatural) via ses réseaux, dans l’optique de proposer à ses usagers « un accès nouveau aux métadonnées archivistiques, complémentaire de la recherche classique par le moteur du portail ».

Porté par le Service interministériel des Archives de France, le portail FranceArchives offre une recherche fédérée dans près de 26 millions de métadonnées archivistiques produites par près de 170 institutions et entièrement sémantisées en RDF par le biais de l’ontologie RiC-O version 0.2 publiée en février 2021.

C’est une des premières utilisations de RiC-O à grande échelle (même s’il faudra à l’avenir qu’il se mette à jour sur la version 1.0 de RiC-O publiée depuis !), et c’est également l’un des premiers entrepôts de données archivistiques de cette taille sur le Linked Open Data.

… Un graphe de données qui a tout pour être « Supernaturalisé »

Des données de qualité à une recherche augmentée

… Enfin, il va surtout s’agir de ses « données de qualité », autrement dit les :

• inventaires avec leurs composants,
• notices descriptives de producteurs d’archives,
• fiches signalétiques des services d’archives,

 … tous objets liés à une autorité « personnes et institutions », « lieux » et « thèmes » de qualité (soit moins de 5% des métadonnées du portail avant conversion… et plus de 70% de l’ensemble du réservoir en RDF !), autorités de qualité elles-mêmes harmonisées et alignées vers des référentiels nationaux et internationaux.

Modèle particulièrement adapté à la description des archives en RDF, c’est l’ontologie RiC-O (v0.2) qui a été utilisée pour la sémantisation des données XML EAD – XML EAC-CPF vers RDF, complétée de schema.org pour les fiches signalétiques des services de l’annuaire au format XML EAG.

Les informations relatives aux archives et à leurs producteurs étant décrites dans des fichiers différents, la recherche avancée via SPARQL rend désormais possible une interrogation fédérée plus fine d’un vaste corpus de notices en « traversant » le graphe structuré selon le modèle RiC-O. En effet, l’intérêt de l’interrogation via SPARQL est de casser les silos entre types de métadonnées : il permet de faire une recherche transversale entre données provenant de fichiers EAD et de fichier EAC-CPF.

Les notices affichées en résultats de recherche montrent les alignements existants vers les notices de producteurs externes, Wikidata, data.bnf, GeoNames ou encore le Thesaurus pour l’indexation matières des archives locales. C’est ainsi dans l’onglet Personnes/indexations liées que sont exploités les résultats de la conversion en RDF, par le biais de suggestions de recherches complémentaires sur le portail classique.

Une façon de faire bénéficier le grand public du RDF de manière complètement transparente pour lui !

Quelques exemples de requêtes…

On accède à l’outil via le menu « Recherche SPARQL » en haut à droite du site du portail :

Plusieurs exemples de requêtes sont à disposition pour explorer les données :

De la requête la plus simple :

Personne est membre de Institution

À des requêtes de plus en plus élaborées et complexes, comme ici :

Lieux qui sont le sujet des archives reliées au fonds « Fabrique de berlingot Eysséric »

Où l’on voit que l’on peut retracer le cheminement de la requête à travers le graphe de l’ontologie RiC-O en cliquant sur « Afficher/masquer l’éditeur SPARQL ».

Des archives à la page…

À noter que le projet, qui avait fait l’objet d’une présentation à l’occasion de SWIB (Semantic Web in Libraries) et de SemWebPro 2023 a été entièrement déployé (et configuré !) à partir de la documentation disponible sur le site web de Sparnatural.

N’hésitez pas à aller la consulter !

Hello Sparnatural

How-to configure in SHACL

Reference documentation of Sparnatural widgets

Pour aller plus loin sur la sémantisation des archives…

Le déploiement de Sparnatural sur FranceArchives fait suite à une autre réalisation de l’année précédente, le démonstrateur Sparnatural des Archives nationales. Celui-ci avait permis de faire évoluer Sparnatural et de le déployer sur un graphe sémantique en RiC-O de 20 millions de triplets (hors inférence), alimenté avec le contenu de 1577 instruments de recherche décrivant les archives de 40 des 122 études notariales de Paris conservées aux Archives nationales, de 1120 notices décrivant ces études et les notaires qui y ont exercé, et d’autres référentiels des Archives nationales notamment sur les lieux de Paris. La réalisation de ce démonstrateur a été entièrement documentée en français et en anglais. Ce démonstrateur et ses interfaces évolueront d’ailleurs bientôt.

Depuis, Sparna s’est impliqué dans le domaine de la sémantisation des archives puisque nous développons également, pour les comptes des Archives Nationales, l’outil Ric-O converter.

Celui-ci permet la conversion de notices EAD et EAC vers du RDF exprimé en RiC-O. Nous finalisons actuellement une nouvelle version du convertisseur pour le rendre compatible RiC-O 1.0 (et même 1.1 dont la sortie est imminente).

Un nouvel article à paraître ici sur RiC-O ? … Stay tuned !

Cet article Retour sur … Le déploiement de Sparnatural pour FranceArchives est apparu en premier sur Sparna Blog.

“

The Sparnatural knowledge graph explorer leverages SHACL specifications to drive a user interface (UI) that allows end users to easily discover the content of an RDF graph. What is the best way to make this UI-oriented SHACL specification ? if a SHACL specification for the knowledge graph structure already exists, can it be used directly ? does it require customization ? or is the Sparnatural SHACL spec completely decoupled from an existing knowledge graph spec ? and what if no SHACL spec exists at all ?

We faced all these different situations while deploying Sparnatural, and used various approaches to produce a satisfying end-user oriented specification. In particular, the Nakala repository is one of the latest graph for which Sparnatural was deployed. Nakala is a data repository that aims to preserve and disseminate data produced by French research projects in the Humanities and Social Sciences, in compliance with the FAIR principles. Nakala is a service offered by Huma-Num, a research infrastructure dedicated to the digital humanities. The Nakala knowledge graph contains `dcterms` metadata provided by researchers to describe the resources they upload. Additional non-dcterms metadata can also be provided. The metadata varies in quality and quantity depending on the researcher. When exposed in a SPARQL endpoint, resources, collections of resources and agents are described using the Europeana Data Model (EDM).

As the EDM dissemination channel for Nakala was new, no SHACL specification existed for it. We could have designed one for Sparnatural from scratch, but the choice was make to generate it automatically, with no human intervention. This was for three reasons : ease of configuration, flexibility in maintenance over time, and pedagogical reason, as it was important to explain the structure of the graph to target users.

