Using JSON-LD in AllegroGraph – Python Example

The following is example #19 from our AllegroGraph Python Tutorial.

JSON-LD is described pretty well at https://json-ld.org/ and the specification can be found at https://json-ld.org/latest/json-ld/ .

The website https://json-ld.org/playground/ is also useful.

There are many reasons for working with JSON-LD. The major search engines such as Google require ecommerce companies to mark up their websites with a systematic description of their products and more and more companies use it as an easy serialization format to share data.

The benefit for your organization is that you can now combine your documents with graphs, graph search and graph algorithms. Normally when you store documents in a document store you set up your documents in such a way that it is optimized for direct retrieval queries. Doing complex joins for multiple types of documents or even doing a shortest path through a mass of object (types) is however very complicated. Storing JSON-LD objects in AllegroGraph gives you all the benefits of a document store and you can semantically link objects together, do complex joins and even graph search.

A second benefit is that, as an application developer, you do not have to learn the entire semantic technology stack, especially the part where developers have to create individual triples or edges. You can work with the JSON data serialization format that application developers usually prefer.

In the following you will first learn about JSON-LD as a syntax for semantic graphs. After that we will talk more about using JSON-LD with AllegroGraph as a document-graph-store.

Setup

You can use Python 2.6+ or Python 3.3+. There are small setup differences which are noted. You do need agraph-python-101.0.1 or later.

Mimicking instructions in the Installation document, you should set up the virtualenv environment.

  1. Create an environment named jsonld:
python3 -m venv jsonld

or

python2  -m virtualenv jsonld

  1. Activate it:

Using the Bash shell:

source jsonld/bin/activate

Using the C shell:

source jsonld/bin/activate.csh
  1. Install agraph-python:
pip install agraph-python

And start python:

python
[various startup and copyright messages]
>>>

We assume you have an AllegroGraph 6.5.0 server running. We call ag_connect. Modify the hostportuser, and password in your call to their correct values:

from franz.openrdf.connect import ag_connect
with ag_connect('repo', host='localhost', port='10035',
                user='test', password='xyzzy') as conn:
    print (conn.size())

If the script runs successfully a new repository named repo will be created.

JSON-LD setup

We next define some utility functions which are somewhat different from what we have used before in order to work better with JSON-LD. createdb() creates and opens a new repository and opendb() opens an existing repo (modify the values of hostportuser, and password arguments in the definitions if necessary). Both return repository connections which can be used to perform repository operations. showtriples() displays triples in a repository.

import os
import json, requests, copy

from franz.openrdf.sail.allegrographserver import AllegroGraphServer
from franz.openrdf.connect import ag_connect
from franz.openrdf.vocabulary.xmlschema import XMLSchema
from franz.openrdf.rio.rdfformat import RDFFormat

# Functions to create/open a repo and return a RepositoryConnection
# Modify the values of HOST, PORT, USER, and PASSWORD if necessary

def createdb(name):
    return ag_connect(name,host="localhost",port=10035,user="test",password="xyzzy",create=True,clear=True)

def opendb(name):
    return ag_connect(name,host="localhost",port=10035,user="test",password="xyzzy",create=False)

def showtriples(limit=100):
    statements = conn.getStatements(limit=limit)
    with statements:
        for statement in statements:
             print(statement)

Finally we call our createdb function to create a repository and return a RepositoryConnection to it:

conn=createdb('jsonplay')

Some Examples of Using JSON-LD

In the following we try things out with some JSON-LD objects that are defined in json-ld playground: jsonld

The first object we will create is an event dict. Although it is a Python dict, it is also valid JSON notation. (But note that not all Python dictionaries are valid JSON. For example, JSON uses null where Python would use None and there is no magic to automatically handle that.) This object has one key called @context which specifies how to translate keys and values into predicates and objects. The following @context says that every time you see ical: it should be replaced by http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#xsd: by http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#, and that if you see ical:dtstart as a key than the value should be treated as an xsd:dateTime.

event = {
  "@context": {
    "ical": "http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#",
    "xsd": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#",
    "ical:dtstart": { "@type": "xsd:dateTime" }
      },
    "ical:summary": "Lady Gaga Concert",
    "ical:location": "New Orleans Arena, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA",
    "ical:dtstart": "2011-04-09T20:00:00Z"
}

