Nominees
What is PROPheT?
PROPheT, developed within the context of the EC FP7 funded PERICLES (http://pericles-project.eu/) project, is a novel application that enables instance extraction and ontology population from Linked Open Data (LOD) sources, such as DBpedia and Europeana, through a user-friendly graphical user interface. LOD principles support the use of common data formats, most fundamentally the Resource Description Framework (RDF), and allow data to be shared and reused efficiently. The basic aim of LOD is to preserve information in a structured and interconnected way, so as to enable linkages between information resources and make information more discoverable. We build upon these benefits to fulfill PROPheT’s mission, which is to promote the long term access and broader use of information (text, semantics) by and through individuals and institutional stakeholders, be they curators, archivists, artists, collection and data managers, operators, software developers, scientists and researchers.
So, what does PROPheT actually do?
Once an ontology engineer has created a domain-specific ontology, he/she will soon need to populate the empty schema with information; in other words, fresh instances and property values, which is a cumbersome, time-consuming and error-prone process, if done manually. This is where PROPheT gets handy, allowing the user to explore and retrieve existing knowledge in a repository of his/her choice (e.g. DBpedia). PROPheT offers various search types, such as searching by instance label or class type. When some desired information is located, the user can populate it to the local ontology by simply appointing the appropriate mappings between classes and between properties. The enriched local model may then be exported to any of the established ontology file types (.owl, .ttl, .n3, etc.), allowing other applications to take advantage of the acquired knowledge through the flexibility of ontologies.
What features does PROPheT offer?
The key PROPheT features are:
- An intuitive user interface with a variety of visual aids and user preferences.
- Seamless compatibility with any knowledge source with a SPARQL endpoint.
- Four different ways for searching and importing new instances, or for enriching existing ones with property values.
- User-driven mapping between classes and properties, supported by suggestions based on previous selections.
- Impeccable handling of large number of namespaces, with the ability to add custom prefixes or delete existing ones.
- Elimination of redundancy in the instance set by handling duplicates.
What does PROPheT achieve?
The implementation of PROPheT was motivated by the lack of a tool offering such a wide range of ontology population functionalities. PROPheT offers access to and reusability of knowledge, while it ensures this happens effortlessly, serving ontology enthusiasts in the fields of:
- Long term preservation of knowledge.
- Interlinking resources from various repositories, filling the semantic gap and promoting the vision of the Semantic Web.
- Discovery of knowledge.
- Reusability and extensibility of existing knowledge, represented in a formal (ontology-based) way.
- Research in evolving semantics and semantic change/drift.
Resources:
- Tool homepage: http://mklab.iti.gr/project/prophet-ontology-populator
- Download link: http://mklab.iti.gr/files/PROPheT-v1.2.rar
- Official PROPheT documentation: http://mklab.iti.gr/prophet/
