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Published in:
2011 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Smeagol: A “Specific-to-General” Semantic Web Query Interface Paradigm for Novices
Authors : Aaron Clemmer, Stephen Davies
Published in: Database and Expert Systems Applications
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
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Most Semantic Web query interfaces let the user give an abstract specification of the desired results (perhaps using facets, or a natural language query.) We introduce the Smeagol visual query interface which, by contrast, guides the user from a specific example to a general result set. Users begin the query process with navigation and exploration activities, building a concrete subgraph of interest from the larger data set. They then generalize this subgraph to find other subgraphs similar in some way to the one identified. Among other advantages, this approach also lends itself quite naturally to querying on instance-based data; i.e., triples in which the predicate is not part of a defined ontology. We provide an analysis of this specific-to-general approach, contrasting it with existing systems. We also present the results of a usability experiment comparing novices’ use of Smeagol with that of a standard Linked Data browser.