wikimania2008 - schedule version 1.3
Wikimania 2008
Wikimedia International Conference
| Speakers | |
|---|---|
|
Yaron Koren |
| Schedule | |
|---|---|
| Day | Day 3 (2008-07-19) |
| Room | Room A |
| Start time | 14:15 |
| Duration | 00:45 |
| Info | |
| ID | 27 |
| Event type | workshop |
| Track | Technical infrastructure |
| Language used for presentation | en |
Creating the structured semantic wiki
The Semantic MediaWiki extension, along with some of the extensions that rely on it (Semantic Forms, Semantic Drilldown, etc.) can be used to allow a wiki to simulate a regular database-driven website. In fact, such a system improves on regular database-driven websites in two respect: it allows for mass collaboration on the data, and it can be set up without the need for any programming or database administration. This workshop will demonstrate how to set up such a structured semantic wiki, and the interaction of all the various semantic extensions.
There are about six extensions, depending on how you count them, that use the structure provided by Semantic MediaWiki to provide the functionality that's traditionally offered by a regular database-driven website, CMS, or whatever you want to call it. Together, they provide the capability of adding and editing data, drilling down through data, viewing information in map and calendar form, and exporting data in XML format, among other things. I personally wrote four of these extensions (Semantic Forms, Semantic Drilldown, Semantic Calendar and Data Transfer). The others include Semantic Layers, Semantic Google Maps and Page Object Model (the last one is not yet working, though it might be by the time of the presentation). Of these, Semantic Forms is currently the most popular: I don't know exactly how many wikis use it around the world, but the mailing list for the extension has 100 members.
This workshop/presentation will go through each of these extensions and explain how they work, most likely by demonstrating setting up a new wiki with a simple data structure, adding some data and seeing how all the extensions interact with that data.
The presentation/workshop would also cover ideas for the future of such systems. Besides needed improvements to existing extensions, one very tantalizing possibility is the idea of creating an API, similar to MediaWiki's existing API, that would let outside systems use a semantic wiki as a structured database; instead of accessing an Oracle or MySQL database, they would use the API to access a semantic wiki in the same way, with the wiki offering the advantage of easy versioning and reverting of changes, something that's quite hard to do with existing databases.
Requirements: This workshop will need wi-fi and a projector for a laptop.
Language: English.
To be submitted: I'll submit presentation slides, though not for this proposal itself.
Presentation length: This workshop could be done in anywhere from half an hour to two hours, but 60 minutes might be ideal. There's no shortage of stuff to demo and talk about even for 90 minutes, though.
Target audience: The audience should be familiar with standard MediaWiki usage, including templates and Special pages; no previous knowledge of Semantic MediaWiki is needed, though it would certainly be helpful.