Knowledge Graphs

Foreword

The winners in the data industry know where the puck is going: making data smarter. This can be accomplished by integrating data with knowledge at scale, and this is where knowledge graphs come in. This book is a practical guide to understand what knowledge graphs are and why you should care. Importantly, it strikes the right balance between technical aspects and corresponding business value for an organization. If you need to make the business case for knowledge graphs, this is the book for you!

Let’s first talk about the elephant in the room: RDF versus property graphs. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed my conversations with Jesús Barrasa on this topic. We have always been strong believers that these technologies will converge because at the end of the day, it’s all just a graph! This book is evidence of this convergence: enriching the property graph model with taxonomies, ontologies, and semantics in order to create knowledge graphs. And don’t forget that the conversation should focus on the business value and not just the technology.

How do you get started on your knowledge graph journey?

First, one of my mantras is don’t boil the ocean. This means that your knowledge graph journey should start simple, be practical, and focus on the business return coming from the right amount of semantics. Second, I always say that you need to crawl, walk, and run. Crawling means to start by creating a knowledge graph of your metadata that catalogs the data within your organization. I’m ...