Tomasz Pluskiewicz

Biography

For the past three years I have been working with Zazuko, mostly building Knowledge Graphs of Swiss open data. In the past I worked with graph technologies in MakoLab in Łódź, Poland

I am a long time contributor, and now de-facto maintainer of Hydra Community Group and also active in the area of RDF/JS specifications and tools.

As a long time RDF enthusiast and .NET developer, in the past I would have also been an active contributor to dotNetRDF, the leading RDF library for the .NET Framework and .NET Core.

Talks and Events

2022 Tutorial: Bridging the gap between business domains and Knowledge Graphs

Knowledge Graphs are most commonly presented as a flexible alternative to data warehouses or data lakes. Granted, semantic technology offers superior expressiveness and analytic potential but a great effort remains to actually construct the graphs from disparate sources, such as tabular data, XML, relational databases or APIs. This reduces the role of Knowledge Graphs to the equivalent of an OLAP engine, no matter how flexible.

On the other hand, sophisticated software solutions exist dedicated to building Knowledge Graphs from the ground up. Unfortunately, they are sometimes described as “silos” albeit backed by a RDF. still lacking the openness towards interoperability promised by Linked Data. Closed ecosystems, complicated user interfaces and difficult access to the graph itself prevents their usefulness in creating user-facing software fulfilling complex business requirements and data integrations.

In parallel to the evolution of Knowledge Graphs, the software industry in general has been developing many technologies and techniques helping teams deliver the correct solutions their customers need. Modeling approaches, such as Domain-Driven Design tactical patterns and Event Storming, help analyse and understand the business domain. Various implementations arise to put these rich models to life, including event-driven architecture, CQRS, Web APIs, and microservices, to name a few buzzwords. Sadly, with the even increasing number of technologies, frameworks, APIs, etc, data becomes more and more disconnected and isolated. The effect is quite the opposite from the openness and connectivity promised by Knowledge Graphs. This does not mean, however, that there isn’t a great deal of potential in the industry outside semantic technologies, yet it is often overlooked or dismissed.

During this tutorial I would like to present a set of JavaScript tools which provide a flexible and standards-based foundation for building Knowledge Graphs more similar to “traditional” application software than graphy data warehouses. The goals include embedding as much of the business domain as possible in the graph while retaining the ability to capture complex, case-specific logic, precise access control to the graph, and using open standards. At the same time, the development should more closely resemble typical software than powering through complex, specialized graph-building UIs. 

Less code, more graph, and one hundred percent Open Source! Everyone is most welcome to contribute to all software used throughout the tutorial.