Ontotext Ontotext is a software company with offices in Europe and USA. It is the semantic technology branch of Sirma Group. Its main domain of activity is the development of software based on the Semantic Web languages and standards, in particular RDF ...

GraphDB (previously known as BigOWLIM) is a

graph database A graph database (GDB) is a database that uses graph structures for semantic queries with nodes, edges, and properties to represent and store data. A key concept of the system is the ''graph'' (or ''edge'' or ''relationship''). The graph relat ...

and

knowledge discovery Knowledge extraction is the creation of knowledge from structured ( relational databases, XML) and unstructured ( text, documents, images) sources. The resulting knowledge needs to be in a machine-readable and machine-interpretable format and mus ...

tool compliant with RDF and

SPARQL SPARQL (pronounced " sparkle" , a recursive acronym for SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language) is an RDF query language—that is, a semantic query language for databases—able to retrieve and manipulate data stored in Resource Description ...

and available as a high-availability cluster. Ontotext GraphDB is used in various European research projects. As of April 2021, Graph DB is ranked as the 4th most -popular RDF store and 6th most-popular Graph DBMS system. Some categorize it as a NoSQL database. In 2014

acquired the trademark "GraphDB" from Sones. As for a typical graph DB,

ontologies In computer science and information science, an ontology encompasses a representation, formal naming, and definition of the categories, properties, and relations between the concepts, data, and entities that substantiate one, many, or all domains ...

are an important input for the databases. The underlying idea is a semantic repository.

Architecture

GraphDB is used to store and manage semantic

Knowledge Graph The Google Knowledge Graph is a knowledge base from which Google serves relevant information in an infobox beside its search results. This allows the user to see the answer in a glance. The data is generated automatically from a variety of so ...

data. It is built on top of the RDF4J architecture implemented through RDF4J's Storage and Inference Layer (SAIL). The architecture is made of three main components: * The Workbench is a web-based administration tool. The user interface is based on RDF4J Workbench Web Application * The Engine consists of a

query optimizer Query optimization is a feature of many relational database management systems and other databases such as NoSQL and graph databases. The query optimizer attempts to determine the most efficient way to execute a given query by considering the p ...

, reasoner, storage and plugin manager. The reasoner in GraphDB is

Forward chaining Forward chaining (or forward reasoning) is one of the two main methods of reasoning when using an inference engine and can be described logically as repeated application of '' modus ponens''. Forward chaining is a popular implementation strategy ...

with the goal of total materialization. The plugin manager supports user-defined indexes and can be configured dynamically during run-time. These include: ** RDF Rank, which is an algorithm that identifies the most relevant entities, similar to

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

PageRank PageRank (PR) is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results. It is named after both the term "web page" and co-founder Larry Page. PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages. Accordi ...

by evaluating their interconnectedness **

GeoSPARQL GeoSPARQL is a standard for representation and querying of geospatial linked data for the Semantic Web from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The definition of a small ontology based on well-understood OGC standards is intended to provide a st ...

, which is the standard for geographical

linked data In computing, linked data (often capitalized as Linked Data) is structured data which is interlinked with other data so it becomes more useful through semantic queries. It builds upon standard Web technologies such as HTTP, RDF and URIs, but ...

. The plugin is able to convert between coordinate reference systems into the default, which OGC specifies as CRS84 format **

Lucene Apache Lucene is a free and open-source search engine software library, originally written in Java by Doug Cutting. It is supported by the Apache Software Foundation and is released under the Apache Software License. Lucene is widely used as ...

, which supports full-text search capabilities. This provides a variety of indexing options and the ability to simultaneously use multiple, differently configured indexes in the same query using

Apache Lucene Apache Lucene is a free and open-source software, free and open-source Search engine (computing), search engine Library (computing), software library, originally written in Java (programming language), Java by Doug Cutting. It is supported by the ...

