Re: overstock.com adds GoodRelations in RDFa to 900,000 item pages

Hi Michael:
Thanks!

> I went to the site, and there is no indication on limits of rights  
> usage - so in what sense are the axioms proprietary?

They are proprietary in the sense that I use SPARQL construct rules to  
express an intended formal semantic of GoodRelations which is outside  
of what I am able to express in OWL DL ;-)

Otherwise, they are perfectly generic. The transitivity of product  
model variants is a bit tricky, though.

Martin

On 06.10.2010, at 20:36, Michael F Uschold wrote:

> Thanks Martin,
>
> That is an excellent explanation.
>
> > The GoodRelations proprietary axioms are at
> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/ 
> GoodRelationsOptionalAxiomsAndLinks
>
> I went to the site, and there is no indication on limits of rights  
> usage - so in what sense are the axioms proprietary?
>
> Michael
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 10:49 AM, Martin Hepp <martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org 
> > wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
>
> Michael,
>
> I had a look at some of the examples. Noteworthy is the apparent  
> lack of any product ontology.  Martin's example example is for a  
> camera with housing. An obvious way to model this is as a bundle  
> with two things: one of type Video Camera and one off type  
> UnderWaterHousing.  There is nothing of this sort. Rather, this and  
> perhaps all 900,000 items are of type: Product.  In other words,  
> there is no semantics at all for the products, no types, no  
> features, no constraints, nothing.
>
> Have I missed something?
> Yes, two things:
>
> 1. It is a dangerous misconception to expect the original data  
> publisher to do all the data cleansing and linking. Providers of  
> dataspaces or complementing data services can add the missing pieces  
> or cleanse the raw data from the LOD space.
>
> 2. Part of the product semantics can be originally exposed in  
> textual properties and tokenized or extracted by someone else.
>
> Take this data:
>
> foo:myproduct a gr:ProductOrServiceSomeInstancesPlaceholder ;
>        rdfs:label "Digital Camera"@en .
>
> This is not perfect, but it's already much more accessible to SPARQL  
> queries, and the armada of NLP techniques can be used to add the  
> triple
>
>        foo:myproduct a ceo:DigitalCamera .
>
> in some other RDF graph anywhere on the Web.
>
>
>
>
> If this is true, the question is why.  Possibilities include:
>        • Expedience:  It is conceptually trivial to convert the  
> catalog to RDFa this way.
> It is too expensive to expect data owners to lift their existing  
> data to academic expectations. You must empower them to preserve as  
> much data semantics and data structure as they can provide ad hoc.  
> Lifting and augmenting the data can be added later.
>
> If you expect all shops in the world to classify their products  
> according to Cyc or eClassOWL, they will not be able to publish any  
> data.
>
>        • First things first: it was just a first step, more  
> semantics is on the way...
> In the long run, there will be an incentive to add more semantics to  
> articulate your value proposion more clearly.
>
>        • Lack of perceived value: Does it cost too much for what  
> value there may be?
> See above - this way, publishing the data can be done easily. Adding  
> Cyc or eClassOWL classification will cost a lot but not bring new  
> business for the moment.
>
>
> I wonder what the value is for this first step.
> Improved rendering in Yahoo plus visibility in many of the evolving  
> eCommerce applications based on GoodRTelations.
>
>
> I wonder whether there are plans for adding semantics to the  
> products themselves.
>
> I don't know, but as said, it need not to be the retailers that add  
> the product master data.
>
> Much more realistic is a scenarios in which
> 1. shops will typically just expose *offer* data and
> 2. manufacturers or data intermediaries will provide fine-grained  
> product *feature* data.
>
> Overstock uses a minimal subset of GoodRelations, sufficient for  
> SEO, which will become more powerful when linked to other data.
>
> In an ideal world, they would also immediately provide  
> gr:hasMakeAndModel links to the URI of the respective camera model  
> data (gr:ProductOrServiceModel) and/or narrow down the semantics of  
> the product placeholder node from  
> gr:ProductOrServicesSomeInstancesPlaceholder to the intersection of  
> e.g.
>
>  gr:ProductOrServicesSomeInstancesPlaceholder
>
> and
>
>  http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/ontologies/consumerelectronics/v1#DigitalCamera
>
>
> Example:
>
> PREFIX o :  <http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/Bell-and-Howell-DV550UW-12MP-Digital-Video-Camera-with-Underwater-Housing/4450313/product.html# 
> >
>
> o:product  a gr:ProductOrServicesSomeInstancesPlaceholder,  
> ceo:DigitalCamera ;
>                gr:hasMakeAndModel foo:DV550UW12MP.
>
> foo:DV550UW12MP would be the make and model master data, defined  
> somewhere else, e.g. on the manufacturer's page:
>
> foo:DV550UW12MP a gr:ProductOrServiceModel, ceo:DigitalCamera ;
>        ceo:weight ..... .
>
>
> But even shallow structured offer data can be very useful, as long  
> as there are strong identifiers attached. If overstock.com used  
> UPC / EAN codes (gr:hasEAN_UCC-13) or manufacturer's part numbers  
> (gr:hasMPN), which they unfortunately don't, it would be very easy  
> to link the products to matching datasheets:
>
> # Add gr:hasMakeOrModel links between models and products on the  
> basis of identical EAN_UCC codes
> CONSTRUCT {?product gr:hasMakeAndModel ?model}
> WHERE
> {
>  ?model a gr:ProductOrServiceModel.
>  {
>    {?product a gr:ProductOrServicesSomeInstancesPlaceholder.}
>    UNION
>    {?product a gr:ActualProductOrServiceInstance.}
>  }
>  ?model gr:hasEAN_UCC-13 ?ean.
>  ?product gr:hasEAN_UCC-13 ?ean.
>  OPTIONAL {?product gr:hasMakeAndModel ?model2}
>  FILTER (?ean!="" && ?model != ?model2)
> }
>
> Then, you can trigger the default GoodRelations axioms for adding  
> model feature to products:
>
> # Products inherit all product features from their product models  
> unless they are defined for the products individually
>
> CONSTRUCT {?product ?property ?valueModel.}
> WHERE
> {
>  {
>   {?product a gr:ActualProductOrServiceInstance.}
>   UNION
>   {?product a gr:ProductOrServicesSomeInstancesPlaceholder.}
>  }
>   ?model a gr:ProductOrServiceModel.
>   ?product gr:hasMakeAndModel ?model.
>   ?model ?property ?valueModel.
>  {
>   {?property rdfs:subPropertyOf  
> gr:qualitativeProductOrServiceProperty.}
>   UNION
>   {?property rdfs:subPropertyOf  
> gr:quantitativeProductOrServiceProperty.}
>   UNION
>   {?property rdfs:subPropertyOf gr:datatypeProductOrServiceProperty.}
>  }
>  OPTIONAL {?product ?property ?valueProduct.}
>  FILTER (!bound(?valueProduct))
> }
>
>
> And SCHWUPP! ;-) you have very rich information about every single  
> product from initially shallow shop data.
>
> Martin
>
> PS: The GoodRelations proprietary axioms are at
>
> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/ 
> GoodRelationsOptionalAxiomsAndLinks
>
>
>
> On 06.10.2010, at 19:15, Michael F Uschold wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 5:39 AM, Martin Hepp <martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org 
> > wrote:
> Dear all:
>
> I am happy to announce that overstock.com, one of the major US  
> online retailers, has just added GoodRelations rich meta-data in  
> RDFa to ALL ca. 900,000 item pages.
>
> Example:
>  http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/Bell-and-Howell-DV550UW-12MP-Digital-Video-Camera-with-Underwater-Housing/4450313/product.html
>
> Sitemap:
>  http://www.overstock.com/googlemap.xml
>
> There is still a minor bug in the markup (regarding the position of  
> the rdf:type gr:UnitPriceSpecification statement), but I will notify  
> them immediately; the bug will also not break typical GoodRelations  
> queries.
>
> Best wishes
> Martin
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> martin hepp
> e-business & web science research group
> universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
>
> e-mail:  hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org
> phone:   +49-(0)89-6004-4217
> fax:     +49-(0)89-6004-4620
> www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
>        http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
> skype:   mfhepp
> twitter: mfhepp
>
> Check out GoodRelations for E-Commerce on the Web of Linked Data!
> =================================================================
> * Project Main Page: http://purl.org/goodrelations/
> * Quickstart Guide for Developers: http://bit.ly/quickstart4gr
> * Vocabulary Reference: http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1
> * Developer's Wiki: http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations
> * Examples: http://bit.ly/cookbook4gr
> * Presentations: http://bit.ly/grtalks
> * Videos: http://bit.ly/grvideos
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Michael Uschold, PhD
>   LinkedIn: http://tr.im/limfu
>   Skype: UscholdM
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Michael Uschold, PhD
>    LinkedIn: http://tr.im/limfu
>    Skype: UscholdM

Received on Wednesday, 6 October 2010 18:40:47 UTC