RE: freebase parallax: user interface for browsing graphs of data

Tim,

> I felt the dichotomy wasn't between browsing and query-building but
> browsing and analyzing something something one has found.  

But if analyzing includes aggregating, the browsing paradigm has in my
opinion to be adapted to browsing sets of resources instead of browsing
single resources. And when working with sets, you're quite close to
query building.

The Tabulator design, at least at the time I've looked at it while
writing the Humboldt paper [1], was based on the single resource
browsing paradigm.

> The transition in tabulator comes when you have browsed a and found
and
> selected a subgraph and then you ask for a view of all similar
> subgraphs out there in the web, with the button we now call 'find
> all'.  (As you have to first select a set of fields, it isn't
> intuitive for the newbie.  -- I like your "what on earth just
> happened?" popups!   Maybe it needs one of those.)  The generation of
> the query is query by example. 

To me, query by example means two things in a graph data environment: 

1. building a sub-graph of interest
2. creating instance-based filters (similar to Exhibit)

While the former does work in a single resource browsing UI, the later
does not.

> It is similar,  but freebase parallax
> allows you to follow any relationship which presidents have, rather
> than picking a specific president as an example and then generalizing.
> This avoids problems of finding an example which uncharacteristically
> doesn't have the direction you want.

Ok, good point, so the question is how to do the generalization in an
interactive manner. When I pick one person and then try to generalize, I
don't want to end up with all people in the world. So generalization
just based on rdf:type doesn't work very well...


Best,
Georgi


[1]
http://www.georgikobilarov.com/publications/2008/Kobilarov-Dickinson-LDO
W2008-Humboldt.pdf


--
Georgi Kobilarov
Freie Universität Berlin
www.georgikobilarov.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tim Berners-Lee [mailto:timbl@w3.org]
> Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 3:10 PM
> To: David Huynh
> Cc: Georgi Kobilarov; public-lod@w3.org; semantic-web@w3c.org
> Subject: Re: freebase parallax: user interface for browsing graphs of
> data
> 
> 
> On 2008-08 -17, at 04:02, David Huynh wrote:
> 
> > I can also explain that distinction in a different way. Parallax is
> > intended to be a browser, not a query builder. Personally, to me a
> > query builder implies a closed-world database where there are few
> > types and how these types are connected is understood by the user.
> > For example, the database might contain data about publications,
> > authors, and conferences. The user is assumed to be aware of how
> > those types are connected. The query builder can then let the user
> > specify patterns to match this closed graph by presenting the query
> > graph in some visual way. Now, if we're dealing with an open world
> > instead, then I don't think a query graph, and hence, a query
> > builder, is suitable conceptually. Parallax embodies a browsing
> > paradigm instead of a query building paradigm.
> 
> 
> I felt the dichotomy wasn't between browsing and query-building but
> browsing and analyzing something something one has found.   The
> transition in tabulator comes when you have browsed a and found and
> selected a subgraph and then you ask for a view of all similar
> subgraphs out there in the web, with the button we now call 'find
> all'.  (As you have to first select a set of fields, it isn't
> intuitive for the newbie.  -- I like your "what on earth just
> happened?" popups!   Maybe it needs one of those.)  The generation of
> the query is query by example. It is similar,  but freebase parallax
> allows you to follow any relationship which presidents have, rather
> than picking a specific president as an example and then generalizing.
> This avoids problems of finding an example which uncharacteristically
> doesn't have the direction you want.
> 
> Tim
> 
> [1] Tabulator: Exploring and Analyzing linked data on the Semantic
> Web, Procedings of the The 3rd International Semantic Web User
> Interaction Workshop (SWUI06)  workshop, Athens, Georgia, 6 Nov 2006.
> http://swui.semanticweb.org/swui06/papers/Berners-Lee/Berners-Lee.pdf

Received on Wednesday, 20 August 2008 01:47:57 UTC