Sparnatural UI

Let’s first have a look at what the Sparnatural UI looks like on an example from Nakala:

Once you know that « ProvidedCHO » stands for « Provided Cultural Heritage Object », and that « asWKT » encodes the location of a Place, you will be able to understand that the query searches for all ProvidedCHO entries gathered into a certain collection (« Cartes Université Bordeaux Montaigne » – a collection of maps), and selects their location and an optional description (and yes, the results of this query are displayed on a map, but that’s out of scope).

SHACL is derived automatically

In this project we wanted the shortest path from the graph to the query UI. Hence we used a SHACL generation algorithm, available in SHACL Play. By issuing SPARQL queries on an RDF graph, the algorithm determines the NodeShapes (targeting the classes used as values of `rdf:type`), and PropertyShapes (from all predicates used on instances on each class) of the model, with their node kinds, datatypes, class range, and cardinalities. It generates `sh:or` constraints when multiple datatypes or ranges are found. Note that in the case of Nakala a large variety of ranges are used, since the data comes from very open user inputs : the same `dcterms` property can be either an IRI or a Literal, with varying datatypes.

In addition, the algorithm computes some statistics on the dataset : the number of targets of each NodeShapes, the number of occurrences and the number of distinct values for each property shapes. The statistics are expressed using the `void` vocabulary, and `dcterms:conformsTo` is used to link void partitions to the corresponding shapes.

The SHACL Play documentation tool was then used to generate a report of the generated SHACL combined with the statistics. A few errors were spotted in the exported data, and fixed. We also saw that around 70 properties were present only a few times out of 700.000+ ProvidedCHO records. These properties were applied by probably a single or very few researchers when describing their data. It was decided to filter them out to keep the final UI simple, with an extra filtering step : based on statistics, property shapes used less than 0.1% of the number of targets of their node shapes are removed.

Here is a screenshot of the report : the right column shows the number of distinct values, and the column before is the number of total occurrences; we can immediately see that `dct:isReplacedBy` occurs only once, and `dct:isRequiredBy` occurs 81 times. They will be filtered out.

Sparnatural reads SHACL

Sparnatural can then read the SPARQL specification, together with the dataset statistics. When designing a query, value selection widgets for literal properties are determined by looking at the `sh:datatype` constraint (for number, dates, boolean, or map widgets). For IRI properties, statistics are used to distinguish between list and autocomplete widgets. Predicates with less than 500 distinct values will use a dropdown list, and those with more will use an autocomplete search field. The range is determined by reading `sh:class` or `sh:node`. The label to show in dropdown lists or to search on autocomplete field is determined by looking at a `dash:propertyRole = dash:LabelRole` annotation.

How about labels ? Sparnatural can read them from classes and properties of the original OWL file, if provided with it. Otherwise local names of target classes or predicates are used.

Other configuration techniques

Other Sparnatural deployments, such as the DBPedia demo are designed in SHACL from scratch, using spreadsheets. This requires more manual work, but has the advantage of tailoring the UI to exactly what needs to be shown, including user-oriented labels/tooltips/icons, hiding some properties, taking shortcuts or declaring inverses using property paths, etc. In the case of DBPedia, no SHACL spec exists, and deriving it automatically for the entire graph would probably not make a lot of sense, hence the necessity for a manual design.

For other projects we are working on a third configuration technique : a SHACL spec that describes the exact content of the graph is first built. It is used to publish the documentation of the model and to validate the data. A separate shapes file containing a Sparnatural-specific configuration layer is then added on top of it. That layer can hide shapes by applying an `sh:deactivated` annotation on them, can specify the UI widgets to use, add additional `dash:LabelRole` flags, add shortcut or inverse properties, etc.

The 3 configuration paths are shown in the following diagram:

Your query UI in minutes

We combined 4 tools (all open-source) : an algorithm to generate a « profile » in SHACL of an RDF dataset, a statistical report generator, a SHACL filter based on statistics, and the Sparnatural query UI. The ability to generate the SHACL profile and review it in the report provided a way to understand the structure of the data in a matter of minutes, while hours would have been necessary with SPARQL queries, without a guarantee of completeness. The provision of the query UI was made by dropping the SHACL file and the statistics to Sparnatural, without manual intervention. This shows the pivotal role of SHACL for data quality and model-driven approaches for knowledge graphs projects.

”

We look forward to reading Veronika’s book, and you ?

Cet article Nakala : from an RDF dataset to a query UI in minutes – SHACL automated generation and Sparnatural est apparu en premier sur Sparna Blog.

Another star to light on EU’s linked open data maturity flag !

Not talking about 2024 exceptional Northern Lights to come, but this one’s also good news for science !

➡️ Late 2023, the Publications Office of the European Union announced on social media the public release of the new CORDIS SPARQL endpoint.

CORDIS, aka « the Community Research and Development Information Service of the European Commission », is « the […] primary source of results from the projects funded by the EU’s framework programmes for research and innovation, from FP1 to Horizon Europe ». Described as a « rich and structured public repository with all project information held by the European Commission such as project factsheets, participants, reports, deliverables and links to open-access publications », the CORDIS catalog has also been made available in 6 European languages by Publications Office’s editorial team.

Cherry on top of a whole process, the CORDIS SPARQL endpoint release comes to crown a long-term linked open data project. The aim identifying, acquiring, preserving and providing access to knowledge in a common will to share with the widest public possible a trust-worthy, qualified and structured information (see Publications Office 2021 Annual Management Report).

In the context of the pandemic (and recent opening of data.europa.eu, the official portal for European data, as defined in 2017–2025 European Open Data Space strategy), the EuroSciVoc taxonomy of fields of science was released April 2020, followed December 2021 by the publishing of European research information ontology (EURIO) on the EU Vocabularies website .

As presented at ENDORSE conference March 2021, the redesign of CORDIS data-model in accordance with Semantic Web standards contributed to bring the platform « from acting as a data repository to finally playing an active role as data provider », where EuroSciVoc taxonomy & EURIO ontology both played key roles in the creation of future CORDIS knowledge graph and SPARQL endpoint :

EuroSciVoc […] is a multilingual, SKOS-XL based taxonomy that represents all the main fields of science that were discovered from the CORDIS content, e.g., project abstracts. It was built starting from the hierarchy of the OECD’s Fields of R&D classification (FoRD) as root and extended through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. It contains almost 1 000 categories in 6 languages (English, French, German, Italian, Polish and Spanish) and each category is enriched with relevant keywords extracted from the textual description of CORDIS projects. It is constantly evolving and is available on EU Vocabularies website […].

