Distributed Knowledge Graphs 1

UNC SILS, INLS 620, Fall 2025

August 19
Introduction to the course

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 1,000 words

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Recurse Center. “Social Rules,” n.d. https://www.recurse.com/social-rules.
    1,000 words

August 21
GitHub and GitHub Classroom

View notes Updated Thursday 8/21 12:19 PM

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. GitHub, Inc. “Start Your Journey: Learn the Basics of GitHub.” GitHub Docs, 2024. https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/start-your-journey.

August 21
Hello world assignment available

August 26
Visual Studio Code and Codespaces

View notes Updated Tuesday 8/26 11:09 AM

Total amount of required viewing for this meeting: 14 minutes

πŸ“Ί To view before this meeting:

  1. Microsoft, β€œLearn Visual Studio Code in 7min.”

    View. 7 minutes
    Viewing tips

    You can follow along at https://vscode.dev.

  2. Microsoft, β€œUsing Git with Visual Studio Code.”

    View. 7 minutes

August 28
GitHub Copilot

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 2,300 words

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. GitHub, Inc. “What Is GitHub Copilot?” GitHub Docs, 2024. https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/about-github-copilot/what-is-github-copilot.
  2. Butterick, Matthew. “GitHub Copilot Investigation,” 2022. https://githubcopilotinvestigation.com.
    2,300 words

August 28
Hello world assignment due

September 2
Forms of data

View notes Updated Tuesday 9/2 11:25 AM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 12,800 words

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Shaw, Ryan. “The Forms of Descriptions (Part 1),” 2022. PDF.
    4,300 words
  2. Shaw, Ryan. “The Forms of Descriptions (Part 2),” 2022. PDF.
    8,500 words

September 4
(Semantic) data modeling I

View notes Updated Thursday 9/4 8:37 AM

Total amount of required viewing for this meeting: 19 minutes

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 8,000 words

Data modeling is the design of a formal language intended to aid communication and mediate among different purposes and perspectives.

πŸ“Ί To view before this meeting:

  1. Posner, Miriam. What Is Linked Open Data?, 2021.

    View. 19 minutes

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “What Is the Semantic Web?” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 1–18. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    8,000 words

September 9
(Semantic) data modeling II

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 7,000 words

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “Semantic Modeling.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 19–35. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    7,000 words

September 9
Data modeling assignment available

September 11
The Web I

View notes Updated Thursday 9/11 11:19 AM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 10,200 words

The (World Wide) Web is an Internet-scale distributed hypermedia system. It exists by means of voluntary compliance with open communication protocols and data format standards.

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Richardson, Leonard, and Mike Amundsen. “Surfing the Web.” In RESTful Web APIs, 1–16. Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly, 2013. PDF.
    4,500 words
  2. Hogan, Aidan. “Introduction.” In The Web of Data, 1–14. Springer, 2020. PDF.
    5,700 words
    Reading tips

    Focus on section 1.2 (β€œThe Current Web”), pages 6–14.

September 16
The Web II

View notes Updated Tuesday 9/16 12:17 PM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 4,900 words

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Richardson, Leonard, and Mike Amundsen. “Resources and Representations.” In RESTful Web APIs, 29–43. Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly, 2013. PDF.
    4,900 words
  2. Optional
    Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “Linked Data.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 85–118. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    11,600 words

September 16
Data modeling assignment due

September 18
RDF: terms, triples, graphs I

View notes Updated Thursday 9/18 11:01 AM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 7,000 words

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a conceptual model for structuring information into triples that can be combined into graphs.

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. DuCharme, Bob. “What Is RDF?,” June 27, 2021. https://www.bobdc.com/blog/whatisrdf/.
    2,100 words
  3. Schreiber, Guus, and Yves Raimond. “RDF Data Model.” In RDF 1.1 Primer. W3C, 2014. https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-primer/#section-data-model.
    1,300 words

September 18
The Web assignment available

September 23
RDF: terms, triples, graphs II

View notes Updated Thursday 9/25 11:24 AM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 7,000 words

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “RDF—The Basis of the Semantic Web.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 37–67. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    7,000 words
  2. Optional
    Hogan, Aidan. “Resource Description Framework.” In The Web of Data, 59–109. Springer, 2020. PDF.
    10,000 words
  3. Optional
    W3C. “RDF 1.1 Concepts and Abstract Syntax,” February 25, 2014. https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-concepts/.

September 25
RDF: serializations I

View notes Updated Thursday 9/25 11:24 AM

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 5,100 words

Because RDF is a purely conceptual model, it does not specify how data should be written down or serialized. There are several alternative standards for serialization.

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Schreiber, Guus, and Yves Raimond. “Writing RDF Graphs.” In RDF 1.1 Primer. W3C, 2014. https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-primer/#section-graph-syntax.
    2,900 words
  2. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “Alternatives for Serialization.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 68–63. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    2,200 words

September 30
RDF: serializations II

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 5,000 words

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Hogan, Aidan. “RDF Syntaxes.” In The Web of Data, 94–109. Springer, 2020. PDF.
    5,000 words
  2. Optional
    Sporny, Manu. What Is JSON-LD?, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vioCbTo3C-4.

September 30
The Web assignment due

October 2
Ryan is out of town

I will be be out of town, so we will not meet today.

October 7
Well-being day

Due to the well-being day, we will not meet today.

October 9
RDF Schema and RDF vocabularies I

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 2,200 words

RDF Schema is a data modeling language layered on top of the basic RDF conceptual model. It provides additional tools for describing classifications and collections of resources.

