=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-206/paper-16
|storemode=property
|title=Towards a Semantic Wiki-Based Japanese Biodictionary
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-206/paper16.pdf
|volume=Vol-206
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/semwiki/MuljadiTKKF06
}}
==Towards a Semantic Wiki-Based Japanese Biodictionary==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-206/paper16.pdf
Towards a Semantic Wiki-Based Japanese
Biodictionary
Hendry Muljadi, Hideaki Takeda, Shoko Kawamoto, Satoshi Kobayashi,
and Asao Fujiyama
National Institute of Informatics, 2-1-2, Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan
{hendry, takeda, skawamot, satoshi-k, afujiyam}@nii.ac.jp
http://www.nii.ac.jp
Abstract. This paper describes an on-going project to develop and maintain a
web-based Japanese Biodictionary within a Semantic Wiki environment. For
the development of the dictionary, MediaWiki is extended to enable the writing
of labeled links that represent RDF triples. The extension enables Semantic
Wiki to provide not only collaborative environment for experts in various biol-
ogy fields to create and edit the dictionary, but also the navigation support to
manage relations between terms. Using a simple wiki syntax, people can de-
velop and maintain the dictionary visually and easily.
1 Introduction
Developing a web-based Japanese Biodictionary is obviously a hard and time-
consuming task. The project for the development of a web-based Japanese Biodic-
tionary has done a survey over 77 Japanese textbooks in various biology fields, which
include textbooks for high-school, undergraduate and graduate students. There are
more than 30,000 different terms extracted for the web-based dictionary. However,
writing the description of each term is another thing to do. It will cost a lot of money
to pay for the copyright if we use the description written on the textbooks or other
dictionaries. On the other hand, as the web-based Japanese Biodictionary is also tar-
geting high-school students as its viewers, it is necessary to provide an easy-to-
understand description of the terms as well as the relations between terms [1].
Learning from the development of Wikipedia1, we consider that collaboration on
the web is perhaps the best solution for the development of the dictionary. By allow-
ing experts in various fields of biology to collaborate, the dictionary may well be
developed. However, as we implemented the MediaWiki 2 in its original form, we
found that users cannot describe the relation between terms flexibly. Allowing the
MediaWiki to write labeled links can solve this problem.
This paper presents the development of a Semantic Wiki-based Japanese Biodic-
tionary. Section 2 presents the features of the proposed Semantic Wiki, which is
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
2 http://www.mediawiki.org
called MewKISS. Section 3 presents the current state of the Semantic Wiki-based
Japanese Biodictionary. The conclusion of this paper is presented in section 4.
2 Semantic Wiki
2.1 Extending MediaWIki
MediaWiki is a very useful tool for collaborative content management. MediaWiki
also has a category management function which allows users to create class and sub-
class relation between Wiki pages under the namespace ( “Category” ), and class and
instance relation between Wiki pages under the namespace ( “Category” ) and com-
mon Wiki pages. However, MediaWiki in its original form does not allow users to
create relation between pages flexibly. Our research has enabled MediaWiki to write
labeled links [2]. Wiki syntax to write the labeled link is [[term:target_page|property]].
The labeled link relations will be displayed on the Wiki pages as follows.
1. On the source_page: -> property -> target_page
2. On the target_page: <- property <- source_page
3. On the property: source_page -> target_page
Fig.1 shows an example of the writing of labeled link on a Wiki page. Fig.2 shows
how the labeled link relations will be displayed on the Wiki pages.
Fig. 1. Writing the labeled links on a Wiki page
(a) on a source_page (b) on a target_page (c) on a property page
Fig. 2. Displaying the labeled link relations on Wiki pages
2.2 Features of the Proposed MewKISS
MewKISS is an abbreviation for MediaWiki with Simple Semantics. The word
“KISS” is written with full capital letters to stress that the proposed Semantic Wiki is
developed by considering the idea of the KISS principle3. MewKISS emphasizes the
user-friendliness of the Semantic Wiki engine. It is developed to allow non-technical
users to write and edit metadata according to RDF statements easily, and leaves the
more technical aspects to external applications.
Fig. 3 shows the overall structure of the MewKISS4. The features of the MewKISS
can be summarized as follows.