In order to transform CORDIS data into Linked Open Data, thus aligning with Semantic Web standards, best practices and tools in industry and public organizations, the need for an ontology emerged. CORDIS created the EURIO (European Research Information Ontology) based on data about research projects funded by the EU’s framework programmes for research and innovation. EURIO is aligned with EU ontologies such as DINGO and FRAPO and de facto standard ontologies such as schema.org and the Organization Ontology from W3C. It models projects, their results and actors such as people and organizations, and includes administrative information like funding schemes and grants.

EURIO, which is available on EU Vocabularies website, was the starting point to develop a Knowledge Graph of CORDIS data that will be publicly available via a dedicated SPARQL endpoint. »

(Enrico Bignotti & Baya Remaoun, « EuroSciVoc taxonomy and EURIO ontology: CORDIS as (semantic) data provider  » , ENDORSE March 16, 2021. PDF VIDEO)

… A Knowledge graph that was soon released in 2022-2023 (see INDUSTRY TRACK 1 on Tuesday, 25 October of ISWC 2022 Conference for more detail), until final opening of a CORDIS SPARQL endpoint late november 2023.

Now fancy a few SPARQL queries in there ?

Follow the SPARQL

CORDIS SPARQL endpoint is actually made available on CORDIS Datalab (and already referenced in EU Knowledge Graph among other European SPARQL endpoints ! see the query / see the results)

Here you can access a quick documentation guide to CORDIS Linked Open Data : https://cordis.europa.eu/about/sparql.

Let’s have a look at EURIO ontology first : we need to understand it to query CORDIS knowledge graph.

As we are told in the guide, the latest version can be downloaded on EU Vocabularies website. When we unzip the archive we access the whole documentation about EURIO Classes & properties that we need to write our SPARQL queries – and a diagram of main classes and properties of CORDIS data model : 

At first sight we can observe on the schema 3 main groups of entities :

• On the top right, the projects & publications associated, key ressources of CORDIS ;
• On the top left, the fundings & grants materials, on « monetary » side of the project ;
• On the bottom, the organisations & persons implied, with references & coordinates.

Let’s open CORDIS SPARQL endpoint – some easy queries can be run to begin exploring CORDIS knowledge graph.

Nb : the data on SPARQL endpoint is a snapshot, but freshest dumps can be found on European data portal !

Here a simple one to find a list of FundingSchemes with their titles and IDs corresponding to « Horizon 2020 » programme :

▶️ See the results

The FILTER REGEX enables us to display the IDs corresponding to H2020 Funding Schemes.

We can make another query to get the projects with the Funding Scheme Programme they are related to (note that, in EURIO a eurio:hasFundingSchemeProgramme is a sub-property of eurio:fundingScheme) :

▶️ See the results

(Here we used a property path with a « / » to shorten the query to get the acronyms of projects & Funding Scheme Programmes codes).

… and combining with the first query we can find the projects depending on H2020 Funding Scheme Programme in particular :

▶️ See the results

It is also possible to get the list of all existing Funding Scheme Programmes CORDIS projects have been funded by – we observe 27 of them here (from the SPARQL endpoint) – while adding a count function to know how many projects per FundingSchemeProgramme :

▶️ See the results

Querying the organisations properties will return other kind of useful informations about geographical location of the projects stakeholders. Let’s figure out we want to find the projects whose coordinating organisations have sites located in France :

Projects whose coordinating organisations have sites located in France  PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#> PREFIX eurio: <http://data.europa.eu/s66#> PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> SELECT ?project ?acronym ?role ?organisation ?country WHERE { # select the projects with their acronyms … ?project a eurio:Project. ?project eurio:hasAcronym/eurio:shortForm ?acronym. # … and organisations with ‘coordinator’ role and name … ?project eurio:hasInvolvedParty ?organisationrole. ?organisationrole eurio:roleLabel ?role. ?organisationrole eurio:roleLabel « coordinator ». ?organisationrole eurio:isRoleOf/eurio:legalName ?organisation. # … with address country for the sites defined at ‘FR’ ?organisationrole eurio:isRoleOf/eurio:hasSite/eurio:hasAddress/eurio:addressCountry ?country. VALUES ?country { ‘FR’ } } LIMIT 100

▶️ See the results

Depending on available data, you can either query via PostalAddress info (eurio:addressCountry ‘FR’) or AdministrativeArea (eurio:hasGeographicalLocation) … Here we’re lucky as both fields are mandatory ones.

Last but not least, we can also play with CORDIS vocabularies : here you’ll have the choice to investigate via plain keywords of Projects or Publications items, querying titles, abstracts or other types of literals…

An example of projects with abstracts containing string ❄ ‘winter’ ❄ – the URL giving the exact link to the project online :

▶️ See the results

But funniest way will be using EuroSciVoc taxonomy (and navigating through thesaurus hierarchy) : to do so we need to navigate through property « eurio:hasEuroSciVocClassification » to get the Concepts skosxl:prefLabel property … to finally obtain the thesaurus labels (don’t forget to choose a prefered language with a FILTER (lang parameter) :

Projects with their associated EuroSciVoc keywords (English prefLabels ) PREFIX skosxl: <http://www.w3.org/2008/05/skos-xl#> PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#> PREFIX eurio: <http://data.europa.eu/s66#> PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> SELECT ?project ?acronym ?ESV WHERE { # select the projects with their acronyms … ?project eurio:hasAcronym/eurio:shortForm ?acronym. # … with EuroSciVoc Classification prefLabels … ?project eurio:hasEuroSciVocClassification/skosxl:prefLabel/skosxl:literalForm ?ESV. # … only returning ‘English’ prefLabels FILTER (lang(?ESV) = ‘en’) } LIMIT 100

▶️ See the results

A bit more complex one using first level of hierarchy of the taxonomy : here we are searching for all skos:broader concepts « with no other broader concept » (the FILTER NOT EXISTS formula), aka the top concepts or root concepts of the vocabulary used to describe the projects. Then counting the projects by each category :

▶️ See the results

… and maybe again more explicit results if refined to level 2 of hierarchy  :

▶️ See the results

And a little last one with a count, to enumerate most used EuroSciVoc Concepts for indexing projects :

▶️ See the results

This one an ideal one to generate a word cloud maybe ?

