We are happy to announce the next release of DL-Learner, a tool for learning OWL class expressions from examples and background knowledge. It extends Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) to Description Logics and the Semantic Web. The tool has matured over the past 3 years and is meanwhile used in a number of applications. Some features of this release are:

• support for OWL API 3 and OWL 2
ORE (ontology repair and enrichment) tool based on DL-Learner algorithms (soon to be migrated to an own project)
• several new heuristics, e.g. generalised F-Measure, and efficient stochastic heuristic approximation methods
• learning algorithms for the EL description logic
• support for hasValue construct in combination with string datatype
• support for refining existing definitions (instead of learning from scratch) for CELOE ontology engineering algorithm
• support for direct Pellet 2 integration and reasoners connected via OWLlink
• more unit tests, bug fixes and features

DL-Learner can be used to:

• solve general supervised Machine Learning problems using ontologies as background knowledge (given as OWL files, SPARQL endpoints, etc.), e.g. it was used to predict whether chemicals can cause cancer
• help knowledge engineers by learning definitions and subclass axioms (see the Protege plugin and OntoWiki plugin)
• generating user recommendations when browsing knowledge bases

I’d like to thank all contributors, in particular active developers and everyone who sent us valuable feedback.

The tool can be be downloaded here.

The Open Knowledge Foundation Working Group on EU Open Data (where AKSW is an active member) is organising a session on linked government data at the ICT2010 event in Brussels later this year.

• Where? T 003, Brussels Expo
• When? 11:00-12:30 CET, 28th September 2010

This networking session will discuss how public access to government data – crucial for an open and transparent society – can be improved.

This session has been proposed by IT professionals, scientists and government representatives organised – under the auspices of the Open Knowledge Foundation – as the Working Group on EU Open Data. It aims to establish a forum for networking and exchanging ideas with regard to publishing and linking governmental data, identifying technological developments and showcasing successful cases of linked governmental data. Developments in linked data could help further integrate information published by regional, national and European public administrations. The session is thematically relevant to a number of pillars within the Framework Programme as well as the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme.

Today, we released version 0.2 of the ontology repair and enrichment (ORE) tool. It is a tool for knowledge engineers to improve an OWL ontology through a wizard like repair process and uses state-of-the-art ontology debugging methods. The main feature in version 0.2 is a mode for incrementally detecting inconsistencies in large knowledge bases available as SPARQL endpoints. Using this mode, we have detected inconsistencies and computed justifications in DBpedia Live and OpenCyc. Previously, both knowledge bases were too large to compute justifications on standard hardware to the best of our knowledge, i.e. inconsistencies could not be fixed efficiently. A screencast illustrates this process for the case of DBpedia Live. Thanks to Lorenz Bühmann for his work on ORE.

ORE Homepage | Download | Screencast | AKSW Homepage

The AKSW research group is pleased to announce that OntoWiki 0.9.5 is now available for download.

OntoWiki is a web-application enabling the collaborative creation and (linked data) publication of RDF knowledge bases.

More information about OntoWiki can be found at http://ontowiki.net. You can download OntoWiki in our google code file section.

Enhancements in this release include:

• Support for Semantic Pingback, a protocol which enables OntoWiki to communicate named links from linked data resources or blog systems like WordPress.
• Support for the publication of provenance information via Linked Data.
• A new navigation module which support the configuration and usage of arbitrary navigation hierarchies (e.g. based on classes, SKOS elements, geospatial entities or FOAF groups).
• A bookmarklet for collecting RDFa-based information into a specific OntoWiki knowledge base.
• More editing widgets, e.g. for phone number and mailto: resources.
• A new mapping module for the resource visualisation and filtering based on maps.
• Attribute / Tag clouds based on selected RDF properties.
• A GUI for complex SPARQL filter (contains, larger, smaller, between and bound)
• A JSON/RPC server as an additional interface (e.g. for the command line client)
• A plugin to create nice URIs based on the content of a new resource.

A detailed log of the over 200 enhancements and bug fixes of this release is available at our issue tracker.

Many thanks to the contributors of this OntoWiki release (in alphabetical order): Atanas Alexandrov, Christian Maier, Christoph Riess, Jonas Brekle, Marvin Frommhold, Michael Haschke, Michael Martin, Michael Niederstätter, Natanael Arndt, Norman Heino, Philipp Frischmuth and Tim Ermilov

best regards

Sebastian Tramp

Extended Semantic Web Conference started yesterday in Hersonissos, Crete. AKSW is involved in this years ESWC in various ways: We co-organized the 6th Workshop on Scripting and Development (SFSW10) probably for the last time this year at ESWC, since the original aim of promoting more light-weight, pragmatic semantic web applications of the SFSW workshop series became now rather mainstream. Sören was one of the panelists of the panel on “Linked Data: Now what?”. With the two papers “LESS - Template-Based Syndication and Presentation of Linked Data” and “Improving the Performance of Semantic Web Applications with SPARQL Query Result Caching” AKSW is also well represented in the main scientific conference programme.