Ask Data Anything - Election results example

In modern organizations, data management is a major issue and at the same time a major resource. In our experience, the first challenge a business that wants to use its data is facing how to have a unified view of their data. Generally data inside organizations is stored in different databases that have often proprietary API making it difficult to move from one database to the other. Furthermore, also when the technology used to store data is the same, there are still semantic problems like different terminologies, languages etc.

The bigger the company is, the lower the possibility to standardize the procedures are, so that these kind of situations will not happen. This happens because we are human and we naturally tend to interpret data using our own experience and knowledge. Thus we cannot expect the technical team to call all pieces of a car using the exact same terminology as the logistic department. This is why, our solution aims at giving the possibility to standardize the way in which the end user interact with the data without actually changing the source of the data.

Ask Data Anything (ADA), allows companies to add a semantical layer on top of the data without the need of copying data. The product is managing term disambiguation, aggregation of data using hierarchies defined in ontologies, data integration between different data sources.

Ask Data Anything - NYPD Motor vehicle accidents

In modern organizations, data management is a major issue and at the same time a major resource. In our experience, the first challenge a business that wants to use its data is facing how to have a unified view of their data. Generally data inside organizations is stored in different databases that have often proprietary API making it difficult to move from one database to the other. Furthermore, also when the technology used to store data is the same, there are still semantic problems like different terminologies, languages etc.

The bigger the company is, the lower the possibility to standardize the procedures are, so that these kind of situations will not happen. This happens because we are human and we naturally tend to interpret data using our own experience and knowledge. Thus we cannot expect the technical team to call all pieces of a car using the exact same terminology as the logistic department. This is why, our solution aims at giving the possibility to standardize the way in which the end user interact with the data without actually changing the source of the data.

Ask your Data Anything (ADA), allows companies to add a semantical layer on top of the data without the need of copying data. The product is managing term disambiguation, aggregation of data using hierarchies defined in ontologies, data integration between different data sources.

Example of using SWRL built-ins with Solar System ontology.

Introduction to SWRL

Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL for short) is a combination of OWL DL and OWL Lite sub-languages of OWL Web Ontology. It is possible to write ontology with SWRL built-ins in Ontorion Fluent Editor. One of such example of ontology written by using Semantic Web Rule Language is Cognitum's Solar System Ontology.

To follow along open Fluent Editor, go to File -> New and type Solar System. Double click on the template to open.

Using RDF Data Cube Vocabulary to model sales data with Fluent Editor - Example.

RDF Data Cube Vocabulary is a way to represent data in popular format with link data paradigms. Linked data is an approach to publishing data on a web and this vocabulary makes it possible. There are numerous benefits to linked data. The individual observations, and groups of observations, become (web) addressable. This allows publishers ad third parties to annotate and link to this data. For example a report can reference the specific figures it is based on allowing for fine grained provenance trace-back. Representing any data set with these benefits is now possible with Controlled Natural Language in Fluent Editor and it has never been so easy.

Medical Clinic Ontology - Example

Diseases of affluence, an aging population and many other reasons cause doctors to be overworked and tired. Many of them complain, that bureaucracy consumes a large amount of time, which could be otherwise spend on curing patients. Cognitum meets the expectation of medical workers and provides tools that can spare precious time by adding semantic layer to patients' records and doctors' medical knowledge. Cognitum's Fluent Editor can be used to quickly access patient's medical history, suggest a medicament for specific illness and even predict patient's disease based on signs and symptoms.

Example of energy industry ontology with external references in Fluent Editor

Modern energy sector is a wide area of industry, that concerns numerous aspects, like energy efficiency in different regions, renewable energy sources, energy companies' specializations and many others. Due to the variety of information, it is often difficult to get comprehensive answers to questions about specific fields. Semantic Technology allows to manage this knowledge in a simple and flexible way. It provides versatile description of reality, that is understand and can be adjusted to give complete, comprehensive information in chosen areas. This article presents simple ontology written in Fluent Editor, describing energy industry. It contains information about energy companies, regions and ecological aspects of their activities. You can download this sample ontology through the following link: EnergeoOnt.encnl

Using SWRL built-ins in CNL ontology

The Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) is an expressive OWL-based rule language. SWRL extends OWL syntax which allows users to write rules with more powerful deductive reasoning capabilities than OWL alone. SWRL built-ins are one of SWRL’s powerful features, which are predicates to be used to manipulate data values in SWRL rules.

From the latest version, Fluent Editor supports a number of core SWRL built-ins defined in SWRL Built-in Submission. In this post, we will introduce two examples of applying some of SWRL core built-ins to your CNL ontology.

SKOS and BibTeX in Creating Semantic Ontology on Medical Articles

There are numerous projects that can serve as useful foundations for forming your ontology. One of such projects is Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS), a W3C Recommendation.
SKOS provides a standard way to represent knowledge organization systems such as thesauri, classification schemes using the RDF. Another project is BibTeX, a method of marking up bibliographic data, primarily for use in LaTeX documents, but also useful for generic bibliographic storage.

