Query-Based Multicontexts for Knowledge Base Browsing
Julien Tane · Repository KITopen (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) · 2007
The amount of accessible information is rising at a great pace. At the same time, the need to grasp and understand information becomes even more crucial. To achieve this, it is important to improve the interaction between users and data collections. Querying and browsing are the two main kinds of interaction with complex data. It is crucial to be able to combine them efficiently and effectively. On the one hand, the purpose of querying is to return the precise content of some part of a large data collection, but requires some knowledge of the data model to query it. On the other hand, browsing usually combines relational exploration with some sort of topic or conceptual hierarchy, allowing the user to interact with the data to refine or adapt the representation to his specific needs. However, current techniques cannot mix both approaches successfully to offer an exploration paradigm capable of displaying complex relationships in the data. In this thesis, we propose a new approach to create and navigate contextual views by integrating browsing and querying to explore complex data collections such as knowledge bases. Inspired by existing techniques from the field of Formal Concept Analysis, we introduce a new structure called Query-based multicontext. This structure can be seen as the space of views over the data collection. Each view is generated from a data source using a query-based intensional representation of their content. We further define different operators as well as a generic template mechanism which simplify the view definition process. As a main application of the approach, we designed and implemented a knowledge base browser relying on different strategies to define pertinent views. Finally, we evaluated our work in two manners. First, we discuss the benefits of our knowledge browsing approach with respect to other approaches found in the literature. Then we compared the performance of users on diverse visualisation tasks when using one of three visualisation. To Philipp and Jorge, for their patience... 0.1. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5 0.1 Acknowledgements After spending so much time at a weary task, fighting so many different negative feelings such as frustration, disappointment, which sometimes lead you to the road of depression, you really know then how important friends and colleagues have been in the final success. The least I can do is to show my gratitude with these few lines. First of all I want to thank Philipp Cimiano and Jorge Gonzales for their support at a turning point of my life as well as the many discussions and frustrations which they had to endure. In particular, I want to tell my utmost respect and gratitude to Philipp for the time, energy he needed in trying to keep me focused. I would like to express my extreme gratitude to Prof. Studer and Stumme for offering me the possibility to begin and finish this thesis in the most comfortable positions. Thanks to their wise guidance, the work atmosphere of their research groups have been ideal for the work I had to do. Their calm, understanding and professionalism have been exemplary during the whole time. Thanks to Dr. Philipp Cimiano again and Dr. Pascal Hitzler for many crucial comments and corrections which improved the quality of this thesis greatly. I owe also many thanks to all the proof and comment readers of my thesis or of parts of it: Philipp Cimiano, Prof. Studer, Prof. Stumme, Pascal Hitzler, Daniel Oberle, Raphael Volz, as well as to my brother Pierre and my dear friend Etienne Ailloud who read many pages of my dissertation and gave me a more in dependant feedback. My work would have not been such a pleasure, if my colleagues had not been so fun to work with, not to mention their excellent work. I want to mention in particular Christoph Schmitz, Siegfried Handschuh, Philipp Cimiano, Andreas Hotho, Duc Thanh Tran and Prof. Stumme for their patience. A special thank you goes to Christoph, with whom I cooperated closely for the PADLR project and who made useful comments on the early idea behind this thesis. A great thank to Boris Motik and Serhiy Yevtushenko, whose works have served as a solid basis for much of my own work. Once someone said: ’Go to a woman...’ when you need to pump up your confidence. This has proved to be true for me to a point that I want to thank many different women for their cares and words but also for their just being there. So thanks to Saartje Brockmann, Sventje Dieter, Sofia Pinto, Julia Rothmann, Julia Dernbach, Juliane Pasch, Lotta Koch, Frederieke Layer, Jenny Ross, Sylvie, Friede und die Swerge Konigin. A special ’thank you Saarjte’ goes to Saartje Brockmann for the right words at a very crucial moment. I must also thank my flat mates: Hartmut Aichert, Jens Pliester and Yimin Wang for all their useful comments, their friendship and their tolerance. My gratitude goes to Klaus Tager whose friendship and presence has meant much to me during this time. For coming often to Karlsruhe and many great discussions, I also thank Etienne. For somewhat useful comments on life, much fun and many interesting discussions, thanks to Jochen and Toby. Last but not least, since they were always there for me, I want to thank my family, especially my mother and father, but also my brothers as well as Karin Grankvist Tane who all know how to remind but also forgive me my many shortcomings. Thanks to my uncle, aunts, cousins and cousines, who I