Semantic MediaWiki

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Semantic MediaWiki
MediaWiki
Developed by Wikimedia (Developers)
Latest release 1.1.1 / April 23, 2008
Written in PHP
OS Cross-platform
Genre MediaWiki extension
License GPL
Website Semantic MediaWiki

Semantic MediaWiki is an extension to MediaWiki (the wiki software implementation that Wikipedia and other sites run), that allows for the encoding of semantic data within wiki pages, thus turning a wiki that includes the extension into a semantic wiki. Data that has been encoded can be used in semantic searches, used for aggregation of pages, and exported to the outside world via RDF.

Every semantic annotation within SMW is a property connecting the page on which it resides to some other piece of data, either another page or a data value of some type using RDF triples of the form (subject, predicate, object).

As an example, a page about Berlin could have, encoded within it, the fact it is the capital of Germany. On the page "Berlin", the syntax would be:

 ... is the capital of [[Is capital of::Germany]] ...

which is semantically equivalent to the statement "Berlin" "Is capital of" "Germany". In this example the Berlin page is the subject, Is capital of is the predicate, and Germany is the object that the symantic link is pointing to.

The population of Berlin could also be encoded; the syntax might look like:

 ... its population is [[population::3,993,933]] ...

which is semantically equivalent to the statement "Berlin" "population" = "3993933".

Using SMW's own inline querying tools, a page could then be created that lists all cities with a population greater than 2 million; and Berlin would appear in such a list.

Semantic MediaWiki was initially created by Markus Krötzsch, Denny Vrandečić and Max Völkel, and was first released in 2005. Currently the extension has over 30 developers, and its development is supported by Institute AIFB of Universität Karlsruhe.

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