What if we send the CSV data to some nice online word cloud generator then ?

(OMG they also have a shooting star shape  in there 🤩)

As a conclusion…

According to Science (CORDIS saying !), New Year’s resolutions appear difficult to be held… because most of time too ambitious, restrictive or unprecisely formulated : indeed, « the effectiveness of resolutions depends on how they are framed. »

Horizon 2024, let’s suggest a(n RDF ?) well-framed one : may CORDIS SPARQL endpoint initiative be an example for other structures who want to share Linked Open Data !

Wishing you Best Interoperability and a Very Merry ✨ Sparqling New Year ! ✨

Cet article CORDIS : a SPARQL endpoint is born ! est apparu en premier sur Sparna Blog.

To inaugurate my first article on Sparna’s blog, let’s share a little feedback of mine today about Sparna’s well-known SKOSPlay! whose 10 years’ birthday is to celebrate this year !

10 yo, quite a historic tool ! but more than ever actual in a context where the semantic technologies get front of the scene anew due to growing interest shown by the digital humanities movement to data interoperability projects via the standardized knowledge structuration (Wikipedia-Wikidata projects e.g., as semantic wiki devices), and also due to the last progress of artificial intelligence, now able to processing large amount of data and soon fully leveraging the potential of ontologies and knowledge graphs.

From asking for a taxonomy to querying RDF files with an API…

This said, in a more practical way, semantic web standards are not always easy to manipulate as a professional – if non-initiate to SPARQL and nor confirmed data scientist, and even when you have got to deal with a simple structured list of terms !

Either your data is already SKOS-standardized (great !), there sometimes come to have a gap between normalization step and visualization step that requires a bit more technical IT skills. Either – most of time – the common muggle-born is to start with a plain Excel spreadsheet, create a list, add some hierarchy, maybe other scope notes or definitions and… end far puzzled wondering how to get a 5-star data vocabulary ⭐ !

A SKOSPlay!-within-a-SKOSPlay!

Wink to @belett, anything possible now with SKOSPlay!

Aiming at visualizing (and printing !) SKOS thesauri, taxonomies and vocabularies at the very beginning, SKOSPlay! is a full online free and open source tool leveraging semantic technologies (RDF, SPARQL, inference, Linked Data) to generate downloadable HTML or PDF documents. More and more new features have been added since then : alignments display, OWL and SKOS-XL files processing, autocomplete fields and permuted indexes generating …

Hello @veronikaheim, maybe SKOSPlay! could match your need ?

… among other nice and useful developments.

But as an Excel aficionada, the one that I prefer is the Excel-to-RDF converter tool.

One sheet. One import. One result. Easy-peasy, happy terminologist :))

(And you can even keep your custom colors templates and formats !!! 🦄 )

Come on & let’s SKOSPlay!

Let’s figure out you want to display or construct a small vocabulary you could quickly visualize in a standardized SKOS-structured way :

Now to fit in the SKOS model your data has to follow a particular template you can fullfill by downloading on SKOSPlay! website.

First you have to define the header of the template : the global scheme of your vocabulary, its URI, title and description :

Adding the terms of your list (with the URIs)… Here with the “@en” language indication on top of the column as I am to create an English-French multilingual vocabulary :

Recreating the arborescent structure through the Excel template (don’t mind my color palette, I always like colouring my Excel sheets to better visualize the info at a glance !).

The hierarchical broader-narrower structure is to be recreated by adding a “skos:narrower” column (or skos:broader, as you want, with only 1 broader value per line) where you will list the different specific values front of the more generic one (separated by comas). Here I used a PREFIX too in order to shorten my http:// URIs, SKOSPlay! can process them anyway !

Then adding a few notes and other information (multilingual values, skos:notation, any other default properties known in the converter (see the documentation) or different custom elements of yours by adding other PREFIXes :

Your Excel template is ready to go ! quite an easy configuration in my demo here, but SKOSPlay! can also deal with skos:Collections, SKOS-XL and other advanced RDF structures : blank nodes, RDF lists, named graphs. And now possible to generate OWL and SHACL files with the converter too !

Now it’s time to turn your (finally-not-so-dirty-) data into a SKOS-charming file. Take your favorite magic wand SKOSPlay! Excel-to-RDF converter tool and load your Excel file in it (adding some optional parameters if needed).

Well done, it’s a wonderful RDF-ized vocabulary file (here in a Turtle format but you have also RDF/XML, N-Triples, N-Quads, N3 and TriG available) :

Wingardium Visualiza !

We’re almost done. Go back to the website, tab “Play!”, load your last RDF-serialized file and go to the next step to chose the kind of display you want to get, endly press (SKOS)Play! and … abracadataaaaaaa !

Many different options to visualize your arborescent data. Tree, static and dynamic, but also more « professional » and printable sorts of displays like alphabetical, hierarchical or permuted views :

And KWIC (as for « KeyWord In Context ») :

Even possible to load an online Google spreadsheet (mine is shared here), just by adapting a little its URL for the converter’s need. Interesting feature in a collaborative purpose when you are team-building a vocabulary !

The whole pack fully documented and findable on Sparna’s website & Git. Some recent users even produced a short video tutorial to show what they managed to do with different SKOSPlay! visualization tools.

Already knew about SKOSPlay! ? go see his little brother, SHACLPlay! and feel free to give us some feedback in the comments 

Happy Birthday SKOSPlay! & Long live Semantic Web !

A bit more Vouvray with your nougat de Tours ?

Cet article 2013-2023 : ‘Tis SKOSPlay!’s Birthday ! est apparu en premier sur Sparna Blog.

So what you need is to produce a clean JSON structure from your raw RDF triples. And when I mean “clean”, I mean :

• no URIs. Nowhere. No URIs in JSON keys, No URIs in types of entities, no URIs in the value of properties controlled by a closed list; the only places where it is acceptable to see a URI are : to give the id of the entities, and when making a reference to such an id of entity within the graph; even in these cases the URIs can be shortened.
• no fancy JSON-LD keys like @type, @value, @datatype, @id, etc.
• indented.

You have 2 possibilities to do that :

1. You develop a custom script, to either generate a JSON export of your data, or to implement the API that will query the knowledge graph, parse the triples, and generate that clean JSON output.
2. You use JSON-LD framing to automate the production of a clean JSON(-LD) from RDF.