With Fluent Editor, you can utilize both projects through importing them as references, which can be useful for expressing better organization of knowledge. In this post, we will present how SKOS and BibTeX can be utilized in creating your ontology. Data used in the following ontology is based on an excerpt from a list of medical articles on PubMed Central (PMC).

Fluent Editor 2014 R4 – SWRL Built-ins, Auto-recovery Functionality, OWL2 EL++/OWL-RL Validation, and New Features in Ontology Graph.

A new Fluent Editor 2014  R4 is now available which will present you a few new powerful features. With the new Fluent Editor you will be able to utilize core SWRL built-ins, various OWL2 profiles, visualize your ontology file more effectively, and more to benefit while editing and exploring ontology files. Such new feather are as follows :

• SWRL built-ins
• Auto-recovery functionality
• OWL2-EL++ / OWL-RL validation
• New features in ontology diagram
• Various performance improvements

Ask Data Anything

Ask Data Anything is Cognitum's approach to exploring data by using a subset of natural language which articulates concepts and instances modeled in ontologies to provide a meaningful quering experience. Ask Data Anything seizes on regularities of language to provide a natural interpretation of queries being asked; its semantics are provided via R and rOntorion (alternatively  F# and Ontorion).

Technically, Ask Data Anything is capable of performing projection, sub-setting, grouping and aggregation operations, providing answers for queries involving the following information:

• What? Any of the columns of your data table are considered a quantitative field over which to perform queries,
• How? How the output is to be shown. The results of the query can be retrieved on either a table, histogram or a map,
• Where? (Optional) The "in" preposition allows to restrict the search to an specific named group of items  as happens for instance with continents which can be seeing as a group of countries,
• Of? (Optional) The "of" preposition allows to dive into the data, restricting the desired results to a certain set of types (concepts in the Fluent Editor sense) by searching the data in a certain column for instances (in Fluent Editor sense) of those types; we call this material sub-setting,
• By? (Optional) By which type (in Fluent Editor sense) you would like to group the results for aggregation purposes.
• When? (Optional) Queries can contain time constraints.

Using Active Rules on Fluent Editor

Active rules is the mechanism Fluent Editor provides for executing custom imperative code in C# upon meeting certain criteria described as SWRL rules. Considering that standard SWRL rule axioms consist of two parts, an antecedent (body) and consequent (head), the body part of active rules exactly follows the standard format of SWRL rules. The difference from standard SWRL lies on the head part, on which you can add your custom C# code as a set of execution commands. We provide some mechanism to deal with the nature of distributed environments through a set of core built-ins. Available functions to use in active rules are as follows:
 

• KnowledgeInsert(string knowledge) : Inserts knowledge into your ontology.
• KnowledgeDelete(string knowledge) : Deletes knowledge into your ontology.
• WriteMessage(string msg) : Prints msg on Active Rules Output window. 

Visualization of Ontology Contents - with Ontology Diagram and SWRL Debugger

From the latest release version, Fluent Editor includes a few new features that enhance visualization of ontology, which can help you navigate through the structure of your ontology more intuitively. Possibility of drawing a diagram of ontology is one of such features. Ontology diagrams graphically express relations between concepts and instances - also the materialized ones. 
Another new feature to be introduced is SWRL debugger. SWRL debugger shows binding of rules that took place during the reasoning process over your ontology. It is presented as a list of all the SWRL rules and bound instances. By running SWRL debugger, you can check how SWRL rules work on your ontology.

In this post, we will look through these two features further.

Fluent Editor 2014 R3 - Diagrams, SWRL debugger, Active Rules emulator...

Recently we have published an updated release of the Fluent Editor 2014 with few new great features many of you have requested so far. We want to make ontology development even easier and pleasant task! With new Fluent Editor you can instantly visualize your ontologies, better inspect ontology ecosystem with references, trace down SWRL rules and simulate server behavior. Here’s what’s new:

• Ontology Diagrams
• Rereference Diagrams
• Reference Explorer
• SWRL Debugger
• Active Rules emulator
• Proxy Configuration
• Performance improvements

How to explore SPARQL endpoint?

In this article you will learn: - how to explore SPARQL endpoint with Ontorion™ SPARQL Tools for Excel - about SPARQL autocomplete tool from Cognitum

Ontorion™ SPARQL Tools for Excel latest release offers two new features enriching the SPARQL experience. First one is Explore SPARQL endpoint tool, which enables to get a quick overview of the data content of the endpoint. Second is SPARQL autocomplete tool, which guides user throughout writing the query with intelligent autocomplete hints.