1. A collaborative lightweight metadata management. Enabling MediaWiki to write
labeled links with simple syntax allows users to create and manage relations be-
tween Wiki pages easily and flexibly. The writing of labeled links allows users to
write and edit RDF triples even though the users have no knowledge about it.
2. Navigation support. Displaying labeled links allows users to navigate the relation
between Wiki pages visually.
3. Mapping to other Semantic Web application. MewKISS handles only simple
RDF statements. By converting the RDF triples, which are stored in the new ta-
ble of MewKISS, into XML-encoded RDF data format, the RDF triples can be
exported to RDF database such as Sesame5.
4. An integrated content and metadata management. By extending MediaWiki, the
Semantic Wiki has the benefit of having all the functions available in MediaWiki
as a collaborative content management system. Thus, the Semantic Wiki can be
used as a collaborative and integrated content and metadata management system.
Other
Semantic Web
RDF DB
Applications
RDF RDF
Web Server (Apache 2) Import Export
labeled link Wiki Engine
process (MediaWiki 1.5.x)
MySQL
Triples are stored in
the MewKISS database
MewKISS Table for triples
Fig. 3. Overall structure of the proposed Semantic Wiki
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle
4 Our current prototype is accessible from http://semanticwiki.jp/
5 http://openrdf.org/
3 Semantic Wiki-Based Japanese Biodictionary
3.1 Current State of the Semantic Wiki-Based Japanese Biodictionary
Currently the prototype system contains more than 4,000 terms. There are 5 RDF
properties used in the biodictionary: is-a, part-of, synonym, English and English
synonym. The first two properties, is-a and part-of, are used to represent class and
sub-class relations. Synonym is used to link a Japanese biology term with its syno-
nym Japanese term. English is used to link a term with its direct translation’s English
term, while English synonym is used to link a term with its English term’s synonym.
Using our proposed Semantic Wiki, other properties, such as kind-of, may also be
easily used.
Category management function is also used for categorization and also to list all
the terms in the dictionary.
Fig. 4(a) shows a category page that is used to list all the terms in the biodictionary.
Fig. 4(b) shows the editing page of a term. Fig.4(c) shows the Wiki page of a term.
description
a biology
term
categorization
(a) A category page to list all the created
biology terms
using category
management
function to list all
the terms in one (c) Wiki page of a biology term
page
writing RDF triples
(b) Editing page of the Wiki page
Fig. 4. Wiki pages in the Japanese Biodictionary
3.2 Future Works
The current Semantic Wiki-based Japanese Biodictionary allows users to collabo-
rately create and edit biology terms as well as their relations to other terms. By con-
verting the stored RDF triples into XML-encoded RDF data format, RDF triples can
be exported to Sesame. However, further work needs to be done to enable users to
export the RDF triples to Sesame directly from the MewKISS environment. Further
works also need to be done to allow simple and complex queries directly from the
MewKISS environment, and on how the semantic mapping to other Semantic Web
applications may benefit the biodictionary.
4 Conclusion
For the development of a Semantic Wiki-based Japanese Biodictionary, MediaWiki is
extended to enable the writing of labeled links that represent RDF triples. MewKISS
provides a collaborative, easy-to-use and integrated content and metadata manage-
ment system. In the MewKISS environment, users can write and edit RDF triples,
even though they have no knowledge about it. RDF triples stored in the table of
MewKISS can be converted into XML-encoded RDF data format and exported to
RDF database such as Sesame. Thus, MewKISS may well serve as a bridge between
non-technical users and Semantic Web technology.
Developing the Japanese Biodictionary within a Semantic Wiki environment does
allow experts in various biology fields to create and manage content of the dictionary
as well as the relation between terms easily and visually.
References
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H., Takeda, H., Fujiyama, A.: The New Generation Bioportal: the Development of a Web
Site for Biology Education. In Proc. of the 80th Domestic Conf. of the Society of Biological
Sciences Education of Japan (2006) 27 (in Japanese)
2. Muljadi, H., Takeda, H.: Semantic Wiki as an Integrated Content and Metadata Management
System. In Poster & Demonstration Proc. of the 4th Intl. Semantic Web Conf. (2005) PID
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