Slides from my talk at the 3rd KRDB school on Trends in the Web of Data, September 18, Brixen-Bressanone, Italy.
http://www.inf.unibz.it/krdb/school/2010/
1. The GoodRelations Ontology
for E-Commerce
3rd KRDB School on
Trends in the Web of Data (KRDB-2010)
Brixen-Bressanone, Italy,
17-18 September 2010
Prof. Dr. Martin Hepp
Professur für Allgemeine BWL, insbesondere E-Business
6. Macroeconomic Impact
Transaction Costs:
> 50 % of the
US GDP (1970)
John Joseph Wallis and Douglas C. North:
Measuring the Transaction Sector in the
American Economy, 1870 – 1970
(1986)
18.09.2010 6
7. Key Driver of Search Costs:
Specificity
How much you loose when you can‘t
use a good for what it was designed.
15. The WWW: A Giant Data Shredder
Source: Recipient:
Structured Data Unstructured Text
18.09.2010 15
16. What is Linked Data Linked
loves
Susi Martin
1 2 3 4
18.09.2010 16
17. What is Special About E-Commerce Data?
1
2 RDBMS
3
4 $$$
18.09.2010 17
18. GoodRelations: A Global Schema for
Commerce Data on the Web
Extraction
Arbitrary Query and Reuse
Manufacturers
Retailers
Payment
Delivery
Product Model Warranty
Master Data Shop Spare Parts &
Offerings Auctions Consumables
18.09.2010 18
19. On the Shoulders of Giants
A Unified View of Commerce Data
on the Web
18.09.2010 19
21. Valuable Types of Links:
Product - Product Model
Photo credits: Flickr.com, available
under CC BY 2.0 by bsabarnowl
Ford T
Data- gr:hasMakeAndModel
sheet
Often via strong, non-URI identifiers like EAN/UPC
18.09.2010 21
22. Valuable Types of Links:
Offer – Store(s)
XYZ
gr:availableAtOrFrom
for $
99
18.09.2010 22
25. Immanuel Kant on Ontologies
& Linked Data
„Thoughts without content are empty,
intuitions without concepts are blind.“
Critique of Pure Reason (1781)
1. Ontologies without data are useless
2. Data without ontologies is blind
18.09.2010 25
26. In other words: Schemas Matter
Photo credits: Flickr.com, available
under CC BY 2.0 by dnorman
Otherwise your data is just landfill…
18.09.2010 26
27. Albert Einstein on Schema Design
"Make everything as simple as possible, but
not simpler.“
Albert Einstein
18.09.2010 27
29. Subtle Distinctions Foster Data Reuse
• Product Offer
– „You can buy or lease my house“
• Store Business entity
– „How many Tesco stores are in London?“
• Product Product Model
– „How many digital cameras by Canon are
listed on eBay“?
18.09.2010 29
31. 18.09.2010
Ontology Economics
Hepp, Martin: Possible Ontologies: How Reality Constrains the
Development of Relevant Ontologies, in: IEEE Internet Computing,
31
Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 90-96, Jan-Feb 2007
33. Ontology Engineering
• Generic model
– Stable distinctions
– Easy to populate
– Incremental Enrichment
• Good textual elements
• Good documentation
• Tool support for the entire tool chain
18.09.2010 33
35. Basic Structure of Offers:
Agent-Promise-Object Principle
Object or
Agent 1 Promise
Happening
Compensation Transfer of
Rights
Agent 2
35
36. The Minimal Scenario
• Scope
– Business entity
– Points-of-sale
– Opening hours
– Payment options
• Suitable for
– Every business
– E-commerce and
brick-and-mortar
36
37. The Simple Scenario
• Scope: Minimal scenario plus
– Range of products or services
– Business functions
– Eligible regions or customer
types
– Delivery options
• Suitable for
– Any business: E-Commerce and
brick-and-mortar
– Specific products or services
37
38. The Comprehensive Scenario
• Scope: Simple scenario plus
– Individual products or services
– Product features
– Pricing, rebates, etc.
– Availability
• Suitable for
– Any business: E-commerce and
brick-and-mortar
– Specific products or services
– Structured product database
38
39. Product Model Data Scenario
• Scope
– Individual product
models
– Quantitative and
qualitative features
• Suitable for
– Manufacturers of
commodities
39
44. Alternative Ways of Describing the
Product or Service
• Omit it
– Minimal Example: Describe just your business & store
• gr:ProductOrServiceSomeInstancesPlaceholder + rdfs:comment
– Textual
• Product or service ontology
– eclassOWL
– freeClass
• DBPedia URIs
• Turn proprietary hierarchy into pseudo-ontology
18.09.2010 44
45. Impact and Success
• One of the few vocabularies implemented
by major businesses out of their own
budgets
• BestBuy, O’Reilly, Overstock.com,…
• Ca. 16 % of all triples as of now
• Supported by Yahoo
• Bing, Google may join
18.09.2010 45
50. GoodRelations Design Principles
• Keep simple things Lightweight Heavyweight
simple and make Web of Data Web of Data
complex things
possible LOD OWL DL
• Cater for LOD and OWL RDF + a little bit
DL worlds
• Academically sound
• Industry-strength
engineering
• Practically relevant
18.09.2010 50
66. Crawling, Update, Federation
(1) Shop data changes every 1..24 h
(2) Can you harvest the data from 1,000,000
shop sites just via
– Sitemap.xml with proper lastmod
attribute
– RDFa inside the pages
18.09.2010 66