Let us try it out (the subjects are blank nodes so you will see different values):

>>> conn.addData(event)
>>> showtriples()
(_:b197D2E01x1, <http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#summary>, "Lady Gaga Concert")
(_:b197D2E01x1, <http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#location>, "New Orleans Arena, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA")
(_:b197D2E01x1, <http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#dtstart>, "2011-04-09T20:00:00Z"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime>)

Adding an @id and @type to Objects

In the above we see that the JSON-LD was correctly translated into triples but there are two immediate problems: first each subject is a blank node, the use of which is problematic when linking across repositories; and second, the object does not have an RDF type. We solve these problems by adding an @id to provide an IRI as the subject and adding a @type for the object (those are at the lines just after the @context definition):

>>> event = {
  "@context": {
      "ical": "http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#",
      "xsd": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#",
      "ical:dtstart": { "@type": "xsd:dateTime" }
        },
      "@id": "ical:event-1",
      "@type": "ical:Event",
      "ical:summary": "Lady Gaga Concert",
      "ical:location": "New Orleans Arena, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA",
      "ical:dtstart": "2011-04-09T20:00:00Z"
  }

We also create a test function to test our JSON-LD objects. It is more powerful than needed right now (here we just need conn,addData(event) and showTriples() but test will be useful in most later examples. Note the allow_external_references=True argument to addData(). Again, not needed in this example but later examples use external contexts and so this argument is required for those.

def test(object,json_ld_context=None,rdf_context=None,maxPrint=100,conn=conn):
    conn.clear()
    conn.addData(object, allow_external_references=True)
    showtriples(limit=maxPrint)
>>> test(event)
(<http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#event-1>, <http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#summary>, "Lady Gaga Concert")
(<http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#event-1>, <http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#location>, "New Orleans Arena, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA")
(<http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#event-1>, <http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#dtstart>, "2011-04-09T20:00:00Z"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime>)
(<http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#event-1>, <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type>, <http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#Event>)

Note in the above that we now have a proper subject and a type.

Referencing a External Context Via a URL

The next object we add to AllegroGraph is a person object. This time the @context is not specified as a JSON object but as a link to a context that is stored at http://schema.org/. Also in the definition of the function test above we had this parameter in addData:allow_external_references=True. Requiring that argument explicitly is a security feature. One should use external references only that context at that URL is trusted (as it is in this case).

person = {
  "@context": "http://schema.org/",
  "@type": "Person",
  "@id": "foaf:person-1",
  "name": "Jane Doe",
  "jobTitle": "Professor",
  "telephone": "(425) 123-4567",
  "url": "http://www.janedoe.com"
}
>>> test(person)
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-1>, <http://schema.org/name>, "Jane Doe")
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-1>, <http://schema.org/jobTitle>, "Professor")
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-1>, <http://schema.org/telephone>, "(425) 123-4567")
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-1>, <http://schema.org/url>, <http://www.janedoe.com>)
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-1>, <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type>, <http://schema.org/Person>)

Improving Performance by Adding Lists

Adding one person at a time requires doing an interaction with the server for each person. It is much more efficient to add lists of objects all at once rather than one at a time. Note that addData will take a list of dicts and still do the right thing. So let us add a 1000 persons at the same time, each person being a copy of the above person but with a different @id. (The example code is repeated below for ease of copying.)

>>> x = [copy.deepcopy(person) for i in range(1000)]
>>> len(x)
1000
>>> c = 0
>>> for el in x:
    el['@id']= "http://franz.com/person-" + str(c)
    c= c + 1
>>> test(x,maxPrint=10)
(<http://franz.com/person-0>, <http://schema.org/name>, "Jane Doe")
(<http://franz.com/person-0>, <http://schema.org/jobTitle>, "Professor")
(<http://franz.com/person-0>, <http://schema.org/telephone>, "(425) 123-4567")
(<http://franz.com/person-0>, <http://schema.org/url>, <http://www.janedoe.com>)
(<http://franz.com/person-0>, <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type>, <http://schema.org/Person>)
(<http://franz.com/person-1>, <http://schema.org/name>, "Jane Doe")
(<http://franz.com/person-1>, <http://schema.org/jobTitle>, "Professor")
(<http://franz.com/person-1>, <http://schema.org/telephone>, "(425) 123-4567")
(<http://franz.com/person-1>, <http://schema.org/url>, <http://www.janedoe.com>)
(<http://franz.com/person-1>, <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type>, <http://schema.org/Person>)
>>> conn.size()
5000
>>>
x = [copy.deepcopy(person) for i in range(1000)]
len(x)

c = 0
for el in x:
    el['@id']= "http://franz.com/person-" + str(c)
    c= c + 1

test(x,maxPrint=10)

conn.size()

