From SWUIWiki
Hildebrand et al. are conducting a survey on the role of semantics in current end user search applications. An analysis of this survey is described in [1]. On this Wiki we would like to maintain and extend the survey. In addition, we are compiling a common vocabulary of terms (including definitions) that are applicable to semantic search. The generic characteristics of the analyzed systems and links to related papers and demos are listed on the systems overview page. Raw analysis data is available at the initial survey page. Feel free to contribute to the survey, vocabulary and definitions on the Wiki pages or by emailing the author.
Other resources
W3C maintains a list of Semantic Web Tools and various others exists, such as the Developers Guide to Semantic Web Toolkits and the Comprehensive Listing of Semantic Web and Related Tools by Michael K. Bergman. These lists support the semantic web community (mainly developers) by providing an overview of available tools. This survey can contribute to this by giving more insight into the different perspectives on accessing semantic web content by text based search.
Analysis of Systems (inProgress)
We have started compiling a list of systems that provide access to semantic web data through a graphical user interface. We are interested in systems that provide some form of free text search, in addition to those that include different forms of browsing. In the analysis we consider three different stages of the search process: query construction, the core search process, the presentation of the
search results and user feedback on query and result. For each of these we consider the functionality that the system provides and how this is made available at the graphical user interface.
Example
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
- keyword(s)
- natural language
|
- Single text entry
- Property-specific fields
|
| Operators
|
- boolean operators
- special purpose operators
- regular expressions
|
- Application-specific syntax
|
| Controlled terms
|
- Disambiguate input
- Restrict output
- Select predefined queries
|
|
| User feedback
|
|
- Suggestion list
- Semantic autocompletion
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
- Exact, prefix, substring match
- Minimal edit distance
- Stemming
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
- thesauri expansion
- graph traversal
- RDFS/OWL reasoning
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
- Selected property values
- class specific template
- display vocabulary
|
- Text
- Graph
- Tagcloud
- Map
- Timeline
- Calender
|
| Ordering
|
- Content and link structure based ranking
|
|
| Organization
|
- Clustering by property or path
- Dynamic clustering
|
- Tree
- Nested box structure
- Clustermap
|
| User feedback
|
- Post-query disambiguation
- Query refinement
- Recommendation of related resources
|
- Facets
- Tagcloud
- Value list
|
AquaBrowser
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
|
|
- Application-specific syntax
|
| Controlled terms
|
- Restrict output (after text search)
|
|
| User feedback
|
- Associations, translations, spelling variants
|
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
| -
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
|
|
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
AquaLog
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
|
|
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
- Structural interpretation of natural language expression guided by semantic relations.
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
| -
| -
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
Autofocus
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| ?
|
- Application-specific syntax
|
| Controlled terms
|
|
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
| -
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
- Property values (selectable by user)
|
|
| Ordering
| ?
| ?
|
| Organization
|
- Grouping by selected values/keywords and intersection of these
|
|
| User feedback
|
- Post-query disambiguation
- Query refinement
|
|
BrowseRDF
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
| -
| -
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
|
|
|
| User feedback
|
- Recursively use properties of selectable values
(allows interactive construction of join queries)
|
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
| -
| -
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
DBin
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
| -
| -
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
|
- Restrict output by Class
- Select predefined (parameterized) queries
|
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
- domain specific templates
|
|
| Ordering
| -
| -
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
DBpedia search
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
- graph traversal (depth=1)
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
|
|
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
- Post-query disambiguation
|
|
e-Culture (basic search)
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
(manually assigned weights)
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
|
|
|
| Organization
|
|
|
| User feedback
|
- Post-query disambiguation
|
|
Falcon-S (semantic search)
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
| -
| -
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
|
|
|
| User feedback
|
- Show available query constructs
|
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
|
- Ranking of on frequency of terms
|
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
Flink
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
| -
| -
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
| -
|
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
- OWL same as relations
- Social network analysis of relations between persons
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
|
- Ranking based on social network analysis
|
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
Freebase
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
- Single text entry
- Property-specific fields
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
|
|
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
- topic-type checking (similar as rdf:type)
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
|
?
|
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
- Query refinement
- Recommendation of related resources
|
|
Ginseng
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
- Structural interpretation of natural language expression guided by semantic relations.
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
| -
| -
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
H-Dose
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| ?
| ?
|
| Controlled terms
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
?
