Re: "humane" query editors for the data web?

Hi Mike,

Well put! It's an accurate account of what's going on. As I explicitly 
said in my original post, this was more or less a tease and shameless 
self-promotion :-), but hopefully beneficial, as there are, in my 
opinion, some interesting ideas from this query editor that can be 
adopted / adapted. In fact, if you watch the screencast again, there 
might be hints of "data driving interfaces", albeit only for developers, 
not end-users. What other major wins at no cost are you seeing?

David

Mike Bergman wrote:
> This has been a classic case of Cool Hand Luke and a failure to 
> communicate.  Indeed, it happens all of the time in this forum.
>
> David comes from a perspective of usability and user interfaces, 
> granted with a JS bias.  Most all of us have recognized his genius for 
> quite some time, and he is a leading innovator in such data presentation.
>
> Kingsley has been a passionate advocate for data connectivity and 
> overcoming all things "silo".  Middleware is his game (and OL's). 
>  Data and manipulating data is his perspective, and we know the 
> superior infrastructure that his personal and then corporate 
> commitments to these issues have brought.
>
> Benjamin notes today the difference in perspective.  Does it begin 
> with the user experience, or does it begin with the data?
>
> The answer, of course, is Yes.
>
> David with JSON and MQL and other things FB might be criticized.  As 
> he knows, I have done so personally offline and directly.
>
> Kingsley might be criticized for facile hand-waving at UI and 
> usability questions; he, too, knows I have made those points privately.
>
> I truly don't know what our "community" really is or, if indeed, we 
> even have one.  But I do know this:
>
> All of us work on these issues because we believe in them and have 
> passion.  So, I have a simple suggestion:
>
> Keep looking outward.  We need to talk and speak to the 
> "unaffiliated".  In that regard, David has the upper hand because 
> presentation and flash will always be easier to understand for the 
> non-cognescenti.  But, David, you know this too:  your job is easier 
> if the nature of the data and its structure drives your display.
>
> There are HUGE, HUGE advantages of data driving interfaces and 
> usability that neither of you are discussing.  Let's next turn our 
> attention there and gain some major wins at no cost.
>
> Mike
>
>
> David Huynh wrote:
>> Kingsley,
>>
>> Thanks for the resources and the detailed explanation! Looks like all 
>> the pieces are there!
>>
>> David
>>
>> Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>>> David Huynh wrote:
>>>> Thanks for the link, Juan.
>>>>
>>>> Just curious, even if I know SPARQL, how do I (as a new user) know 
>>>> which properties and types there are in the data? And what URIs to 
>>>> use for what?
>>> David,
>>>
>>> Not speaking for Jaun, but seeking to answer the question you posed.
>>>
>>> Our iSPARQL interface takes the view that:
>>>
>>> 1. You lookup vocabularies and ontologies of interest before 
>>> constructing triple patterns since the terms need to come from 
>>> somewhere
>>> 2. You then you use the ontology/vocabulary tree to drag and drop 
>>> classes over Subject  and Object nodes
>>> 3. Do the same thing re. properties by selecting them and dropping 
>>> them over the connectors (predicates)
>>> 4. Repeat the above until you've completely painted an SPO graph of 
>>> what you seek.
>>>
>>> BTW - the pattern in steps 2-4 above originated from RDF Author, and 
>>> we simply adopted it for SPARQL (following a skype session I had 
>>> with Danbri years ago re. the need for SPARQL QBE). Note: RDF Author 
>>> allowed you to write Triples directly into RDF information resources 
>>> via their URLs. Which means the same UI works fine for SPARUL 
>>> (writing to Quad Store via its internal Graph IRI or Web Information 
>>> Resource URL).
>>>
>>> Links:
>>>
>>> 1.  http://rdfweb.org/people/damian/RDFAuthor/Tutorial/ -- RDF Author
>>>
>>> Kingsley
>>>>
>>>> David
>>>>
>>>> Juan Sequeda wrote:
>>>>> You may want to check out a tool that we are working on: SQUIN
>>>>>
>>>>> http://squin.informatik.hu-berlin.de/SQUIN/
>>>>>
>>>>> Juan Sequeda, Ph.D Student
>>>>> Dept. of Computer Sciences
>>>>> The University of Texas at Austin
>>>>> www.juansequeda.com <http://www.juansequeda.com>
>>>>> www.semanticwebaustin.org <http://www.semanticwebaustin.org>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 9:18 PM, David Huynh <dfhuynh@alum.mit.edu 
>>>>> <mailto:dfhuynh@alum.mit.edu>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>     Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>>     Admittedly this is somewhat of a tease and shameless
>>>>>     self-promotion :-) but I think there are a few interesting
>>>>>     concepts in the query editor for Freebase that I've been working
>>>>>     on that can be very useful for querying and consuming LOD data 
>>>>> sets:
>>>>>
>>>>>       http://www.freebase.com/app/queryeditor/about
>>>>>
>>>>>     Or maybe I missed it totally--is there anything similar for
>>>>>     writing SPARQL queries over LOD?
>>>>>
>>>>>     Cheers,
>>>>>
>>>>>     David

Received on Thursday, 23 April 2009 06:15:53 UTC