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Metadata

Revision as of 14:43, 20 January 2016 by Freephile (talk | contribs) (adds "What's It Good For?" section)

Metadata Dialog-information.svg
Summary
Description: Semantic MediaWiki is a large extension of the MediaWiki ecosystem. In wikis where it is deployed such as this one, you can have semantics (meaning) attached to your words and data so that the words and data are meaningful to the system. Your content becomes a database.
More
Notes: Just like the spreadsheet allows knowledge workers to practically generate software applications, Semantic MediaWiki is no less revolutionary. Non-technical staff can create powerful databases with form-entry, reports, validations, etc.
Test: See the Metadata page and it's "info box"
Example: This page (Features) uses Semantic MediaWiki to provide a report on all the pages in the Feature Category


With SMW, using simple markup, called annotations, you create the database. This page is an example of making the annotation. And the Features page shows how those annotations become a usable database.

What's It Good For?

By using semantic data (facilitated by forms and/or templates), you can turn your wiki into a database of events, hikes, multi-faceted employee directory, product or service catalog and virtually any other "database" that you can dream up. The schema of the database is more organic, and doesn't require as much technical know-how to create or modify.

Example Annotations

[[explainsFeature::SemanticMediaWiki]]
The regular inline syntax is very similar to Category syntax except the normal 'Category' keyword is instead the property
[[explainsFeature::SemanticMediaWiki| ]]
If you add a pipe and space character, the annotation will not display a link, so use this form to "hide" the annotation from
{{#set: explainsFeature=SemanticMediaWiki }}
Using the #set parser tag can help with complicated property names or values.

Browse

Pages like Special:Browse/Features-23_QUERY504415247238cca9574ac4fa4bf3fb91 reveal information about the semantic data.

Ask

The Special:Ask page lets you run queries through a form-based wizard making it much easier to get the right query, and the right display