, a high-performance, full-featured text search engine * The Connectors: The performance of search such as full-text search and

faceted search Faceted search is a technique that involves augmenting traditional search techniques with a faceted navigation system, allowing users to narrow down search results by applying multiple filters based on faceted classification of the items. It is som ...

can be vastly improved via the connectors by enabling the implementation by an external component or service. GraphDB has a connector for both well-known

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

search engines,

Solr Solr (pronounced "solar") is an open-source enterprise-search platform, written in Java. Its major features include full-text search, hit highlighting, faceted search, real-time indexing, dynamic clustering, database integration, NoSQL features a ...

and

Elasticsearch Elasticsearch is a search engine based on the Lucene library. It provides a distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with an HTTP web interface and schema-free JSON documents. Elasticsearch is developed in Java and is dual ...

. ** There is also a connector enabling

MongoDB MongoDB is a source-available cross-platform document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database program, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional schemas. MongoDB is developed by MongoDB Inc. and licensed under the Ser ...

integration, providing the scalability and performance advantages. ** Relational data virtualization ( Ontology-Based Data Access, OBDA) is provided by integration of ontop ** SQL Access over JDBC is provided for traditional analytics tools such as

Tableau Tableau (French for 'little table' literally, also used to mean 'picture'; tableaux or, rarely, tableaus) may refer to: Arts * ''Tableau'', a series of four paintings by Piet Mondrian titled ''Tableau I'' through to ''Tableau IV'' * ''Tableau viv ...

and PowerBI **

Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typ ...

Sink Connector for ingesting large amounts of data. ** GraphQL access to knowledge graphs and semantic search based on

and exposed through GraphQL.

Features and Integrations

According to Ontotext, Graph DB supports: * GraphDB uses RDF4J as a library, utilizing its

APIs Apis or APIS may refer to: * Apis (deity), an ancient Egyptian god * Apis (Greek mythology), several different figures in Greek mythology * Apis (city), an ancient seaport town on the northern coast of Africa **Kom el-Hisn, a different Egyptian ci ...

for storage and querying. * It supports the GraphQL,

and SeRQL languages and RDF (e.g., RDF/XML, N3, Turtle) serialization formats. * It supports custom reasoning rulesets, as well as RDFS, RDFS-plus, OWL 2 RL and QL. * It integrates OpenRefine for the ingestion of tabular data and provides semantic similarity search at the document level.

Uses

Ontotext Graph DB is used in various scientific areas, e.g.,

Genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar worki ...

, Healthcare,

Data Forensics Computer forensics (also known as computer forensic science) is a branch of digital forensic science pertaining to evidence found in computers and digital storage media. The goal of computer forensics is to examine digital media in a forensica ...

, Cultural Heritage,

Geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, a ...

, Infrastructure Planning,

Civil Engineering Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewa ...

, Digital Historiography, Oceanography. For more examples see "Diverse Uses of a Semantic Graph Database for Knowledge Organization and Research" below. Commercial clients include

BBC Sport BBC Sport is the sports division of the BBC, providing national sports coverage for BBC television, radio and online. The BBC holds the television and radio UK broadcasting rights to several sports, broadcasting the sport live or alongside ...

, ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nikke ...

'',

Springer Nature Springer Nature or the Springer Nature Group is a German-British academic publishing company created by the May 2015 merger of Springer Science+Business Media and Holtzbrinck Publishing Group's Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, and M ...

UK Parliament The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the Parliamentary sovereignty in the United Kingdom, supreme Legislature, legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of We ...

AstraZeneca AstraZeneca plc () is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with its headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, England. It has a portfolio of products for major diseases in areas includ ...

as well as in the pharmaceutical and finance industries. Some use cases focus on scalability and large data sizes.

External links

Ontotext's Product Website

Github repository for Apache Licensed Workbench for GraphDB

Register Article from 15 Jan 2020 about Ontotext GraphDB

W3.org entry for GraphDB
* Diverse Uses of a Semantic Graph Database for Knowledge Organization and Research: presentation, video,

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, co ...

project and

Zotero Zotero () is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as PDF files. Features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnot ...

bibliography.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ontotext Graphdb Graph databases Big data products Database engines Metadata NoSQL Online databases Semantic Web Structured storage Triplestores

Architecture

Features and Integrations

Uses

See also

External links

References