SemTK: An Ontology-first, Open Source Semantic Toolkit for Managing and Querying Knowledge Graphs

TL;DR

SemTK is an open-source, user-friendly toolkit that simplifies the ingestion, exploration, and querying of knowledge graphs for both experts and non-experts, addressing usability gaps in semantic web tools.

Contribution

It introduces SemTK, a comprehensive toolkit with an intuitive interface for managing and querying knowledge graphs without requiring deep semantic expertise.

Findings

Enables non-experts to import data into semantic stores easily

Provides an intuitive web interface for exploring ontologies and data

Facilitates simplified query generation for users of varying expertise

Abstract

The relatively recent adoption of Knowledge Graphs as an enabling technology in multiple high-profile artificial intelligence and cognitive applications has led to growing interest in the Semantic Web technology stack. Many semantics-related tools, however, are focused on serving experts with a deep understanding of semantic technologies. For example, triplification of relational data is available but there is no open source tool that allows a user unfamiliar with OWL/RDF to import data into a semantic triple store in an intuitive manner. Further, many tools require users to have a working understanding of SPARQL to query data. Casual users interested in benefiting from the power of Knowledge Graphs have few tools available for exploring, querying, and managing semantic data. We present SemTK, the Semantics Toolkit, a user-friendly suite of tools that allow both expert and non-expert semantics users convenient ingestion of relational data, simplified query generation, and more. The exploration of ontologies and instance data is performed through SPARQLgraph, an intuitive web-based user interface in SemTK understandable and navigable by a lay user. The open source version of SemTK is available at http://semtk.research.ge.com