Glossary

ACL

The access control feature for the wiki (Access Control List extension) is based on so-called access control lists (ACLs). These security rules define which user or user groups can perform certain actions like modifying or read-only on single articles, articles of certain categories or namespaces and values of semantic properties.

annotation

Annotation means "addition" or "hint". Semantic annotations are such "hints" that allow computer programs to interpret some piece of information given in the wiki. SMW+ has introduced special markup elements that allow editors to provide annotations in wiki pages.

application

SMW+ enables users without programming skill to collectively create tailored wiki applications using the Wiki Markup Language. An application can contain for example templates, #forms, articles and ontologies.

attributes

Attribute is a synonym of #property. In earlier versions the concepts (and namespaces) "Relation" and "Attribute" were separated, now they are unified into "Property"

bot

Bots are automated tools that can be used to perform tedious work or certain repetitive tasks on or pertaining to your wiki. Bots can be used for helpful purposes, such as fixing double redirects, or for harmful purposes, such as vandalism and spamming. For example the gardening extension provides a compilation of bots to support the maintenance of a semantic wiki.

bundle

A bundle is a deployable entity that contains wiki pages or ontologies. Every page, which is contained in a bundle, is linked to its bundle page (usually by a template), that keeps meta information about this bundle.

cardinality

Cardinality of a property is a restriction and defines the number of elements in a set. The "min cardinality" defines how often a property has to be used at least in a set, the "max cardinality" how often a property can be used maximum in a set.

concept

Queries can be stored on dedicated pages, called concepts. These pages can be viewed as "dynamic categories" - as collections of pages that are created automatically from the description given by a query. An example could be the concept of European cities. In traditional MediaWiki installations, one may have a category called European cities that holds all such cities. In SMW, one would instead define the concept "European cities" by saying that it contains all cities that are located in Europe. No city page needs to be changed, and yet one can create many concepts about cities (such as "capital", "Italian city", or "large coastal city located at a river").

CPU license

The pricing for the SMW+ Professional CPU license is per server and based on the number of CPUs per server.

credentials

Credentials entitles you the access to the wiki. SMW+ uses the classic combination of a user account and a secret password.

deploy descriptors

The deploy descriptors are extracted from the Wiki App or content bundle description page into the file 'deploy.xml'. This file contains metadata, like version and dependencies and about the bundle which are needed for the Wiki Administration Tool.

domain

The domain is the subject of an attribute's relation, just like the grammatical subject in an ordinary sentence: A person has a firstname. In this case the property "Firstname" has the domain and range "Person": [[Has domain and range::Category:Person| ]]

factbox

The factbox is an infobox at the bottom of wiki pages which summarizes the semantic data that was entered into the page. This helps editors to check whether the wiki actually "understood" the supplied information as intended. Users can read the factbox for getting a quick overview, and for using its links to further information. Note, the factbox is switched off by default and might be switched on using the magic word __SHOWFACTBOX__ for an article or globally by the administrator.

forms

A form is a document with fields in which to write or select, for a series of documents with similar contents. (Semantic) Forms in special can be used for adding, editing and querying data on your wiki, without any programming knowledge. The main components of Semantic Forms functionality are form definition pages, which exist in a own namespace - "Form:". Since forms are defined strictly through these definition pages, users can themselves create and edit forms, without the need for any actual programming.

gardening

Gardening is a term that means maintaining all the data stored in the wiki. This process comprises amongst others tidying the ontology, pruning back less relevant information, adding missing links and annotations. The Gardening extension provides a compilation of bots to support the maintenance of a semantic wiki.

haloacl

see ACL

inferencing

The principle of "inference" means being able to derive new data from data that you already know. Inference is one of the driving principles of the Semantic Web, because it allows to create applications quite easily.

instance

Instance designates the semantic relations between a general concept and individual instances of that concept. For example: Copenhagen is an instance of the general concept "capital". Instances of a category often share many properties, but some instances might have properties that are not widely shared. Instances are multiply categorized, for example my pet cat can be described as:

• An animal
• A mammal
• A cat
• An American Shorthair

Jena

Jena is an open source framework for managing and handling semantic data. The TripleStore Basic contains Jena and a connector that connects the triple store to SMW+. With a triple store-enabled SMW+ you can query the semantic data directly within the wiki or remotely using SPARQL queries. Apart from SPARQL support, Jena also supports RDF(S) and OWL reasoning with its in-built inference engine.