Motivation

A growing amount of data is made public via SPARQL endpoints. You can explore the data by asking SPARQL queries. One of the most famous SPARQL endpoints is DBpedia - a semantic version of Wikipedia. Many public institutions expose some of their data in such an open way as well. A good example is The Environment Agency of England and Wales, which publishes data about bathing water quality .
The basic building block of SPARQL data set is a triple. It is a statement of the form subject-predicate-object. Apart from that, the structure of the data can be quite loosely defined. Thus it may sometimes be difficult to explore a new SPARQL endpoint for the first time.

Using OWL Annotation in Fluent Editor

OWL Annotations together with SKOS and DcTerms form a widely used Thesaurus standard that help the ontology modeler to give meaningful names to elements of the ontology or to relates elements in various ontology. In the latest release of Fluent Editor, we have introduced the possibility to add, remove and modify OWL annotations with full support for SKOS and DcTerms. As always this has been implemented thinking of the usability over everything. 

All actions related to the annotations are reachable from the Annotation tab that was added in the right column of the Fluent Editor window. To see how to use annotations in Fluent Editor,you can open the Book Reference template. To see the template, click on File -> New  and then Book Reference.

Collaborative ontology editing with the use of Fluent Editor and the Ontorion Server

In the latest release of Fluent Editor, we have implemented a simple and intuitive way for multiple users to edit the same ontology at the same time. This is possible by using the functionalities of both Fluent Editor and Cognitum's scalable knowledge management system Ontorion. In this article we will try to give you a general understanding of how this concurrent editing of ontologies is working.

As a comment we would like to stress that the component that we will show you has been implemented in C# using the Ontorion API (that is part of the Ontorion Server). If thus have access to the Ontorion API and Ontorion Server, you can implement all functionalities that you see in this article in your custom program. For more information about Ontorion Server and the Ontorion API you can contact us here.

First of all open Fluent Editor, click File, Open&Import , Ontorion Server and then Connect to Ontorion.

Reasoning about ontologies - fast vs. complete answers

In this article you will gain more intuition about: - how to query your ontology - the difference between reasoner and materialized graph - what is materialization mode OWL-DL and materialization mode OWL-RL+ - when you can use faster OWL RL+ reasoning mode safely You will see two example ontologies: - about books (using data types, cardinality restriction, data type restrictions) - about political preferences (SWRL rules, defining concepts by enumeration) You can reproduce the steps by downloading the ontologies: - my_books.encnl - political_parties.encnl and opening it with FluentEditor on your computer.

About reasoners and materialized graph

With recent FluentEditor releases the user has three tools to query the ontology:

• reasoner of choice (in this example Hermit reasoner is used)
• materialized graph (we can use either OWL-DL or OWL-RL+ materialization mode)
• SPARQL queries

Fluent Editor's Interoperability with Protégé

Protégé is a great tool for editing ontologies allowing deep insight into the structure of the OWL ontology. Fluent Editor allows user to focus on actual meaning of the ontology (taxonomy, vocabulary, rule set, etc) being edited.
From the R2 release, Fluent Editor enables you to view and build ontology with both applications synchronously, through which you can enjoy those great features of both applications at the same time. This is supported by two related functionalities. -  exporting ontology from one window to the other, or importing ontology from the opened window to your current window. In this post we will look through how you can utilize this feature.


Initial Settings
By default, this interoperability with Protégé is disabled. In order to enable it, first you need to edit settings of the Protégé plug-in on Tab > Options as shown below. Set "Yes" for enabling the plug-in and enter your Protégé path on the bottom.

Mixing Text Mining with Semantic Technologies - sample application.

The very broad subject of processing the natural language is incredibly hot nowadays. In many cases, a regular text mining approach is not adequate to the problems that we are facing. Therefore text mining methods are mixed with Natural Language Processing(NLP) methods, like also, with semantic technologies - what gives better results. One of such a problem is how to find out, if two sentences are semantically equal or not.

The solution for the above problem could be used on many fields. One of them is detection of an abusive clauses inside a contract. Sometimes it's really hard to understand correctly, the exact meaning of a clause inside a contract, even for a specialists. For a sake of presentation I have developed a simple application prototype which attempts to solve this problem. Application was developed in C# and it uses Ontorion SDK.

Input

Before running the application we need three files:

1. File with contract in which we will attempt to detect abusive clauses.
2. File with abusive clauses.
3. File with ontology.

Using the rOntorion package in R / RStudio and Fluent Editor

The rOntorion package is the port of Cognitum's Semantic Technologies to R. R has become an important tool among Statisticians and Data Scientists and we are proud to provide this community with an enhanced Linked-Data manipulation experience that will allow them to edit, store and reason over structured data (in the supported formats ocnl, rdf and owl); henceforth discovering new horizons in Data Analysis. rOntorion allows to extend Fluent Editor in R and in turn provides the users with the capability of creating their own custom functionality.

rOntorion in R

To demonstrate the use of rOntorion directly from R, let us go through a minimal example. In this example we are going to reason over a set of dummy sentences and infer a single logical conclusion by querying the semantic engine with a question expressed in ocnl format. First we need to install rOntorion: to do so, issue the following command in an R Console: