This new release, UMBEL version 1.05, is both a vocabulary for modeling subject domains and a set of 28,000 connected topics that act as a reference structure for mapping concepts and information on the Web. These concepts form a coherent and logical graph structure that can further be used for reasoning and inference tasks. UMBEL's big graph structure can be viewed, navigated and explored, as well as queried via a roster of Web services and ontology browsing.

The first set of new UMBEL mappings is to schema.org, a collection of schema (usable as HTML tags) that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major search providers. schema.org was first developed and organized by the major search engines of Bing, Google and Yahoo!; later Yandex joined as a sponsor. Now many groups are supporting schema.org and contributing vocabularies and schema. UMBEL is now mapped to 298 different types of schema.org entities, encompassing many million individual things.

The second mapping is to GeoNames, a reference vocabulary of more than 8 million places. These places are organized according to some 671 codes that span from geopolitical divisions -- such as countries, states or provinces, cities, or other administrative districts -- to types of physical terrain, above ground and underwater, and on to regions and landscape features governed by human activities from vineyards to lighthouses. These codes are the basis for mapping to the UMBEL structure, which then provides a coherent way to organize the millions of places.

"These most recent mappings expand our earlier mappings to sources like Wikipedia; they affirm our five-year commitment to make UMBEL one of the pivotal reference structures for the semantic Web," said Michael Bergman, Structured Dynamics' CEO and co-editor of UMBEL with Fred Giasson. "We look forward to working with the community on further enhancements, as well as to use this newest version in our own client work," he added.

Besides Structured Dynamics, Ontotext AD is also a sponsor of the open source UMBEL ontology.

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About Structured Dynamics LLC

Structured Dynamics assists enterprises and non-profit organizations to adopt Web-accessible and interoperable semantic data. The basic premise is that the data itself becomes the application. Via structured, linked data and a combination of semantic technologies and Web services, information in any form and from any source can now be integrated and made interoperable. The company Web site is at http://structureddynamics.com; it is headquartered in Coralville, IA.

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This new portal is based on SD's Open Semantic Framework (OSF), and specifically the structWSF platform-independent Web services. The new portal contains both upgraded existing Web services and some exciting new ones.

The new UMBEL portal is a fairly classic example of an OSF installation. The content management system hosting the system is Drupal, supplemented with a standard set of third-party modules and SD's own conStruct semantic technology modules. The theme is a stripped-down modification of the popular Pixture Reloaded theme. Like other vocabulary sites, the UMBEL contains specifications and links to community resources and downloads. It also has some specialty links not shown on typical standards sites.

Today's release announcement is to be followed by detailed posts describing the notable features and Web services of the site.

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About Structured Dynamics LLC

Structured Dynamics assists enterprises and non-profit organizations to adopt Web-accessible and interoperable semantic data. The basic premise is that the data itself becomes the application. Via structured, linked data and a combination of semantic technologies and Web services, information in any form and from any source can now be integrated and made interoperable. The company Web site is at http://structureddynamics.com; it is headquartered in Coralville, IA.

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UMBEL's 28,000 reference concepts and their relationships help organize, link and present heterogeneous datasets and information on the Web. UMBEL lowers the time and effort to develop, maintain and use ontologies, and to align them with other content.

UMBEL is derived from the Cyc knowledge base. UMBEL's reference concepts are mapped to Wikipedia, DBpedia ontology classes, GeoNames and PROTON.

"We held off on designating a version 1.00 [of UMBEL] until it had been tested and deployed sufficiently to warrant production use," said Michael Bergman, CEO of Structured Dynamics and one of the two co-founding editors of UMBEL with Frédérick Giasson. "We're pleased to signal that UMBEL is now ready for prime time," he added.

"This is a major step forward to provide a reference structure for knitting content together on the Web," said Ontotext's CEO, Atanas Kiryakov. "We plan to incorporate this new release immediately into our FactForge knowledge platform, already the largest and best performing reasoning engine for linked data," he added.

In broad terms, here is what is included in the new version 1.00:

• A core structure of 27,917 reference concepts (RCs), an increase of 36% over the prior version
• The clustering of those concepts into 33 mostly disjoint SuperTypes (STs)
• Direct RC mapping to 444 PROTON classes
• Direct RC mapping to 257 DBpedia ontology classes
• An incomplete mapping to 671 GeoNames features
• Direct mapping of 16,884 RCs to Wikipedia (categories and pages); 60% of UMBEL is now mapped to Wikipedia
• The linking of 2,130,021 unique Wikipedia pages via 3,935,148 predicate relations; all are characterized by one or more STs with 876,125 also assigned a specific type
• And, some vocabulary changes, including some new and some dropped predicates.