Lucene

The Enhanced Retrieval extension incorporates Apache Lucene, a high-performance text search engine library. This customized version extends Lucene's API to improve the wiki's full-text search capabilities by providing a ranking based on the number on backlinks, distributed searching and indexing, and parsing of wikitext, to name just a few. Since release version SMW+ 1.5.6, Lucene is replaced with Solr.

magicwords

Magic words are strings of text that MediaWiki associates with a return value or function, such as time, site details, or page names. There are three general types of magic words:

1. Behavior switches: these are uppercase words surrounded by double underscores (e.g.__FOO__)
2. Variables: these are uppercase words surrounded by double braces (e.g.{{FOO}}). As such, they look a lot like templates.
3. Parser functions: these take parameters and are in the form{{#foo:...}}

Page-dependent magic words will affect or return data about the current page, even if the word is added through a transcluded template or included system message.

named users

A "named user" in SMW+ is an individual person who is specified by a user account in an installation of "SMW+ professional". For example, the 1-10 named users license entitles you to have one installation of "SMW+ professional" with up to 10 individual persons which are represented by their user accounts in the SMW+ installation.

OFC

Open Flash Chart (ofc) is an open source project that offers various flash charts. These charts are integrated as result printers for visualizing #query results.

OntoBroker

The TripleStore Professional contains OntoBroker and a connector that connects the OntoBroker to SMW+. OntoBroker is a highly scalable and industry-proven RDF triple store, query and inference engine that is provided by ontoprise. With a triple store-enabled SMW+, you can query the semantic data directly within the wiki or remotely using SPARQL queries. Apart from SPARQL support, the OntoBroker also supports RDF(S) and rule reasoning with its in-built inference engine.

DataExplorer

The DataExplorer (formerly known as OntologyBrowser) gives a quick and detailed overview of the wiki's ontology. It allows users to navigate through the concept and property hierarchy. Users with appropriate rights may also modify the ontology - adding new categories and properties - with the OntologyBrowser.

Ontoskin

OntoSkin3 is probably the first thing you will see, if you installed SMW+. OntoSkin3 is the graphical representation of SMW+ and a skin for MediaWiki. It is designed to make it easier to work with SMW+ and adapted to some features of it. Some features of SMW+, e.g. the dropdown menus or the semantic toolbar, rely on a modified skin and won't work with other skins out of the box. So you could benefit from a better usability and more available features when choosing OntoSkin3 in combination with SMW+.

OWL

OWL stands for Web Ontology Language and is built on top of #RDF. OWL was designed to provide a common way to process the content of web information (instead of displaying it). OWL was designed to be read by computer applications (instead of humans). OWL and #RDF are much of the same thing, but OWL is a stronger language with greater machine interpretability than RDF. OWL comes with a larger vocabulary and stronger syntax than RDF.

parserfunctions

see magicwords

property

Properties and types are the basic way of entering semantic data ( tagging) in SMW+. A property gives machine-processable description of some feature of an object, such as its weight, size, location, or its owner. The property is written as an annotation in the article about the object that it describes: e.g. [[Has firstname::Homer]] Properties can be viewed as "categories for values in wiki pages". Properties that establish relationships between two pages this way are also called relations. A property can have, but does not require, a page in the wiki.

query

Queries are a way to access the wiki's knowledge - they are some kind of semantic search. Queries specify two things: Which pages to select and what information to display about those pages. All queries must state some conditions that describe what is asked for. You can select pages by name, namespace, category, and most importantly by property values. One can formulate queries by using the query interface or by using the query language syntax which is similar to the syntax of annotations.

range

The term "ranges" states the instances that are in a triple together with a certain property. For example the property "aviate": [[Has domain and range::Category:Pilot; Category:Aircraft]] this states, that only pilots can aviate, and everything that is being aviated must be an aircraft.

RDF

RDF stands for Resource Description Framework and is a framework for describing resources on the web. RDF is designed to be read and understood by computers, it is written in XML and it is not designed for being displayed to people. The RDF language is a part of the W3C's Semantic Web Activity and became a W3C Recommendation 10. February 2004.

relations

Relation is a synonym of #property. In earlier versions the concepts (and namespaces) "Relation" and "Attribute" were separated, now they are unified into Property.

repository

A repository is a storage location from which software packages may be retrieved and installed on a computer. ontoprise offers two repositories for the Wiki Administration Tool to the community. In these repositories you can find extensions and content bundles that are packaged by the ontoprise team as well as extensions and content bundles packaged by the community. One of them contains stable released versions and the other one unstable versions (nightly builds).

rule

The TripleStore supports reasoning with user-defined rules which are based on ObjectLogic. With these rules, you can specify dependencies between known facts and the creation of new, additional facts based the existing ones. To use this reasoning feature, the Rule Extension is required. The Rule extension comes with form-based editors for the most important rules.

schema

The set of properties (relations and attributes) belonging to a category is called schema.

semantic forms

see forms

smwplus

Smwplus designated the content bundle which is part of the SMW+ software. It contains some template, forms and a small ontology that are needed to run SMW+.

