Exhibit and Semantic MediaWiki: A newly married couple – Part I
Exhibit and Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) definetly make a good couple, since they complement each other quite well. While Exhibit is really good at visualizing structured data, SMWs naturally contain lots of this data. Hence, the interaction of Exhibit and SMW covers the entire value chain from creating to presenting structured content.
In an upcoming series of blog postings I’d like to illustrate how Exhibit and SMW can benefit from each other. Besides, I show which fundamental problems can be solved by just uniting the power of both tools.
This first entry deals with the usage of Exhibit as a result printer within Semantic MediaWiki. As one of its main advantages SMW offers the possibility to query the data it contains. By just adding simple query strings to a wiki page information scattered across a bunch of articles can be gathered on this single page. SMW relies on semantic annotations which are evaluated while the query is processed.
For instance, the following query string triggers the selection of all pages about cities which are located in the United States. Moreover, the values of the properties population and state are extracted from the selected wiki pages.
{{#ask: [[located in::USA]] | ?population | ?state}}
By default the data is displayed in an ordinary table format what tends to be kind of boring. This is where Exhibit hits the mark. With the help of Exhibit we can get a fancy, well-arranged and even more meaningful visualization of the data. That’s why SMW is enabled to use Exhibits for printing query results now. All the different views Exhibit has to offer (e.g. maps, timelines, tables) are supported. Faceted browsing is possible as well.
In order to keep the query string as short and simple as possible information SMWs already contain is leveraged. For example, a specification of a property which holds a geographic coordinate is not mandatory, since SMW stores information about value types. The same is true for date values.
Thus, the following query yields the visualization on the screenshot:
{{#ask: [[located in::USA]] | ?population | format=exhibit | view=tiles,tabular,timeline,map | facets=state}}
Query results with Exhibit as result printer
As you can see the Exhibit seamlessly fits the wiki user interface. No additional scrolling is required and the Exhibit doesn’t look squeezed.
All these features work fine and will be part of the next Semantic Result Formats (SRF) release. SRF is a collection of sophisticated result printers which is realized as an extension to SMW.
This first approach of bringing SMW and Exhibit closer together magically opens doors to further applications I’ll refer to in my next blog entries.
Exhibit and SMW can be great partners. Wiki has been weak in presentation/visualization. This is a much needed improvement.
When working with maps they should include the ability to overlay routes. Routes are a series of points (start lat, lon; intermediate lat, lon; next intermediate lat, lon; etc…. end lat, lon) This can be extremely useful in numerous data presentations such as bird migrations, railroad routes, ship battles, biographies of individuals and families. Using existing/modern roads as routes has value but it’s extremely limiting.
Allowing polygon overlays (over images as well as maps) to change over time (coordinated with SIMILE Timeline) would be equally useful to chart changes in property ownership, archeology sites, natural resource studies, etc. Polygons could be useful when presenting a range of routes that are wider than a single (line) route.
There is also an example of Exhibit presenting family trees (genealogy pedigree charts) using a wiki at we relate. If this was also included in the main Media Wiki it would serve a huge market that is anxious to adopt semantic data exchanges and have a reasonably organized way (GedCom) to do so.
The proposed display (single large map on wiki page) is definitely clean and easy to read. It will be a most welcome extension to MW and SMW. The brevity of the query lowers the barrier to using it.
It may be worthwhile to allow the option for some users to have a more complex view containing multiple “printouts”/visualizations of data on one page to illustrate the simultaneous connections and changes over time, space, and concepts. The tradeoff for simplicity is being able to visualize these multiple connections all at once.
A non-wiki version of this is illustrated in the Itinerary of John compact version when the “page images” tab is selected. See -
http://home.myuw.net/jjcrump/Timelines/itinerary/JohnItinerary-compact.html
and select “page images” tab. (It would have been nice to be able to annotate or write a wiki article to go along with each page image and step in the timeline.)
It would have been especially useful to have the option for the page images to be changed in SYNCHRONIZATION with the movement of the timeline, similar to the changes on the points of the map being synchronized with the movement of the timeline.
As an aside, I could see this as the basis for a virtual museum, all created based on MW, SMW, and various visualization extensions.
I’m doing historic research on the “Underground Railroad” (and other topics). Simultaneous data visualization selectively TIED TOGETHER with a timeline, maps (routes) and/or source documents would be very helpful in presentations in addition to single views as illustrated in your post.
Wiki could be used to collect data contributions over time and wiki pages/printouts/the presentations could be updated by virtue of extended SMW facilities.
There should be an option to add a genealogy visualization presentation well. (For Example pedigree charts tied to timelines, maps and source documents.) Sometimes the families/geneaology/ownership data can inform the “Underground Railroad” outcomes and sometimes the “Underground Railroad” data (such as location, time, FOAF::abolitionists) can inform the research for further genealogical information.
Thanks so much for working on this. I believe that these extensions will be transformational.
Wow, this looks great. I think we could really need something like that for our wiki. Looking forward to the release! My best, C.