Adding a Context Directly to an Object

You can download a context directly in Python, modify it and then add it to the object you want to store. As an illustration we load a person context from json-ld.org (actually a fragment of the schema.org context) and insert it in a person object. (We have broken and truncated some output lines for clarity and all the code executed is repeated below for ease of copying.)

>>> context=requests.get("https://json-ld.org/contexts/person.jsonld").json()['@context']
>>> context
{'Person': 'http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person',
 'xsd': 'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#',
 'name': 'http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name',
 'jobTitle': 'http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/title',
 'telephone': 'http://schema.org/telephone',
 'nickname': 'http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/nick',
 'affiliation': 'http://schema.org/affiliation',
 'depiction': {'@id': 'http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/depiction', '@type': '@id'},
 'image': {'@id': 'http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/img', '@type': '@id'},
 'born': {'@id': 'http://schema.org/birthDate', '@type': 'xsd:date'},
 ...}
>>> person = {
  "@context": context,
  "@type": "Person",
  "@id": "foaf:person-1",
  "name": "Jane Doe",
  "jobTitle": "Professor",
  "telephone": "(425) 123-4567",
}
>>> test(person)
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-1>, <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name>, "Jane Doe")
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-1>, <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/title>, "Professor")
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-1>, <http://schema.org/telephone>, "(425) 123-4567")
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-1>,
 <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type>,
 <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person>)
>>>
context=requests.get("https://json-ld.org/contexts/person.jsonld").json()['@context']
# The next produces lots of output, uncomment if desired
#context

person = {
  "@context": context,
  "@type": "Person",
  "@id": "foaf:person-1",
  "name": "Jane Doe",
  "jobTitle": "Professor",
  "telephone": "(425) 123-4567",
}
test(person)

Building a Graph of Objects

We start by forcing a key’s value to be stored as a resource. We saw above that we could specify the value of a key to be a date using the xsd:dateTime specification. We now do it again for foaf:birthdate. Then we created several linked objects and show the connections using Gruff.

context = { "foaf:child": {"@type":"@id"},
            "foaf:brotherOf": {"@type":"@id"},
            "foaf:birthdate": {"@type":"xsd:dateTime"}}

p1 = {
    "@context": context,
    "@type":"foaf:Person",
    "@id":"foaf:person-1",
    "foaf:birthdate": "1958-04-09T20:00:00Z",
    "foaf:child": ['foaf:person-2', 'foaf:person-3']
}

p2 = {
    "@context": context,
    "@type":"foaf:Person",
    "@id":"foaf:person-2",
    "foaf:brotherOf": "foaf:person-3",
    "foaf:birthdate": "1992-04-09T20:00:00Z",
}

p3 = {"@context": context,
    "@type":"foaf:Person",
    "@id":"foaf:person-3",
    "foaf:birthdate": "1994-04-09T20:00:00Z",
}

test([p1,p2,p3])
>>> test([p1,p2,p3])
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-1>, <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/birthdate>, "1958-04-09T20:00:00Z"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime>)
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-1>, <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/child>, <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-2>)
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-1>, <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/child>, <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-3>)
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-1>, <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type>, <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person>)
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-2>, <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/brotherOf>, <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-3>)
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-2>, <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/birthdate>, "1992-04-09T20:00:00Z"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime>)
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-2>, <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type>, <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person>)
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-3>, <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/birthdate>, "1994-04-09T20:00:00Z"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime>)
(<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/person-3>, <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type>, <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person>)

The following shows the graph that we created in Gruff. Note that this is what JSON-LD is all about: connecting objects together.

img-person-graph

JSON-LD Keyword Directives can be Added at any Level

Here is an example from the wild. The URL https://www.ulta.com/antioxidant-facial-oil?productId=xlsImpprod18731241 goes to a web page advertising a facial oil. (We make no claims or recommendations about this product. We are simply showing how JSON-LD appears in many places.) Look at the source of the page and you’ll find a JSON-LD object similar to the following. Note that @ directives go to any level. We added an @id key.

hippieoil = {"@context":"http://schema.org",
 "@type":"Product",
 "@id":"http://franz.com/hippieoil",
 "aggregateRating":
    {"@type":"AggregateRating",
     "ratingValue":4.6,
     "reviewCount":73},
     "description":"""Make peace with your inner hippie while hydrating & protecting against photoaging....Mad Hippie's preservative-free Antioxidant Facial Oil is truly the most natural way to moisturize.""",
     "brand":"Mad Hippie",
     "name":"Antioxidant Facial Oil",
     "image":"https://images.ulta.com/is/image/Ulta/2530018",
     "productID":"2530018",
     "offers":
        {"@type":"Offer",
         "availability":"http://schema.org/InStock",
         "price":"24.99",
         "priceCurrency":"USD"}}


test(hippieoil)

img-hippieoil

JSON-LD @graphs

One can put one or more JSON-LD objects in an RDF named graph. This means that the fourth element of each triple generated from a JSON-LD object will have the specified graph name. Let’s show in an example.

context = {
        "name": "http://schema.org/name",
        "description": "http://schema.org/description",
        "image": {
            "@id": "http://schema.org/image", "@type": "@id" },
        "geo": "http://schema.org/geo",
        "latitude": {
            "@id": "http://schema.org/latitude", "@type": "xsd:float" },
        "longitude": {
            "@id": "http://schema.org/longitude",  "@type": "xsd:float" },
        "xsd": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#"
    }

place = {
    "@context": context,
    "@id": "http://franz.com/place1",
    "@graph": {
        "@id": "http://franz.com/place1",
        "@type": "http://franz.com/Place",
        "name": "The Empire State Building",
        "description": "The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark in New York City.",
        "image": "http://www.civil.usherbrooke.ca/cours/gci215a/empire-state-building.jpg",
        "geo": {
               "latitude": "40.75",
               "longitude": "73.98" }
        }}

and here is the result:

>>> test(place, maxPrint=3)
(<http://franz.com/place1>, <http://schema.org/name>, "The Empire State Building", <http://franz.com/place1>)
(<http://franz.com/place1>, <http://schema.org/description>, "The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark in New York City.", <http://franz.com/place1>)
(<http://franz.com/place1>, <http://schema.org/image>, <http://www.civil.usherbrooke.ca/cours/gci215a/empire-state-building.jpg>, <http://franz.com/place1>)
>>>

Note that the fourth element (graph) of each of the triples is <http://franz.com/place1>. If you don’t add the @id the triples will be put in the default graph.

Here a slightly more complex example:

library = {
  "@context": {
    "dc": "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/",
    "ex": "http://example.org/vocab#",
    "xsd": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#",
    "ex:contains": {
      "@type": "@id"
    }
  },
  "@id": "http://franz.com/mygraph1",
  "@graph": [
    {
      "@id": "http://example.org/library",
      "@type": "ex:Library",
      "ex:contains": "http://example.org/library/the-republic"
    },
    {
      "@id": "http://example.org/library/the-republic",
      "@type": "ex:Book",
      "dc:creator": "Plato",
      "dc:title": "The Republic",
      "ex:contains": "http://example.org/library/the-republic#introduction"
    },
    {
      "@id": "http://example.org/library/the-republic#introduction",
      "@type": "ex:Chapter",
      "dc:description": "An introductory chapter on The Republic.",
      "dc:title": "The Introduction"
    }
  ]
}

With the result:

>>> test(library, maxPrint=3)
(<http://example.org/library>, <http://example.org/vocab#contains>,
<http://example.org/library/the-republic>,
<http://franz.com/mygraph1>) (<http://example.org/library>,
<http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type>,
<http://example.org/vocab#Library>, <http://franz.com/mygraph1>)
(<http://example.org/library/the-republic>,
<http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/creator>, "Plato",<http://franz.com/mygraph1>)
>>>

img-library-graph

JSON-LD as a Document Store

So far we have treated JSON-LD as a syntax to create triples. Now let us look at the way we can start using AllegroGraph as a combination of a document store and graph database at the same time. And also keep in mind that we want to do it in such a way that you as a Python developer can add documents such as dictionaries and also retrieve values or documents as dictionaries.

