Re: Geonames enters the Semantic Web

We've been glad to see quick reactions and comments through personal 
exchanges and in the blogosphere, which will help us improve this stuff.

Most important was a remark from Tim Berners-Lee at
http://dowhatimean.net/2006/10/news-from-the-frontier-geonames-on-the-semantic-web

And actually we had a few exchanges about it with Marc today, through 
which maybe I begin to understand (at last) what is at stake with this 
httpRange-14 TAG decision, and 303 redirect story, but which leads me to 
the following thoughts I'd like to share here. Let me take an example - 
that's the only way I can make sense of that stuff anyway.

We need a distinct URI to identify a geonames Feature, e.g.,
(1)  http://ws.geonames.org/rdf#geonameId=3014258         rdf:type     
        geonames:Feature
This URI we have not yet, but will have as soon as we are sure we 
understand the issue  completeley right.
It will have a 303 redirect to the current
(2) http://ws.geonames.org/rdf?geonameId=3014258
of which content will be modified accordingly to contain a description 
of (1)

OK. But since (2) is actually the result of a query on a data base 
through a web service, we could add several parameters, like in other 
geonames web services, like including or not in the description the  
related  features (parentFeature, childFeature, nearbyFeature ...), 
limiting the number of related features, languages of attributes, 
whatever. Why so? Because, for example, a "complete" description at 
http://ws.geonames.org/rdf?geonameId=3017382 would contain each 
description of each feature in France - which is a lot. Maybe some user 
would like that kind of description to feed a data base, others would 
like only the direct children of type A.ADM1 etc.
So we are likely to deliver various RDF descriptions of the *same* 
feature (1) at various URIs such as
(3) 
http://ws.geonames.org/rdf?geonameId=3014258&childFeatures=true&maxChildrenFeatures=50
(4) 
http://ws.geonames.org/rdf?geonameId=3014258&nearbyFeatures=true&maxNearbyFeatures=5 
<http://ws.geonames.org/rdf?geonameId=3014258>
Note that such hypothetical URIs actually work right now, but the added 
parameters are not really processed and they are equivalent to (2).

And I guess, like in other geonames Web services, (2) would yield a 
description with default values for parameters used in (3) and (4) and 
the like. In that case, the description of (1) yielded by (2) through 
303 redirects will be neither "complete", nor "canonical", nor 
"authoritative" ... but just a "default" description.

Is this correct TAG-wise? This time I ask before ... :-)


Bernard vatant a écrit :
>
> Hello all
>
> I'm very pleased to announce that, through a quick and efficient 
> collaboration with Marc (in cc), the 6 million and growing 
> geographical features in the data base of Geonames [1] are now 
> described by a OWL ontology [2], and the RDF description of each 
> instance, including names, type, of course geolocation elements, is 
> now available through Geonames Webservice,  adding to an already 
> impressive pack of  services [3].
> The ontology is very simple, and leverage elements of the wgs84_pos 
> vocabulary [4]. The feature types are described using a simple SKOS 
> vocabulary, which has been embedded in the OWL ontology.
>
> If you add that, thanks to Google Maps API, the geonames features can 
> be created and edited through a wiki-like interface [5], this as Web 
> 2.0 as can be.
>
> Comments welcome, either here or in the Geonames forum [6]
>
> Bernard
>
>
> [1] http://www.geonames.org
> [2] http://www.geonames.org/ontology/
> [3] http://www.geonames.org/export/
> [4] http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/#vocabulary
> [5] http://www.geonames.org/recent-changes/
> [6] http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/156.page
>

-- 

*Bernard Vatant
*Knowledge Engineering
----------------------------------------------------
*Mondeca **
*3, cité Nollez 75018 Paris France
Web: www.mondeca.com <http://www.mondeca.com>
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Tel. +33 (0) 871 488 459 
Mail: bernard.vatant@mondeca.com <mailto:bernard.vatant@mondeca.com>
Wikipedia:universimmedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Universimmedia>

Received on Monday, 16 October 2006 22:07:07 UTC