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
- Semantic vector space model
- Automatically determine specialization and generalization based on number of results
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
| -
| -
|
| Ordering
| -
|
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
Haystack
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| ?
| ?
|
| Controlled terms
|
- Restrict output
- Select predefined queries
|
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
| ?
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
| ?
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
| ?
| ?
|
| Organization
| ?
| ?
|
| User feedback
| ?
| ?
|
Hybrid Search
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
(weights by similarity, specificity measure and manually assigned by relation type)
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
|
|
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
KIM
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
- Single text entry
- Property-specific fields
|
| Operators
| ?
| ?
|
| Controlled terms
|
|
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
| -
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
| ?
| ?
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
Longwell
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
- Single text entry field
- Facet specific field
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
|
- Disambiguate input (in facet specific search)
- Restrict output
|
|
| User feedback
|
- Pre-query disambiguation (in facet specific search)
|
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
- display vocabulary (Fresnel)
|
- Text
- Map
- Timeline
- Calender
|
| Ordering
| ?
| ?
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
mspace
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
- Single text entry (search in active facet only)
- Facet-specific fields
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
|
- Disambiguate input
- Restrict output
|
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
- Predefined relations between facets
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
| -
| -
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
MuseumFinland
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
|
- Disambiguate input
- Restrict output
|
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
| -
| -
|
| Organization
|
|
|
| User feedback
|
- Query refinement
- Recommendation of related resources
|
|
OntoKhoj
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
(wordnet senses)
|
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
| ?
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
(First try direct values, else synomyn, else hypernym)
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
|
|
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
OntoWiki
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
|
|
- Class hierarchy tree
- Faceted
|
| User feedback
|
|
- Suggestion list
- Semantic autocompletion
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
| ?
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
- Table with property values
(Interactively add properties)
|
- Text
- Map
- Timeline
- Calender
|
| Ordering
|
|
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
OpenAcademia
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
| -
|
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
| -
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
- Text
- Relation Graph
- Tagcloud
- Timeline
|
| Ordering
| ?
|
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
|
- Tagcloud
- Value list
- Relation Graph
|
QuizRDF
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
|
|
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
- Exact, prefix, substring match
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
|
(tf.idf)
|
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
ReSIST RKB Explorer
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
|
|
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
- Weighted graph search based on predefined relationships
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
|
closeness acquired through weighted graph search
|
ordered list
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
SemSearch
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
|
- boolean operators
- special purpose operators
(":" for result target type)
|
- Application-specific syntax
|
| Controlled terms
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
- RDFS reasoning
- Structural interpretation of multiple keywords guided by semantic relations.
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
|
|
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
- Post-query disambiguation
|
|
Semantic MediaWiki
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
|
|
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
| ?
| ?
|
| Organization
|
|
|
| User feedback
|
- Post-query disambiguation (by namespace)
|
|
Shoe
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
|
|
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
| -
| -
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
Slashfacet
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
- Single text entry
- Facet specific fields
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
|
|
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
- thesauri expansion
- RDFS reasoning (and owl:sameAs)
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
| -
| -
|
| Organization
|
|
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
Squiggle
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
|
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
| -
| -
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
- Query refinement
- Recommendation of related resources
|
|
Squirrel
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| ?
| ?
|
| Controlled terms
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
|
- Content based ranking (and user profile based)
|
|
| Organization
|
|
|
| User feedback
|
- Post-query disambiguation
- Query refinement
|
|
Swoogle
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
|
|
|
| Controlled terms
|
|
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
| ?
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
| -
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
|
- Link structure based ranking
|
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
SWSE
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| ?
| ?
|
| Controlled terms
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
| ?
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
| -
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
|
- Link structure based ranking
|
|
| Organization
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
|
- Post-query disambiguation by type
|
|
Tap
| Search phase
| Feature
| Functionality
| Interface Components
|
| Query construction
| Free text input
|
|
|
| Operators
| -
| -
|
| Controlled terms
| -
| -
|
| User feedback
| -
| -
|
| Search algorithm
| Syntactic matching
|
| Not applicable
|
| Semantic matching
|
- graph traversal (Restricted to manually assigned properties for each class)
| Not applicable
|
| Presentation of results
| Data selection
|
|
|
| Ordering
| -
| -
|
| Organization
|
|
|
| User feedback
|
- Post-query disambiguation by topic
|
|
