Welcome to the Semantics and Visualisation Blog. This Blog was initially created as as place for presenting thoughts and ideas around my PhD Project. It is now continued as a general means of discussing and publishing things around visualisation of semantically rich or linked open data.

The aim of this work is to propose a way to model how to visualize RDF data, the RDFS/OWL Visualization Language (RVL). It is a declarative language for sharing visualization settings for RDF, similar to CSS for HTML. The contribution is that unlike styling or presentation languages for RDF or pure visualization languages, RVL combines rich visual mapping capabilities with the direct awareness of RDFS/OWL language constructs. Moreover, the mapping definitions can be shared together with the data to be visualized. They can be also published at a URI, which facilitates their extension and reuse.

Information on how to visualize RDF data is stored differently by each visualization tool to date. We propose the RDFS/OWL Visualization Language (RVL), a declarative language for sharing visualization settings as simple as CSS styles. The mapping definitions can be given a URI and shared along with the data to be visualized, they can be composed, extended and reused. The declarative approach has the benefit that this can be done independently of specific platforms. Unlike styling or presentation languages for RDF or pure visualization languages, RVL combines rich visual mapping capabilities with the direct awareness of RDFS/OWL language constructs.

Whenever people interact with data from the semantic web, this data has to be transformed into a human understandable representation. However, depending on the domain, szenario, and intention of a user, a different view on the data is optimal. In this project a technology shall be investigated that allows defining how to visualize which data in the most easy and flexible way. By using formalized knowledge of graphic experts and guidance from the system this shall be possible for all users. The visualization shall not be bound to a certain output platform to support the usage on various devices.