Setup

The Python source file jsonld_tutorial_helper.py contains various definitions useful for the remainder of this example. Once it is downloaded, do the following (after adding the path to the filename):

conn=createdb("docugraph")
from jsonld_tutorial_helper import *
addNamespace(conn,"jsonldmeta","http://franz.com/ns/allegrograph/6.4/load-meta#")
addNamespace(conn,"ical","http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#")

Let’s use our event structure again and see how we can store this JSON document in the store as a document. Note that the addData call includes the keyword: json_ld_store_source=True.

event = {
  "@context": {
    "@id": "ical:event1",
    "@type": "ical:Event",
    "ical": "http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#",
    "xsd": "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#",
    "ical:dtstart": { "@type": "xsd:dateTime" }
      },
    "ical:summary": "Lady Gaga Concert",
    "ical:location":
    "New Orleans Arena, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA",
    "ical:dtstart": "2011-04-09T20:00:00Z"
}
>>> conn.addData(event, allow_external_references=True,json_ld_store_source=True)

The jsonld_tutorial_helper.py file defines the function store as simple wrapper around addDatathat always saves the JSON source. For experimentation reasons it also has a parameter fresh to clear out the repository first.

>>> store(conn,event, fresh=True)

If we look at the triples in Gruff we see that the JSON source is stored as well, on the root (top-level @id) of the JSON object.

img-event-store-source

For the following part of the tutorial we want a little bit more data in our repository so please look at the helper file jsonld_tutorial_helper.py where you will see that at the end we have a dictionary named obs with about 9 diverse objects, mostly borrowed from the json-ld.org site: a person, an event, a place, a recipe, a group of persons, a product, and our hippieoil.

First let us store all the objects in a fresh repository. Then we check the size of the repo. Finally, we create a freetext index for the JSON sources.

>>> store(conn,[v for k,v in obs.items()], fresh=True)
>>> conn.size()
86
>>> conn.createFreeTextIndex("source",['<http://franz.com/ns/allegrograph/6.4/load-meta#source>'])
>>>

Retrieving values with SPARQL

To simply retrieve values in objects but not the objects themselves, regular SPARQL queries will suffice. But because we want to make sure that Python developers only need to deal with regular Python structures as lists and dictionaries, we created a simple wrapper around SPARQL (see helper file). The name of the wrapper is runSparql.

Here is an example. Let us find all the roots (top-level @ids) of objects and their types. Some objects do not have roots, so None stands for a blank node.

>>> pprint(runSparql(conn,"select ?s ?type { ?s a ?type }"))
[{'s': 'cocktail1', 'type': 'Cocktail'},
 {'s': None, 'type': 'Individual'},
 {'s': None, 'type': 'Vehicle'},
 {'s': 'tesla', 'type': 'Offering'},
 {'s': 'place1', 'type': 'Place'},
 {'s': None, 'type': 'Offer'},
 {'s': None, 'type': 'AggregateRating'},
 {'s': 'hippieoil', 'type': 'Product'},
 {'s': 'person-3', 'type': 'Person'},
 {'s': 'person-2', 'type': 'Person'},
 {'s': 'person-1', 'type': 'Person'},
 {'s': 'person-1000', 'type': 'Person'},
 {'s': 'event1', 'type': 'Event'}]
>>>

We do not see the full URIs for ?s and ?type. You can see them by adding an appropriate formatargument to runSparql, but the default is terse.

>>> pprint(runSparql(conn,"select ?s ?type { ?s a ?type } limit 2",format='ntriples'))
[{'s': '<http://franz.com/cocktail1>', 'type': '<http://franz.com/Cocktail>'},
 {'s': None, 'type': '<http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1#Individual>'}]
>>>

Retrieving a Dictionary or Object

retrieve is another function defined (in jsonld_tutorial_helper.py) for this tutorial. It is a wrapper around SPARQL to help extract objects. Here we see how we can use it. The sole purpose of retrieve is to retrieve the JSON-LD/dictionary based on a SPARQL pattern.