There are 2 nice things about the solution with JSON-LD framing :

1. it can be automated
2. you automatically retain the RDF compatibility – because your JSON will necessarily be JSON-LD. This means you can import your nice JSON directly in a triplestore.

The principle of JSON-LD framing is that you provide a JSON-LD @context with an additionnal frame specification that defines how the JSON should be structured (indented), which entity to include at each level (entities can be filtered based on some criteria), and also which properties to include in each entity.

To start with JSON-LD framing, what you need is JSON-LD. Any JSON-LD. Typically the raw JSON-LD serialization that any RDF library or triplestore will produce; that kind of ugly, messy, full-of-URIs-and-@language kind of JSON. So something like:

(Brrr, scary, no ?)

And then what you need is the JSON-LD playground with the “Framed” tab. This will allow you to test your context and frame specification.

And when deployed in production, what you will need is a JSON-LD library that is capable of implementing the JSON-LD framing algorithm. Implementations are listed here, and you need an implementation compatible with JSON-LD 1.1.

Example files

As an example, I use a JSON-LD file from the French National Library, the one from Les Misérables here : https://data.bnf.fr/fr/13516296/victor_hugo_les_miserables/ (download link at the bottom of the page).

You can download the initial JSON example, the frame specification, and the result in a zip. The zip also contains intermediate frame specifications.

The @context

We’ll start by specifying the JSON-LD context part.

Map @type to type and @id to id

Average developer will wonder what are those @type and @id keys. Re-map them straight away to type and id:

"type" : "@type",
"id" : "@id",


Schema.org and lot of other specifications do that.

What about @graph ?

If you have a named graph at the top, introduced by @graph, my suggestion would be to simply remap it to a fixed key, like « data », or « entities » :

"data" : "@graph",


Map RDF properties URIs to JSON keys

Get rid of any trace of URI or short URIs in JSON keys. Declare a term for every property in your graph. The simplest way to do this is to use the local part of the URI (after last “#” or “/”) as the term. Order the context by the alphabetical order of the terms. Terms for properties will usually start with a lowercase letter.

In corner cases you may end up with the same term (such as in the example bnf-onto:subject and dcterms:subject), so in that case you need a different key, I chose “bnf-subject” here for bnf-onto:subject and kept “subject” for dcterms:subject.

"creator" : "dcterms:creator",
"date" : "dcterms:date",
"dateOfWork" : "rdagroup1elements:dateOfWork",
"depiction" : "foaf:depiction",
"description" : "dcterms:description",


Map classes URIs to JSON terms

Now you want to do the same thing to get rid of any trace of URIs in the “type” of entities. Declare a term for every class in your ontology/application profile. List the classes in a different section than the properties. Terms for classes will usually start with an uppercase.

"Concept" : "skos:Concept",
"Document" : "foaf:Document",
"ExpositionVirtuelle" : "bnf-onto:ExpositionVirtuelle",


 Declare object properties with “@type”: “@id”

Now you want to get rid of all those ugly “id”, we are only interested in listing the values. To do that, modify the mapping of the property (here “depiction”) to state its values are URIs. You need to change the mapping from

"depiction" : "foaf:depiction",

to

"depiction" : { "@value" : "foaf:depiction", "@type":"@id" },

And so parts like this :

"depiction": [
{
"id": "https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8438568p.thumbnail"
},
{
"id": "https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9004781d.thumbnail"
},
{
"id": "https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5545348q.thumbnail"
}
]

Will be turned into

"depiction": [
"https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8438568p.thumbnail",
"https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9004781d.thumbnail",
"https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5545348q.thumbnail",
"https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8438570r.thumbnail"
]

Map datatypes

Now you want to get rid of the @datatype information for literals. If the value of a property always uses the same datatype, which is the case 99,9% of the time, then you can change the mapping from

"property" : "http://myproperty",

to

"property" : { “@id”: "http://myproperty", “@type”:”xsd:date” }

(The example used does not have datatype properties.)

Map languages, with fixed language or when multilingual

Now let’s get rid of the @language. For this you have 2 choices : when the language is always the same for the value, you can indicate it in the context, the same way that you would do for the datatype but with the @language key. So you change from

"description" : "dcterms:description",

to

"description" : { “@id” : "dcterms:description", “@language” : “fr” }

You could even have different terms for different languages, such as :

"title_fr" : { "@id" : "dcterms:title", "@language" : "fr" },
"title_en" : { "@id" : "dcterms:title", "@language" : "en" },
"title" : { "@id" : "dcterms:title" },

or when you have multilingual multiple values, you can make the property a language map by declaring it this way:

"editorialNote" : { "@id" : "skos:editorialNote", "@container" : "@language" },

Which will turn the language code as a key in the JSON output:

"editorialNote": {
"fr": [
"BN Cat. gén. (sous : Hugo, comte Victor-Marie) : Les misérables. - . - BN Cat. gén. 1960-1969 (sous : Hugo, Victor) : idem. - . -",
"Laffont-Bompiani, Oeuvres, 1994. - . - GDEL. - . -"
] },

In that case, watch out for cases where there is a value without language, it will generate a @none key.

Map controlled list values to JSON terms

By now you already get a much cleaner JSON and almost all “unnecessary” URIs have disappeared. But we still have some URI references that we can clean up : the ones that are references to controlled lists with a finite number of values.

We can declare term mappings for those values just like we did to map properties and classes. BUT – and this is the trick, we need to change the property declaration from “@id” to “@vocab” for the replacement to happen. This is documented in the « Type coercion » section of the spec.

In our example, the mapping to languages and subjects are good candidates to be mapped to JSON terms. So we change

"language" : { "@id" : "dcterms:language", "@type":"@id" },
"subject" : { "@id" : "dcterms:subject", "@type":"@id" },


to

"language" : { "@id" : "dcterms:language", "@type":"@vocab" },
"subject" : { "@id" : "dcterms:subject", "@type":"@vocab" },
“fre” : “http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/iso639-2/fre”,
“eng” : “http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/iso639-2/eng”,

Shorten remaining URI references

Now the only URIs left are the ids of the main entities in our graph, and references to those ids. Reference to controlled vocabularies with a limited number of values have been mapped to JSON terms. Although we cannot turn all the remaining URIs to JSON terms (because we can’t declare all possible entity URIs in the context), we can shorten them by adding a prefix mapping in the context, in our case:

"ark-https": "https://data.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/",


(I note that there are http:// and https:// URIs in the data, I don’t know why)

The frame specification

So now we have clean values, no URIs, no fancy JSON-LD keys. But we still don’t have a structure indented the way the average developer would expect it; and this is where the frame specification comes into play.