UMBEL's basic vocabulary can also be used for constructing specific domain ontologies that can easily interoperate with other systems.

Both Kiryakov and Bergman emphasized this release was an important first step to linking UMBEL with Wikipedia as a "gold standard" for ontological, semantic Web and disambiguation purposes. They noted future releases will extend these mappings, including with other important reference structures on the Web.

Access and More Information

UMBEL is open source, provided under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. All documentation from the prior v 0.80 has been updated, and some new documentation has been added:

• UMBEL Specifications (and Annexes A - H)
• UMBEL Vocabulary
• UMBEL RefConcepts.

Major updates were made to the specifications and Annex G; Annex H is new. Minor changes were also made to Annexes A and B.

All UMBEL files are listed on the Downloads and SVN page on the UMBEL Web site. The reference concept and mapping files may also be obtained from http://code.google.com/p/umbel/source/browse/#svn/trunk. 

To learn more about UMBEL (Upper Mapping and Binding Exchange Layer) or to participate in its ongoing use and development, here are some additional links:

• UMBEL Web site
  
• Discussion group
• LinkedIn group.
  

Acknowledgements

These latest improvements to UMBEL and its mappings have been undertaken by Structured Dynamics and Ontotext. Support has also been provided by the European Union research project RENDER, which aims to develop diversity-aware methods in the ways Web information is selected, ranked, aggregated, presented and used.

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About Ontotext AD

Ontotext is the leading provider of core semantic technology, such as OWLIM, the most scalable semantic database engine, and KIM, the most popular semantic annotation and search platform. Its FactForge and LinkedLifeData services provide unmatched linked data access and management capabilities. Ontotext provides professional services for text mining and semantic data integration; its customers include AstraZeneca, BBC and Korea Telecom. The company Web site is at http://ontotext.com; it is headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria.

About Structured Dynamics LLC

Structured Dynamics assists enterprises and non-profit organizations to adopt Web-accessible and interoperable semantic data. The basic premise is that the data itself becomes the application. Via structured, linked data and a combination of semantic technologies and Web services, information in any form and from any source can now be integrated and made interoperable. The company Web site is at http://structureddynamics.com; it is headquartered in Coralville, IA.

Press Contacts:

Here are the major changes in UMBEL v. 0.80.

• #1: Clarification of Dual Role - this version clarifies and separates files for UMBEL's dual roles. The UMBEL Vocabulary of classes and predicates is used to describe domain ontologies, with the specific aim of promoting interoperability with external datasets and domains. The UMBEL Reference Concept Ontology with its 21,000 general reference concepts acts as binding nodes for mapping relevant Web-accessible content, also with the specific aim of promoting interoperability
• #2: Reference Concepts and Predicate Simplification - another set of major changes was the simplification and streamlining of the predicates and construction of the UMBEL Vocabulary
• #3: SuperTypes - the 21,000 reference concepts were "clustered" into more than 30 mostly disjoint natural groupings called SuperTypes. Fully 75% of the reference concepts in the UMBEL ontology are disjoint with one another
• #4: OWL 2 Compliance - the vocabulary and ontology were converted to OWL 2 in order to: 1) use OWL reasoners; 2) load the full UMBEL into leading ontology editors; 3) use the OWL API, consistent with many other ontology tools under development; and 4) take advantage of a trick in OWL 2 called “punning“, a technique that allows concepts to be used in ontologies as either classes or instances, depending on context, and
• #5: Documentation and Packaging - documentation was streamlined and simplified and a new project Web site was unveiled.

This release is in preparation for a follow-on UMBEL v. 1.00. This next version will provide mappings to leading ontologies and knowledge bases, as well as the upgrade of existing Web services and other language support features.

For Further Information

UMBEL's co-editors are Michael Bergman and Frédérick Giasson of Structured Dynamics. Additional information may be found at:

• UMBEL Web site
• UMBEL Specifications (and Annexes A - G)
• Discussion Group
• Downloads and SVN
• UMBEL Vocabulary
• UMBEL RefConcepts.

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About Structured Dynamics LLC

Structured Dynamics assists enterprises and non-profit organizations to adopt Web-accessible and interoperable semantic data. The basic premise is that the data itself becomes the application. Via structured, linked data and a combination of semantic technologies and Web services, information in any form and from any source can now be integrated and made interoperable. The company Web site is at http://structureddynamics.com; it is headquartered in Coralville, IA.