>>> retrieve(conn,"{?this a ical:Event}")
[{'@type': 'ical:Event', 'ical:location': 'New Orleans Arena, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA', 'ical:summary': 'Lady Gaga Concert', '@id': 'ical:event1', '@context': {'xsd': 'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#', 'ical': 'http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/ical#', 'ical:dtstart': {'@type': 'xsd:dateTime'}}, 'ical:dtstart': '2011-04-09T20:00:00Z'}]
>>>

Ok, for a final fun (if you like expensive cars) example: Let us find a thing that is “fast and furious”, that is worth more than $80,000 and that we can pay for in cash:

>>> addNamespace(conn,"gr","http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1#")
>>> x = retrieve(conn, """{ ?this fti:match 'fast furious*';
                          gr:acceptedPaymentMethods gr:Cash ;
                          gr:hasPriceSpecification ?price .
                    ?price gr:hasCurrencyValue ?value ;
                           gr:hasCurrency "USD" .
                    filter ( ?value > 80000.0 ) }""")
>>> pprint(x)
[{'@context': {'foaf': 'http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/',
               'foaf:page': {'@type': '@id'},
               'gr': 'http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1#',
               'gr:acceptedPaymentMethods': {'@type': '@id'},
               'gr:hasBusinessFunction': {'@type': '@id'},
               'gr:hasCurrencyValue': {'@type': 'xsd:float'},
               'pto': 'http://www.productontology.org/id/',
               'xsd': 'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#'},
  '@id': 'http://example.org/cars/for-sale#tesla',
  '@type': 'gr:Offering',
  'gr:acceptedPaymentMethods': 'gr:Cash',
  'gr:description': 'Need to sell fast and furiously',
  'gr:hasBusinessFunction': 'gr:Sell',
  'gr:hasPriceSpecification': {'gr:hasCurrency': 'USD',
                               'gr:hasCurrencyValue': '85000'},
  'gr:includes': {'@type': ['gr:Individual', 'pto:Vehicle'],
                  'foaf:page': 'http://www.teslamotors.com/roadster',
                  'gr:name': 'Tesla Roadster'},
  'gr:name': 'Used Tesla Roadster'}]
>>> x[0]['@id']
'http://example.org/cars/for-sale#tesla'



Gartner Identifies Top 10 Data and Analytics Technology Trends for 2019

According to Donald Feinberg, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, the very challenge created by digital disruption — too much data — has also created an unprecedented opportunity. The vast amount of data, together with increasingly powerful processing capabilities enabled by the cloud, means it is now possible to train and execute algorithms at the large scale necessary to finally realize the full potential of AI.

“The size, complexity, distributed nature of data, speed of action and the continuous intelligence required by digital business means that rigid and centralized architectures and tools break down,” Mr. Feinberg said. “The continued survival of any business will depend upon an agile, data-centric architecture that responds to the constant rate of change.”

Gartner recommends that data and analytics leaders talk with senior business leaders about their critical business priorities and explore how the following top trends can enable them.

 

Trend No. 5: Graph

Graph analytics is a set of analytic techniques that allows for the exploration of relationships between entities of interest such as organizations, people and transactions.

The application of graph processing and graph DBMSs will grow at 100 percent annually through 2022 to continuously accelerate data preparation and enable more complex and adaptive data science.

Graph data stores can efficiently model, explore and query data with complex interrelationships across data silos, but the need for specialized skills has limited their adoption to date, according to Gartner.

Graph analytics will grow in the next few years due to the need to ask complex questions across complex data, which is not always practical or even possible at scale using SQL queries.

https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-02-18-gartner-identifies-top-10-data-and-analytics-technolo




What is the Answer to AI Model Risk Management?

Algorithm-XLab – March 2019

Franz CEO Dr. Jans Aasman Explains how to manage AI Modelling Risks.

AI model risk management has moved to the forefront of contemporary concerns for statistical Artificial Intelligence, perhaps even displacing the notion of ethics in this regard because of the immediate, undesirable repercussions of tenuous machine learning and deep learning models.

AI model risk management requires taking steps to ensure that the models used in artificial applications produce results that are unbiased, equitable, and repeatable.

The objective is to ensure that given the same inputs, they produce the same outputs.

If organizations cannot prove how they got the results of AI risk models, or have results that are discriminatory, they are subject to regulatory scrutiny and penalties.

Strict regulations throughout the financial services industry in the United Statesand Europe require governing, validating, re-validating, and demonstrating the transparency of models for financial products.

There’s a growing cry for these standards in other heavily regulated industries such as healthcare, while the burgeoning Fair, Accountable, Transparent movementtypifies the horizontal demand to account for machine learning models’ results.

AI model risk management is particularly critical in finance.

Financial organizations must be able to demonstrate how they derived the offering of any financial product or service for specific customers.

When deploying AI risk models for these purposes, they must ensure they can explain (to customers and regulators) the results that determined those offers.

Read the full article at Algorithm-XLab.




Why Is JSON-LD Important To Businesses?

Forbes – February 2019

Although you may not have heard of JavaScript Object Notation Linked Data (JSON-LD), it is already affecting your business. Search engine giant Google has mentioned JSON-LD as a preferred means of adding structured data to webpages to make them considerably easier to parse for more accurate search engine results. The Google use case is indicative of the larger capacity for JSON-LD to increase web traffic for sites and better guide users to the results they want.

Expectations are high for JSON-LD, and with good reason. It effectively delivers the many benefits of JSON, a lightweight data interchange format, into the linked data world. Linked data is the technological approach supporting the World Wide Web and one of the most effective means of sharing data ever devised.

In addition, the growing number of enterprise knowledge graphs fully exploit the potential of JSON-LD as it enables organizations to readily access data stored in document formats and a variety of semi-structured and unstructured data as well. By using this technology to link internal and external data, knowledge graphs exemplify the linked data approach underpinning the growing adoption of JSON-LD — and the demonstrable, recurring business value that linked data consistently provides.

Read the full article at Forbes.




Unraveling the Quandary of Access Layer versus Storage Layer Security

InfoSecurity – February 2019

Dr. Jans Aasman was quoted in this article about how AllegroGraph’s Triple Attributes provide Storage Layer Security.

With horizontal standards such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and vertical mandates like the Fair Credit Reporting Act increasing in scope and number, information security is impacted by regulatory compliance more than ever.

Organizations frequently decide between concentrating protection at the access layer via role-based security filtering, or at the storage layer with methods like encryption, masking, and tokenization.

The argument is that the former underpins data governance policy and regulatory compliance by restricting data access according to department or organizational role. However, the latter’s perceived as providing more granular security implemented at the data layer.

 

A hybrid of access based security and security at the data layer—implemented by triple attributes—can counteract the weakness of each approach with the other’s strength, resulting in information security that Franz CEO Jans Aasman characterized as “fine-grained and flexible enough” for any regulatory requirements or security model.

 

The security provided by this semantic technology is considerably enhanced by the addition of key-value pairs as JSON objects, which can be arbitrarily assigned to triples within databases. These key-value pairs provide a second security mechanism “embedded in the storage, so you cannot cheat,” Aasman remarked.

 

When implementing HIPPA standards with triple attributes, “even if you’re a doctor, you can only see a patient record if all your other attributes are okay,” Aasman mentioned.

 

“We’re talking about a very flexible mechanism where we can add any combination of key-value pairs to any triples, and have a very flexible language to specify how to use that to create flexible security models,” Aasman said.

 

Read the full article at InfoSecurity.




The Semantic Knowledge Graph: A Tribute

Dataversity – January 2019

Noam Chomsky, the philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and father of modern linguistics, has authored over 1,000 articles and 130 books. The 89-year-old intellectual also has written films and appeared in many documentaries. The substantial work he has done in linguistics and politics has earned him the title of “most cited living author.”

Now his work is the subject of the Noam Chomsky Knowledge Graph, the first Semantic Knowledge Graph for a public figure. “Doing a Semantic Project of all he has written or said is a fabulous tribute to a man who has made a big contribution to the study of language and its meaning,” says Fred Davis, Executive Director of the Chomsky Knowledge Graph project.

Dr. Jans Aasman was quoted:

“A good thing about Semantic Technology is that it’s easier to add new information than if you have a highly structured database. That’s because of the way things are stored in triples — where you have a subject, predicate, and object relationship—so you can bring in new information that instantly connects to other information,” says Dr. Jans Aasman, CEO of Franz.

Read the full article at Dataversity

 

 




Semantic Web and Semantic Technology Trends in 2019

Dataversity – January 2019

What to expect of Semantic Web and other Semantic Technologies in 2019? Quite a bit. DATAVERSITY engaged with leaders in the space to get their thoughts on how Semantic Technologies will have an impact on multiple areas.