Solr

Solr is the popular, blazing fast open source enterprise search platform from the Apache Lucene project. Its major features include powerful full-text search, hit highlighting, faceted search, dynamic clustering, database integration and rich document (e.g., Word, PDF) handling. Solr is used for Faceted browsing in the wiki, this is a technique that lets you explore a collection of information based on filters. It is especially useful for users who are not familiar with the type and structure of the stored information.

SPARQL

SPARQL is a specific query language for querying data as it is stored as [#[RDF|RDF]] graphs in the triple store. There is a special parser function - #sparql - which enables advanced inference capabilities and can be used with the SPARQL-syntax.

tagging

Tagging is a synonyme for annotating and means enriching an article with semantic data, namely adding categories and properties.

term

Most companies that introduce a semantic wiki as new knowledge managements system often have their own vocabulary of specific terms that they wish to reflect in their wiki. A vocabulary that is saved in the TIXML format can be imported into SMW+. TIXML is a small, simple XML parser which can both read and write XML files. Each term of the vocabulary is described in an element named term. The sub-elements of the terms are properties with values: term, articleName and content.

;Example:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<terms xmlns="http://www.ontoprise.de/smwplus#">
    <term>
        <articleName>Helium</articleName>
        <content>Helium is a gas under normal conditions.</content>
    </term>
    <term>
        <articleName>Hydrogen</articleName>
    </term>
</terms>

TOC

TOC is short for table of content and is a list of the parts or chapters of an article organized in the order in which the parts appear. In the wiki the behavior of the table of content can be switched using the magicword: __NOTOC__

triples

A triple consists of the three parts: Subject – Predicate (or Property) and Object (or Value) expressions. Every statement can be expressed in a triple, for example: Homer Simpson lives in Springfield. Expressed in wiki syntax, you write: Homer Simpson lives in [[Lives in::Springfield]] "Homer Simpson" is the subject, "Lives in" the property and "Springfield" the value.

triple store

The wiki knowledge base corresponds to a set of Resource Description Framework (RDF)-triples. This means that statements about the (web) resources are made in the form of Subject – Predicate (or Property) and Object (or Value) expressions. A triple store is a convenient method for the storage and retrieval of RDF statements in a specialized database. RDF and RDF Schema (RDFS) is the underlying representation of data in the semantic web and also in SMW+.

triple store connector

see TSC

TSC

A triple store connector (TSC) is a server application which allows connecting a wiki (SMW+) on board to a #triple_store. The wiki benefits from the advanced reasoning in a triple store: Inverse, symmetric and transitive relations are only supported by a triple store. #OntoBroker can even deal with user-defined rules based on ObjectLogic. SMW+ provides connectors to the following triple stores: The TripleStore Professional and the TripleStore Basic.

type

Properties can describe very different kind of values, therefore SMW+ has several so-called data types that can be chosen for properties. Considering an example the population should be expressed, the appropriate type is called Type:Number. Data types are very important for evaluating properties. Firstly, the data type determines how tools should handle the given values, e.g. for displaying values and sorting values in search results. Secondly, the data type is required to understand which values have the same meaning, e.g. the values "1532", "1,532", and "1.5323" all encode the same number.

vocabulary

see term

webDAV

Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) is a framework for users to create, change and move documents on a server. With WebDav you are able to simply manage the content of your wiki. Among others you can easily copy files by drag and drop them into the adequate folders. The Rich Media extension will take care about the use of the correct meta data templates and #forms as well as an associated upload conversion process.

webservice / web service

A web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over a network. The Data Import extension enables users to integrate external data into the wiki in two different ways: by calling external SOAP or RESTful web services from within the wiki or by importing data (e.g. CSV files or emails) as wiki articles.

Wikitag

A Wikitag is a customized Microsoft Office Smart Tag. Smart tags are selection-based search features found in the recent versions of Microsoft Office, where the application recognizes certain words or phrases and offers the user a set of actions. This component shows semantic information from a page and category in the Smart tag menu.

WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG is short for what you see is what you get. The WYSIWYG editor enables users to see on the display screen exactly what will appear when the document is saved. It displays different fonts and graphics on the display screen like it is known from word processing programs.

Smwplussandbox The glossary serves to explain the most used terms when working with SMW+