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. DuCharme, Bob. “What Is RDFS?,” July 25, 2021. https://www.bobdc.com/blog/whatisrdfs/.
    1,500 words
  2. Schreiber, Guus, and Yves Raimond. “RDF Vocabularies.” In RDF 1.1 Primer. W3C, 2014. https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-primer/#section-vocabulary.
    700 words

October 14
RDF Schema and RDF vocabularies II

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 11,300 words

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “RDF Schema.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 201–32. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    11,300 words
  2. Optional
    Hogan, Aidan. “RDF Schema and Semantics.” In The Web of Data, 111–83. Springer, 2020. PDF.
    25,100 words
  3. Optional
    W3C. “RDF Schema 1.1,” February 25, 2014. https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/.
    4,000 words

October 14
RDFS assignment available

October 16
Fall break

Due to fall break, we will not meet today.

October 21
Wikidata and Wikibase I

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 5,100 words

Wikidata is a free and openly editable knowledge base that is published as RDF. Wikibase is the software it runs on.

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Vanderbilt University. “Learn Wikidata.” Accessed January 7, 2022. https://www.learnwikidata.net/.
  2. Vrandečić, Denny, and Markus Krötzsch. “Wikidata: A Free Collaborative Knowledgebase.” Communications of the ACM 57, no. 10 (September 23, 2014): 78–85. https://doi.org/10.1145/2629489.
    5,100 words

October 23
Wikidata and Wikibase II

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 6,800 words

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Wikidata. “Help:Items,” n.d. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Items.
    1,900 words
  2. Wikidata. “Help:Properties,” n.d. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Properties.
    1,200 words
  3. Wikidata. “Help:Statements,” n.d. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Statements.
    1,800 words
  4. Wikidata. “Help:Data Type,” n.d. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Data_type.
    1,900 words
  5. Optional
    Wikibase. “Wikibase/DataModel,” n.d. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/DataModel.
    7,200 words
  6. Optional
    Wikibase. “Wikibase/Indexing/RDF Dump Format,” n.d. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/Indexing/RDF_Dump_Format.
    4,800 words

October 23
RDFS assignment due

October 28
SPARQL I

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 19,200 words

The SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) is a query language for RDF.

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. DuCharme, Bob. “Jumping Right in: Some Data and Some Queries.” In Learning SPARQL: Querying and Updating with SPARQL 1.1, 2nd ed., 1–17. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media, 2013. PDF.
    5,100 words
  2. DuCharme, Bob. “SPARQL Queries: A Deeper Dive.” In Learning SPARQL: Querying and Updating with SPARQL 1.1, 2nd ed., 47–102. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media, 2013. PDF.
    14,100 words

October 28
Wikidata and SPARQL assignment available

October 30
SPARQL II

Total amount of required viewing for this meeting: 45 minutes

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 2,200 words

πŸ“Ί To view before this meeting:

  1. Wikimedia Foundation. Querying Wikidata with SPARQL for Absolute Beginners, 2018.

    View. 45 minutes
    Viewing tips

    You need not watch the entire 111 minutes… the first 45 minutes covers the most important things.

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. “A Gentle Introduction to the Wikidata Query Service.” In Wikidata, n.d. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:SPARQL_query_service/A_gentle_introduction_to_the_Wikidata_Query_Service.
    2,200 words
  2. Optional
    Wikidata. “Wikidata:SPARQL Query Service/Queries,” n.d. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:SPARQL_query_service/queries.

November 4
SPARQL III

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 18,900 words

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “Querying the Semantic Web—SPARQL.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 119–80. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    18,900 words
  2. Optional
    Hogan, Aidan. “SPARQL Query Language.” In The Web of Data, 323–448. Springer, 2020. PDF.
    37,500 words
  3. Optional
    W3C. “SPARQL 1.1 Query Language,” March 21, 2013. https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-query/.

November 6
Shape constraints I

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 19,800 words

Shape constraint languages (SHACL and ShEx) allow us to prescribe a certain β€œshape” for a graph, by requiring or forbidding certain patterns of triples.

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Hogan, Aidan. “Shape Constraints and Expressions.” In The Web of Data, 449–513. Springer, 2020. PDF.
    19,800 words

November 6
Wikidata and SPARQL assignment due

November 11
Shape constraints II

Shape constraint languages (SHACL and ShEx) allow us to prescribe a certain β€œshape” for a graph, by requiring or forbidding certain patterns of triples.

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Wikidata. “Wikidata:WikiProject Schemas,” n.d. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Schemas.

November 11
SHACL and OWL assignment available

November 13
Shape constraints III

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Optional
    Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “Extending RDF: RDFS and SHACL.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 181–200. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    7,400 words

November 18
OWL I

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 12,400 words

The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a data modeling language layered on top of RDF Schema (which is why some parts of OWL are referred to as β€œRDF-Plus.” OWL enables more complex inferences to be drawn from RDF data.

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “RDFS-Plus.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 233–69. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    12,400 words

November 20
OWL II

Total amount of required reading for this meeting: 22,600 words

πŸ“– To read before this meeting:

  1. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “Using RDFS-Plus in the Wild.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 271–302. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    12,600 words
  2. Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “Basic OWL.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 319–51. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    10,000 words
  3. Optional
    Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “SKOS—Managing Vocabularies with RDFS-Plus.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 303–18. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    5,700 words
  4. Optional
    Allemang, Dean, Jim Hendler, and Fabien Gandon. “Counting and Sets in OWL.” In Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 3rd ed., 353–89. ACM Books 33. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. PDF.
    11,500 words
  5. Optional
    Hogan, Aidan. “Web Ontology Language.” In The Web of Data, 185–322. Springer, 2020. PDF.
    49,300 words

November 25–27
Thanksgiving

Due to Thanksgiving, we will not meet this week.

December 2
Semantic data modeling in practice

December 2
SHACL and OWL assignment due