Dr. Jans Aasman, CEO of Franz Inc. was quoted several times in the article:

Among the semantic-driven AI ventures next year will be those that relate to the healthcare space, says Dr. Jans Aasman, CEO of Semantic Web technology company Franz, Inc:

“In the last two years some of the technologies were starting to get used in production,” he says. “In 2019 we will see a ramp-up of the number of AI applications that will help save lives by providing early warning signs for impending diseases. Some diseases will be predicted years in advance by using genetic patient data to understand future biological issues, like the likelihood of cancerous mutations — and start preventive therapies before the disease takes hold.”

 

If that’s not enough, how about digital immortality via AI Knowledge Graphs, where an interactive voice system will bring public figures in contact with anyone in the real world? “We’ll see the first examples of Digital Immortality in 2019 in the form of AI Digital Personas for public figures,” says Aasman, whose company is a partner in the Noam Chomsky Knowledge Graph:

“The combination of Artificial Intelligence and Semantic Knowledge Graphs will be used to transform the works of scientists, technologists, politicians, and scholars like Noam Chomsky into an interactive response system that uses the person’s actual voice to answer questions,” he comments.

“AI Digital Personas will dynamically link information from various sources — such as books, research papers, notes and media interviews — and turn the disparate information into a knowledge system that people can interact with digitally.” These AI Digital Personas could also be used while the person is still alive to broaden the accessibility of their expertise.

 

On the point of the future of graph visualization apps, Aasman notes that:

“Most graph visualization applications show network diagrams in only two dimensions, but it is unnatural to manipulate graphs on a flat computer screen in 2D. Modern R virtual reality will add at least two dimensions to graph visualization, which will create a more natural way to manipulate complex graphs by incorporating more depth and temporal unfolding to understand information within a time perspective.”

 

Read the full article at Dataversity.




Solving Knowledge Graph Data Prep with Standards

Dataversity –  December 2018

There’s a general consensus throughout the data ecosystem that Data Preparation is the most substantial barrier to capitalizing on data-driven processes. Whether organizations are embarking on Data Science initiatives or simply feeding any assortment of enterprise applications, the cleansing, classifying, mapping, modeling, transforming, and integrating of data is the most time honored (and time consuming) aspect of this process.

Approximately 80 percent of the work of data scientists is mired in Data Preparation, leaving roughly 20 percent of their jobs to actually exploiting data. Moreover, the contemporary focus on external sources, Big Data, social and mobile technologies has exploded the presence of semi-structured and unstructured data, which accounts for nearly 80 percent of today’s data and further slows the preparation processes.

Read the full article at Dataversity.

 

 




AllegroGraph named to 2019 Trend-Setting Products

Database Trends and Applications –  December 2018

You can call it the new oil, or even the new electricity, but however it is described, it’s clear that data is now recognized as an essential fuel flowing through organizations and enabling never before seen opportunities. However, data cannot simply be collected; it must be handled with care in order to fulfill the promise of faster, smarter decision making.

More than ever, it is critical to have the right tools for the job. Leading IT vendors are coming forward to help customers address the data-driven possibilities by improving self-service access, real-time insights, governance and security, collaboration, high availability, and more.

To help showcase these innovative products and services each year, Database Trends and Applications magazine looks for offerings that promise to help organizations derive greater benefit from their data, make decisions faster, and work smarter and more securely.

This year our list includes newer approaches leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation as well as products in more established categories such as relational and NoSQL database management, MultiValue, performance management, analytics, and data governance.

 

Read the AllegroGraph Spotlight




Knowledge Graphs — The path to true AI

Published in SD Times – December, 2018

Knowledge is the foundation of intelligence— whether artificial intelligence or conventional human intellect. The understanding implicit in intelligence, its application towards business problems or personal ones, requires knowledge of these problems (and potential solutions) to effectively overcome them.

The knowledge underpinning AI has traditionally come from two distinct methods: statistical reasoning, or machine learning, and symbolic reasoning based on rules and logic. The former approach learns by correlating inputs with outputs for increasingly progressive pattern identification; the latter approach uses expert, human-crafted rules to apply to particular real-world domains.

Read the full article at SD Times.