About Ontotext AD

Ontotext is the leading provider of core semantic technology, such as OWLIM, the most scalable semantic database engine, and KIM, the most popular semantic annotation and search platform. Its FactForge and LinkedLifeData services provide unmatched linked data access and management capabilities. Ontotext provides professional services for text mining and semantic data integration; its customers include AstraZeneca, BBC and Korea Telecom. The company Web site is at http://ontotext.com; it is headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Press Contacts:

CORALVILLE, IA, October 25, 2010 -- Ontotext, a leading semantic technology company for the past 10 years, and Structured Dynamics, an innovator in ontology-driven open source applications, have formed a strategic partnership to address some of the key semantic gaps in the semantic Web. The partnership will focus on development of the next generation of the UMBEL and PROTON ontologies, as well as tools and applications based on them.

Volumes of linked data on the Web are exploding. This growth is exposing two key weaknesses: 1) inadequate semantics for how to link disparate information together that recognizes inherently different contexts and viewpoints; and 2) a lack of coherent reference concepts by which to aggregate and organize this linkable content. The combination of UMBEL and PROTON offers a powerful blend to address these weaknesses.

The partnership will first provide a logical mapping and consolidated framework based on the two core ontologies. These will be made available as standard ontologies and via open source semantic annotation tools.

This consolidated framework will then be applied to organize and characterize the Wikipedia online encyclopedia. One expression of this will be a new version of Ontotext's FactForge, already the largest and best performing reasoning engine leveraging linked data. This new version will allow easy access to the most central Linking Open Data (LOD) datasets such as DBpedia, Freebase, and Geonames, through the vocabularies of UMBEL and PROTON. Additional applications in linked data mining and general tagging of standard Web content are also contemplated by the partnership.

"Ontotext's proven reasoning technologies and ability to host extremely large knowledge bases with great performance are unbelievable boons to the next iteration of UMBEL," said Michael Bergman, CEO of Structured Dynamics and one of the two co-founding editors of UMBEL with Frédérick Giasson. "We have been seeking large-scale coherency testing of UMBEL for some time and Ontotext is the perfect answer," he said.

Ontotext's CEO, Atanas Kiryakov, indicated their interest in UMBEL stemmed from what they saw as some stumbling blocks with linked data while developing FactForge. "The growth and maturation of linked data will require credible ways to orient and annotate the data," said Kiryakov. "UMBEL is the right scope of comprehensiveness and size to use as one foundation for this," he said. Ontotext is also the original developer and current maintainer of PROTON, which will also contribute in this role.

The efforts of the partnership will first be seen with release of UMBEL v. 0.80 in the next couple of weeks. This update revises many aspects of the ontology based on two years of applied experience. The broader mappings and linkages to Wikipedia are earmarked for UMBEL version 1.00, slated for release by the end of the year.

Among other intended uses, PROTON, UMBEL and FactForge form a layered reference data structure that will be used for data integration within the European Union research project RENDER. The large-scale RENDER project aims to integrate diverse methods in the ways Web information is selected, ranked, aggregated, presented and used.

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UMBEL (Upper Mapping and Binding Exchange Layer) is both a vocabulary for building domain ontologies and a framework of more than 20,000 reference concepts. The UMBEL reference ontology is used to tag information and map existing schema in order to help link content and promote interoperability. UMBEL's reference concepts and structure are a direct subset extraction of the Cyc knowledge base.

The PROTON ontology (PROTo ONtology) is a basic upper-level ontology that contains about 300 classes and 100 properties, providing coverage of the general concepts necessary for a wide range of tasks, including semantic annotation, indexing, and retrieval of documents. It is domain independent with coverage suitable to encompass any domain or named entity.

About Ontotext AD

Ontotext is the leading provider of core semantic technology, such as OWLIM, the most scalable semantic database engine, and KIM, the most popular semantic annotation and search platform. Its FactForge and LinkedLifeData services provide unmatched linked data access and management capabilities. Ontotext provides professional services for text mining and semantic data integration; its customers include AstraZeneca, BBC and Korea Telecom. The company Web site is at http://ontotext.com; it is headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria.

About Structured Dynamics LLC

Structured Dynamics assists enterprises and non-profit organizations to adopt Web-accessible and interoperable semantic data. The basic premise is that the data itself becomes the application. Via structured, linked data and a combination of semantic technologies and Web services, information in any form and from any source can now be integrated and made interoperable. The company Web site is at http://structureddynamics.com; it is headquartered in Coralville, IA.

Press Contacts: