Features and supplementary functions

From semantic-mediawiki.org

This page should help users unfamiliar with the variety of functions and features of Semantic MediaWiki to find assistance about available features

General features[edit]

This general list of features should give you an overview, what SMW (often in combination with other extensions) is capable of.

Feature Description Extension
Semantic annotations Annotate text with enhanced wikitext (:: syntax) for making links and data explicit. SMW core
Semantic templates Setting of properties via templates, mostly done with the #set parser function. SMW core
Defining properties and datatypes Properties are of type page by default but can be declared using several datatypes including custom units. The declaration is done using wikitext in the Property: namespace SMW core
Record provenance metadata Recording provenance metadata as reference to improve the context of a claim SMW core
Managing multilingual content Localization1 and the capability of supporting multilingual environments SMW core and Semantic Interlanguage Links
Querying of data Internal querying of data via #ask parser function, to be displayed in several basic formats or passed on the templates SMW core
Browsing and searching Special search options, e. g. via Special:Ask, Factbox or Special:Browse. SMW core
Data curation Methods for data curation ("semantic gardening") SMW core
Semantic Web standards OWL/RDF representation of data, reusing external vocabularies, SHACL SMW core
TripleStore support Storage of semantic data in several triple stores as alternative to the MediaWiki SQL database SMW core
Elastic search support Moving query heavy computation to an external entity SMW core
API API for querying and editing SMW core, MediaWiki
Data export Export of data in formats like RDF, JSON, CSV etc. Semantic Result Formats
Data visualization Visualization of data in various formats Semantic Result Formats, Modern Timeline, Maps, Network and other extensions
Form-based data input Input of data using predefined forms Page Forms, WSForm
Data import Importing structured data via CSV or XML files or from external sources Data Transfer, External Data
Faceted search Special search options for filtering query results Semantic Result Formats, Semantic Drilldown

Many more features are part of the MediaWiki ecosystem (MediaWiki core and dedicated extensions) and independend of SMW. Examples can be found here.

Detailed list of features[edit]

Some of the listed features (or supplementary functions) are not enabled by default providing administrators a tool to customize the wiki for the specific needs of their audience. Those listed feature and while not exhausted are considered to contain an considerable investment in terms of technical effort and time to provide a better experience around and with Semantic MediaWiki.

Feature introduced with: 3.21
Semantic MediaWiki 3.2 adds the issue panel to provide an instrument to collect issues (see figure 1) that occurred as part of the integrity check process
Feature introduced with: 3.12
Added with Semantic MediaWiki 3.1.0 and can assigned an attributive characteristic to a property so that annotated values do appear in the same sequence
If enabled, allows the tracking of embedded queries and record their dependencies so that changes to these dependencies will trigger a re-parse of pages that have those queries embedded.
Feature introduced with: 3.03
The so called property group feature was introduced with Semantic MediaWiki 3.0.0Released on 11 October 2018 and compatible with MW 1.27.0 - 1.31.x. by which properties that belong to a classified category are displayed as a group on special page "Browse".
The ElasticStore was introduced as part of Semantic MediaWiki 3.0 to provide a powerful and scalable Query Engine that relies on the Elasticsearch search platform.
Özellik grubu özelliği, sınıflandırılmış bir kategoriye ait özelliklerin "Gözat" sayfasında bir grup olarak görüntülendiği Semantic MediaWiki  3.0.0Released on 11 October 2018 and compatible with MW 1.27.0 - 1.31.x. ile tanıtıldı.
Feature introduced with: 2.51
Provides a cache layer for query results to help reduce the amount of queries required to display result matches.