Define indentation and filters (and reverse properties if needed)

The frame specification acts as both a filter/selection mechanism and as a structure definition. At each level you indicate the criterias for the object to be included. In our example we have a skos:Concept (the entry in the library catalog) that is foaf:focus a Work (the Book « in the real world »), and that skos:Concept is the subject of many virtual exhibits. We want to have the Concept and the Work at first level, and under the concept the exhibits. But there is a trick : it is the virtual exhibits that points to the concept with a dcterms:subject, and we want it the other direction : Concept is_subject_of Exhibit, so we need a @reverse property.

To do that, add the following reverse mapping declaration: (don’t modify the existing one):

"subject_of" : { "@reverse" : "dcterms:subject" },

Note the use of « @reverse » to indicate that JSON key is to be interpreted from object to subject when turned into triples.

With that in place, we can write our frame specification, which goes right after the @context we have designed before:

"type" : ["Concept", "Work"],
"subject_of" : {
"type" : "ExpositionVirtuelle"
}

Note how we use the terms defined in the context previously. This is to be understood the following way : « at the first level, take any entity with a type of either Concept or Work, then insert a subject_of key and put inside any value that has a type ExpositionVirtuelle ». This garantees the virtual exhibits objects will go under the Concept, and not above or at the same level. But this is not sufficient, as you will notice if you apply that framing that the Work is repeated under the « focus » property of the Concept, and at the root level. This is because of the default behavior of the JSON-LD playground regarding object embedding (objects are always embeded when they are referenced)

Avoid embedding

To avoid embedding when it is undesired, we can set the « @embed » option to « @never » on the « focus » property, like so :

"type" : ["Concept", "Work"],
"subject_of" : {
"type" : "ExpositionVirtuelle"
},
"focus" : {
"@embed" : "@never",
"@omitDefault": true
}


This tells the framing algorithm to never embed the complete entity inside the focus property, just reference the URI instead.

Also, you will notice the use of « @omitDefault » to true; this tells the framing algorithm to omit the focus property when it has no value. Otherwise, since the Work does not have a foaf:focus property (only the Concept), then it will get a « focus » key set to null.

What about order of keys in the JSON ?

Well, I am sure this can be controlled, either by specifying explicitely all the keys you want, in the order you want them, in the frame specification, or by using an « ordered » parameter to the JSON-LD API, but that is not available in the playground.

If you list all keys explicitely in the frame specification, don’t forget to use wildcards so that any value will match; wildcards are empty objects with « {} »:

"myProperty" : {}

The result

Much nicer no ? This is something you can put into the hand of an average developer.

Automate context generation from SHACL

Do you have a SHACL specification of the structure of your graph ? wouldn’t it be nice to automate the generation of the JSON-LD context from SHACL ? Maybe we could do that in SHACL-Play ? stay tuned !

Probably what we can automate is the context part, which can be global and unique for all your graph, but the framing specification should probably be different for each different API you need; each framing specification will then reference the same context by its URL.

Image : [Encadrement ornemental] ([1er état]) / .Io. MIGon 1544. [Jean Mignon] ; [d’après Le Primatice] https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53230250h

Cet article Clean JSON(-LD) from RDF using Framing est apparu en premier sur Sparna Blog.

Here is also nice video showing how to visualize such a SKOS vocabulary in SKOS Play visualization tools.

Thanks to Nikola Vasiljevic and John Graybeal from FAIR Data Collective for this nice integration !

You can check out the Fair Data Collective page on LinkedIn : « Making practical and easy-to-use FAIR data solutions ».

Cet article Fair Data Collective is doing cool things with SKOS Play and xls2rdf est apparu en premier sur Sparna Blog.

Il y a deux grandes catégories d’outils : les outils d’authoring, en phase de conception d’ontologie et pour pouvoir communiquer sur un modèle de données, et des outils de visualisation qui permettent de voir des graphes RDF ou des modèles déjà constitués.

Dessiner/concevoir des ontologies

Powerpoint / Google slides

Je suis un utilisateur de Linux et Ubuntu est mon environnement de travail quotidien. Et pourtant… j’ai quand même une machine virtuelle Windows juste pour utiliser la suite Office et en particulier Powerpoint; je n’ai jamais réussi à être efficace et à créer des diagrammes jolis avec LibreOffice, et il faut dire que le côté quasi universel des documents Office permet de les échanger facilement avec les clients, de les montrer en présentation, et de les intégrer rapidement dans d’autres documents (Word). C’est avec Powerpoint que j’ai par exemple dessiné les diagrammes du profil d’application de l’ISSN, de l’ontologie ELI-DL (ELI for Draft Legislation), ou de l’ontologie ScolomFR. J’aime bien en particulier le formalisme de présentation de ELI-DL : 1 planche d’explication, 1 diagramme, 1 planche d’explication, 1 diagramme, etc. cela permet de « scenariser » la présentation du modèle de façon pédagogique. Le gros défaut en terme de saisie, et c’est tout bête, c’est qu’on ne peut pas associer un libellé à un connecteur… on bouge le connecteur, il faut bouger le libellé avec…

Dans la même veine, Google Slides ajoute la dimension collaborative en temps réel.

Bien sûr, les diagrammes produits ne sont que des images, et n’ont pas de vrais structures de graphe, avec possibilité de faire une mise en page automatique ou un export en SVG par exemple.

Yed et Yed-live

Bernard Chabot, grand Ontologiste et Architecte de la Connaissance (on se croirait dans une loge maçonnique), m’avait plusieurs fois fait la promotion de Yed, un outil de dessin de graphe. C’est un open-source, java, qui existe depuis looooongtemps dans le paysage. Yed qui est une application de bureau a son pendant en ligne, yed-live. C’est avec ces outils que Bernard dessine par exemple les diagrammes de son article »dicho-scope » sur les grands axes de construction d’un modèle sémantique (auquel on ajouterait peut-être la distinction intention vs. extension, mais c’est un autre sujet), ou encore les diagrammes du modèle E2M pour la modélisation de réseaux d’acteurs (oui, un FOAF béton avec une approche ingéniérie de la connaissance).

J’avais utilisé Yed-live et ce que j’avais trouvé vraiment bien ce sont les fonctions de regroupement des noeuds, de layout automatique (et temps réel !), et (mais je n’était pas allé jusque là), la possibilité d’avoir sa propre palette d’objets. Après, attention, l’éditeur est en ligne mais ce n’est pas collaboratif. Ca permet toutefois d’enregistrer son graphe dans un cloud ou par exemple dans un Gist github, et de pouvoir ensuite l’échanger via un partage d’URL.

Extrait d’une plache du modèle E2M par Bernard Chabot, modélisée avec YeD

diagrams.net

Le fil de discussion mentionne diagrams.net, qui a l’air d’être une solution d’édition de graphes online et open-source. Comme Yed-live, s’intègre avec Google Drive ou Github ou Dropbox pour le stockage. Pas besoin de login, et on est dans un look and feel très proche des applications Google. Ca a l’air très sympa et puissant !

Omnigraffle ou LucidCharts (solutions payantes)

On mentionne également Omnigraffle (pour Mac seulement), qui n’a pas l’air tout jeune, et LucidCharts, 2 solutions de dessins de diagrammes et de graphes, mais cette fois-ci commerciales. La présentation corporate de LucidCharts nous apprend qu’on peut (si je comprends bien) venir injecter des données de sources externes (tableur, etc.) dans un modèle de diagramme; intéressant.

Visualiser des ontologies ou des graphes

Plantuml

C’est sur le fil de discussion mentionné plus haut que je découvre PlantUML, un outil qui dessine tout plein de diagrammes UML (mais pas que, aussi des Mind Map ou des Wireframes), à partir d’un bout de texte ! Par exemple, si on écrit

Object <|-- ArrayList

Object : equals()
ArrayList : Object[] elementData
ArrayList : size()

On obtient

Du coup, vous voyez le truc : ce bout de texte, on peut imaginer de le générer… à partir de RDF pour une visualisation de graphe, ou à partir de SHACL pour générer diagramme de classes UML. Et c’est Vladimir Alexiev d’Ontotext qui a cette idée dans son projet « rdfpuml » qui génère des graphes PlantUML à partir de fichiers Turtle (voir ces tweets). Effectivement, si on dessine des graphes à partir de RDF, on doit pouvoir dessiner des diagrammes de classes UML à partir de Shapes… (ce qu’on ne peut pas bien faire à partir d’ontologies OWL, qui, je le rappelle, ne définissent pas des modèles de données fermés mais des domaines de connaissances ouverts). Une idée de fonctionnalité pour SHACL Play !

PlantUML me parait très prometteur pour automatiser cette génération de diagrammes (mais moins pour les éditer à la main).

D3

On ne présente plus D3js, bibliothèque Javascript de dataviz au sens large. Elle est intégrée dans les visualisations de SKOS Play pour visualiser des hiérarchies de thesaurus en SKOS. On est donc là-aussi sur un outil de rendu de graphe ou de données.

Gephi + sigmajs

J’avais présenté la solution Gephi et son export en sigmajs dans un autre billet. Là aussi, on est sur un outil de rendering de graphe, avec la possibilité de manipuler de gros graphes de données et d’éditer le rendu avec des algorithmes très puissant. Mais ce n’est pas un outil d’authoring des données. A l’époque (2015) le plugin d’import RDF me semblait légèrement instable et pas trop mis à jour. Continue-t-il à être maintenu et Gephi est-il toujours une solution viable pour générer des vues de graphes RDF ?

WebVOWL

Dans le registre des solutions de visualisations automatiques, Il ne faut pas oublier WebVOWL qui propose une visualisations de tous les axiomes OWL. Le résultat n’est franchement pas simple à lire, mais a l’avantage d’être quelque chose de très différent des diagrammes de classes UML, et vraiment fait pour la représentation graphique d’ontologies. WebVOLW est intégré à Widoco, un utilitaire de génération de documentation automatiques d’ontologies OWL, que je vous recommende (le successeur de LODE, qui l’intégre d’ailleurs).

Plugins Protégé

Pour être tout à fait complet sur la partie visualisation d’ontologies on ne peut pas passer sous silence les plugins de visualisation intégrés dans Protégé.

Bel été, et n’hésitez pas à poster vos plus beaux diagrammes d’ontologies !

Illustration de l’article : https://www.slideshare.net/Jean_Rohmer/de-lia-au-calcul-littraire-pourquoi-jai-zapp-le-web-smantique/17 « Réseau Sémantique et Logique du XVIeme siècle dans la cathédrale de Grenade modélisant la Sainte Trinité », Jean Rohmer, dans la présentation « De l’IA au Calcul Littéraire: Pourquoi j’ai zappé le Web Sémantique« avec l’aimable autorisation de Jean Rohmer. « Pater non est Filius », « Pater non est Spiritus Sanctus », « Filius non est Spiritus Sanctus », « Deus est Pater », « Deus est Filius », « Deus est Spiritus Sanctus »

Cet article Dessiner des ontologies, visualiser des graphes : quels outils ? est apparu en premier sur Sparna Blog.

Les sources de l’ontologie RiC-O sont dans Github à https://github.com/ICA-EGAD/RiC-O.

4 entités au coeur de RiC-CM

RiC-CM défini 4 entités « noyaux » du modèle conceptuel : la Record Resource, ses Instantiations, des Agents et des Activités. La RecordResource est une description intellectuelle qui peut avoir plusieurs matérialités (typiquement document original vs. numérisation), ses Instantiations. Une « Record Resource » peut se préciser soit en Record Set (ensemble de notices), en Record (notice seule) ou en Record Part (partie de notice), la frontière entre ces 3 notions n’étant pas toujours facile.

Sous la notion générique d’Agent, RiC-CM déclare les 3 types d’agents archivistiques classiques Person, Family et Corporate Body, mais introduit également comme des Agents les « Positions » (Fonctions dans un organigramme) et les « Mechanisms » (typiquement les logiciels), qui peuvent donc être utilisés dans une relation de Provenance.

Ces 4 entités « noyaux » sont complétées par la notion de Rule (règle, loi, normes, « contexts that establish the conditions for the performance of the activities ») et les entités classiques de Date et Place.

Le modèle conceptuel RiC-CM défini un ensemble de 78 relations majoritairement entre les 4 entités noyaux du modèle, et c’est là que la notion de Contextes (au pluriel) prends tout son sens :

1. Relations Partitives tout/partie : Record has consituent Record Part, Event has subevent Event, Group has subdivision Group, etc…
2. Relations Séquentielles avant/après : Record is original of Record, Instantiation has derived instantiation Instantiation, Agent is antecedent of Agent, etc..
3. Relations de Sujet : Record Resource has subject Thing ou Record Resource describes Thing, etc.
4. Relations inter-Record Resource : Record Resource has copy Record Resource, Record Set includes Record, etc.
5. Relations de Record Resource à Instantiation : Record Resource has instantiation Instantiation, etc.
6. Relations de Provenance (Record Resource à Agent) : Record Resource created by Agent, etc.
7. Relations inter-Instantiations, typiquement Instantiation has derived instantiation Instantiation (cas de la copie numérique d’un orginal), etc.
8. Relations de Management : Group or Person or Position is owner of Thing, Agent controls Agent, etc.
9. Relations inter-Agent : Person is leader of Group, Person has child Person, Person occupies Position, Person knows Person, etc.
10. Relations des Events/Activities, typiquement Activity performed by Agent
11. Relations des Rules : Rule regulates Thing, Mandate authorizes Agent, etc.
12. Relations de Datation
13. Relations Spatiales

Ce diagramme (tiré de cette présentation de RiC-CM aux Archives Nationales et du code source de RiC-O dans Github) donne l’aperçu haut-niveau de RiC-CM et des relations qui articulent les entités de haut-niveau du modèle :

Diagramme haut-niveau du Modèle Conceptuel Records in Contexts 0.2

RiC dans la famille des modèles conceptuels

RiC s’inscrit dans la famille des modèles conceptuels développés depuis 3 décennies dans le domaine de l’infodoc : FRBR en 1992-1995 pour les notices bibliographiques des bibliothèques, puis le CIDOC-CRM à partir de 1996 pour la description des objets muséaux et patrimoniaux en général, puis l’intégration de FRBR dans le CIDOC-CRM, à partir de 2003, qui donnera naissance à FRBRoo en 2008. Et plus récemment, en 2017, IFLA-LRM qui consolide les modèles de la famille FRBR.

On notera la temporalité longue pour l’élaboration de ces standards internationaux : réunions internationales, disponibilité des participants, nécessaires discussions longues sur l’identification des concepts fondamentaux du métier. On notera aussi le retard de la communauté des archives, avec le début du groupe EGAD en 2012 et la version 0.1 de RiC-CM publiée en 2016, sur cette réflexion au niveau conceptuel, par rapport aux bibliothèques et aux musées. Cela peut s’expliquer par la présence d’un standard technique unique et utilisé mondialement, l’EAD, et par des moyens plus réduits dans la communauté archivistique.

La communauté du CIDOC-CRM s’est empressé de dénoncer la « secte des archivistes » qui réinventent leur propre modèle conceptuel plutôt que de s’appuyer sur les fondations théoriques du CIDOC-CRM. Mais cette phase de réflexion où sont réexaminés l’existence, le périmètre, la pertinence et l’articulation de de chaque concept métier est bien nécessaire à une communauté de pratique avant que celle-ci ne puisse proposer un éventuel accostage avec le point de vue – certes générique et théoriquement fondé, mais issu d’une autre communauté de pratiques – du CIDOC-CRM. Le document « Toward an International Conceptual Model for Archival Description… » mentionné plus haut mentionne déjà cela :

« Avant de collaborer, la communauté archivistique doit développer un modèle conceptuel qui réponde d’abord et avant tout aux principes et aux besoins des archivistes. Une fois ce modèle élaboré, la communauté sera bien placée pour se joindre aux communautés professionnelles apparentées dans une quête commune pour fournir un accès intégré à l’expression humaine sous toutes ses formes. »

Quelques années de patience, donc, avant une intégration RiC-CM / CIDOC-CRM  (RiCoo ? )

Ricoconverter : Un convertisseur EAD et EAC vers RiC-O, par les Archives Nationales

Florence Clavaud, responsable de la mission Référentiels aux Archives Nationales, a largement développé l’ontologie RiC-O au sein du groupe EGAD. Sous son impulsion avait déjà été développé en 2017-2018 le prototype PIAFF (Pilote d’interopérabilité pour les Autorités Archivistiques françaises), incluant 276 notices d’autorités des AN, de la BNF et du SIAFF, converties dans la première version de RiC-CM et RiC-O qui datait de 2016.

Les Archives Nationales ont souhaité un passage à l’échelle après le succès de PIAFF, pour la conversion de l’intégralité des 28000 instruments de recherche et 15000 notices d’autorité des Archives Nationales, dans la version la plus récente de RiC-O. Le travail a été confié à votre serviteur. Le résultat est ricoconverter, un logiciel opensource, permettant de lancer simplement en ligne de commande une conversion d’un ensemble de fichiers EAD ou EAC vers du RDF/XML structuré en RiC-O. Ricoconverter est essentiellement basé sur 2 feuilles de style XSLT qui font l’essentiel du travail, enrobées dans un script Java. La feuille de style convertissant l’EAC est assez générique et transposable dans d’autres contextes probablement assez directement, la feuille de style EAD répond à l’implémentation spécifique de l’EAD aux AN et demandera plus d’adaptions; mais l’objectif de Ricoconverter est bel et bien de pouvoir être adapté et utilisé pas d’autres services d’archives pour produire des graphes de données RiC-O.

Les sources de ricoconverter sont disponibles dans Github à https://github.com/ArchivesNationalesFR/rico-converter.

Cerise sur le gâteau, quand on a un joli graphe RiC-O, on peut avoir un joli Sparnatural (voir ce billet de blog) qui permet de naviguer dans le graphe et de chercher par exemple « toutes les archives numérisées des organisations ayant succédé à la Direction des Beaux Arts (1848-1852) » (cliquer sur l’image pour voir le screencast) :

Présentations de RiC-CM et RiC-O aux Archives Nationales le 28/01/2020

Pour aller plus loin on peut consulter les présentations sur RiC-CM, RiC-O, ricoconverter et plus encore faites lors de la journée d’étude du 28 janvier 2020 aux Archives Nationales.

Illustration : Institut, [salle des] archives : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol] Agence Rol. Agence photographique depuis Gallica.

Cet article RiC-CM, RiC-O : les Archives se dotent de leur modèle conceptuel (Records in Contexts) est apparu en premier sur Sparna Blog.