IMDB Vocabulary Specification

Namespace Document 6 June 2006

Latest version:
http://ontologies.umbc.edu/imdb/1.0/
Previous version:
2005-06-03 (html, rdf)
Last revised:
$Date: 2006/06/11 12:23:15 $
Revision:
$Revision: 2 $
Authors:
Tim Finin
Contributors:
Sasikanth Avancha, Srikanth Kallurkar, Tapan Kamdar
Valid XHTML 1.0!



Status of This Document

NOTE:This specification is an evolving document. The bulk of this document is now generated by combining the RDFS/OWL machine-readable FOAF ontology with a set of per-term documents. The remaining sections require serious attention; we are well aware that better examples and tighter intro text are needed. Rather than try to perfect things offline, we are switching over to the new spec as it brings a lot of new explanatory text into view.

Our editorial TODO list includes: fix table of contents, reorg intro text, add examples, fix CSS, find a strategy to allow XHTML validation while embedding RDF (currently document won't validate). The spec-management scripts should also be extended to generate an index of FOAF terms organised by status (ie. 'unstable','testing' or 'stable') as well as to expose OWL information about FOAF classes and properties, such as 'mutually disjoint' classes, 'inverse' properties, etc.

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document.

This document is produced as part of the RDFWeb FOAF project, to provide authoritative documentation of the contents, status and purpose of the RDF/XML vocabulary and document formats known informally as 'FOAF'.

The authors welcome comments on this document. Please send comments on this document to the FOAF developers list rdfweb-dev@vapours.rdfweb.org; public archives are available. This document may be updated or added to based on implementation experience, but no commitment is made by the authors regarding future updates (todo: link to stability info re FOAF properties, also need to explain extensibility model).

This document contains embedded XML/RDF statements defining and describing the FOAF vocabulary.

Recent Changes

Table of Contents


IMDB At A Glance

An a-z index of IMDB terms, by class (categories or types) and by property.

Classes:

Properties:

1 Introduction: IMDB

The IMDb is a large database consisting of relevant and comprehensive information about movies - past, present and future. It began as a set of shell scripts and data files. The data files were a collection of email messages exchanged between users of the rec.arts.movies Usenet bulletin board. These movie fans exchanged information on actors, actresses, directors etc. and biographical information about various moviemakers. At some point, these data files were made searchable using commands built by the shell scripts. The current database uses Perl and its builtin support for the Berkeley DBM database structure and almost all the software used for searching the database is written in Perl. The fuzzy search routines are implemented in C. The website is served using the Apache web server using the mod_perl extensions for tighter integration of the server and database. The message boards are provided using the WWWThreads discussion forum system. The U.S based website is served using machines running Digital Unix, while the European website is served using Intel based PCs running FreeBSD.

It is interesting to note that the company makes available all data files and software required to construct a copy of the database on any PC for non-commercial use. Currently the database can be constructed and accessed locally through various interfaces like plain text files, LaTex files and a non-graphical Windows interface.