Knowledge-based and Software Systems Group

Upcoming Open Mic - FAIR Digital Objects

2026-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

The Open mic session starts on Friday 17 April 2026 at 10:30 on this link. The speaker is Michal Med, who attended FAIR Digital Objects Conference which took place in Wien from 24th to 27th March 2026.

The problem

Larger and larger amounts of data are being generated every day while complexity of global data space is increasing expotentially. It will be more nad more difficult to work with all available data in a machine actionable way. Concept of FAR Digital Objects was designed to work with data as active autonomous units carrying all the information to understand them both by humans and computers in the science and research context. It ensures that data are uniquely identified, clearly described and accessible accornig to the clear instructions and conditions.

FAIR Principles

FAIR Digital Objects are based on the FAIR Principles, which are:

Findability,
Accessibility,
Interoperability,
Reusability.

Fair Digital Objects as a solution

Major purpose of FDOs is to crate a Web of FAIR data, where scientists will spend time with actually using and analysing data, rather than finding it, cleaning it and preparing for use. In this open mic presentation, Michal will explain FAIR principles and FDO purpose in more detailed way, defines data spaces and finally introduces what are the key aspects on achieving the goals in FAIR Digital Objects.

Upcoming Open Mic - Development and Debugging of Docker Services (part 2)

2026-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

The Open mic session starts on Friday 20 March 2026 at 10:30 via this link. The speaker is Miroslav Blaško, who will talk about the development of Docker-based services at KBSS.

The abstract

The aim of this talk is to introduce alternative ways how to develop Docker services that are orchestrated using Docker Compose. When dealing with a large number of interdependent services, it is usually complicated to develop individual services. Instead of running all the dependent services from IDE separately, we elaborate on the idea of reusing the orchestration from the Docker Compose setup. Two major alternative solutions to address this use case were introduced in previous talk with the first one explained in detail and demonstrated using an example Docker Compose setup. The second talk of the two-part series explains the second solution in detail and compare it to the first one, hopefully leading to discussion about standardization of the development within the KBSS group.

Upcoming Open Mic - Is your SPARQL query portable?

2026-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

On Friday 6th March 2026 at 10:30 Petr Křemen – a former leader of KBSS group – talks about case for generating event report data for the evaluation of a dashbportability of SPARQL queries

Join the session at this link.

Abstract

Although SPARQL 1.1. is a W3C recommendation, its gray zones allow SPARQL engines decide on different evaluation semantics. I will discuss several such cases (e.g. DESCRIBE, FILTER/OPTIONAL evaluation) and how SPARQL engines approach their evaluation.

Due to Peter’s wish, content and record will not be published.

Jana Ahmad Defended Her PhD Thesis

2026-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

Jana Ahmad spent several years at the KBSS group working on her doctoral research under the supervision of Petr Křemen. Her research interest included conceptual modeling and optimization of query answering based on data structure. On March 3, she successfully defended her dissertation thesis titled Towards Queries Optimization Based on Unified Foundational Ontology:A Study in Safety Engineering Domain.

Congratulations, Dr. Ahmad!

Generating Synthetic Event Report Data for Software Evaluation

2026-02-20T00:00:00+00:00

On Friday 20 February 2026 Bogdan Kostov held an Open Mic session with the topic "Generating Synthetic Event Report Data for Software Evaluation"

Abstract

Real world data is required to evaluate different scenarios of an information/data software system. However, real world data are often not available to developers due to privacy, security and scarcity issues. This session will start with an introduction to data generation and a brief review of data generation techniques. The rest of the session summarizes a case for generation of safety-event report data to demonstrate/evaluate a dashboard application for monitoring safety indicators.

The presentation slides are available at this link.

Upcoming Open Mic - Generating Synthetic Event Report Data for Software Evaluation

2026-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

On Friday 20 February 2026 at 10:30 Bogdan Kostov is going to talk about case for generating event report data for the evaluation of a dashboard application.

Join the session at this link.

Abstract

TermIt: proposal of changes to underlying ontologies

2026-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

On Friday 23 January 2026 Martin Ledvinka held an Open Mic session with the topic "TermIt: proposal of changes to underlying ontologies."

Abstract

TermIt is a SKOS-compatible terminology management system developed by the KBSS. It was created with a certain methodology in mind. However, several use cases and years of real-world experience present have shown the methodology needs to be updated, requiring changes to the ontologies underlying TermIt.

In this session, we discuss what these changes are and in particular how they will affect existing deployments of TermIt.

The changes discussed are:

Translation of the ontologies underlying TermIt into English
Simplification of the vocabulary-glossary-model construct

The presentation slides are available at this link.

Upcoming Open Mic - TermIt: proposal of changes to underlying ontologies

2026-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

On Friday 23 January 2026 at 10:30 Martin Ledvinka is going to talk about proposed changes to the ontologies underlying TermIt. Join the session at this link.

Abstract

TermIt is a SKOS-compatible terminology management system developed by the KBSS. It was created with a certain methodology in mind. However, several use cases and years of real-world experience present a chance to update the ontologies underlying TermIt to better reflect the needs of users and to increase the system’s potential into the future.

In this talk, we will discuss:

Translation of the ontologies underlying TermIt into English
Simplification of the vocabulary-glossary-model construct
Implications of the proposed changes to existing deployments

Publishing RDF metadata in dedicated catalogues

2026-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

On Friday, 9th January 2026, at 10:30, Michal Med talked about effective publishing of RDF-based metadata (based on RDF top-level vocabularies for metadata description, such as SKOS, Dublin Core, DCAT, etc.).

Problem definition

The current approach to research data leads to the need for a catalogue solution, which will be able to consume RDF-based metadata regardless of its nature - whether it is a book, a map, a manuscript, material data observation, or a chemical experiment protocol. In one of the previous open mic sessions we have introduced Czech Core Metadata Model – a DCAT extension metadata profile designed to describe common properties of research data with possibility to be exteded for the needs of specific scientifiec fields.

But as the researchers provide the metadata in RDF-based serializations of CCMM and DCAT(-AP), there is still a need to catalogize the metadata in an RDF-based catalogue, which allows the use of the capabilities of the RDF approach, such as searching the domain-specific metadata properties. Many ‘catalogues’ are now based on the dataset repositories (!), which flatten the graph metadata model and are then very ineffective in discovery, searching, and statistical dashboards.

The problem may be defined as looking for effective way to publish machine readable metadata in a catalogue that allows lossless discovery of all relevant information for various purposes, from finding relevant data to overall statistics about published data, creating dashboards and reusing and interconnecting data.

Piveau catalogue as an solution

Tha basic assumption is that data are properly described with metadata based on concepts from top level metadata ontologies, such as SKOS[1], Dublin Core[2], DCAT[3] etc. This is something that is already taken into account in the process of creation of metadata profiles. But it is also important to publish metadata using the catalogues that allow users to fully utilize the benefits of using graph metadata.

In this talk, we took a specific data management ecosystem called Piveau [4] as a metadata catalogue for publishing and harvesting metadata from various providers. This tool is used (among others) as a metadata catalogue for European data portals and is among possible candidates to be used in building the Czech node of the European Open Science Cloud [5] as a metadata management tool and catalogue.

The talk described the multilevel architecture of the environment, consisting of a storage part (Hub), a harvesting part (Consus), and validation and reporting tools (Metrics). In the practical part, it is shown how to create a catalogue, import metadata, or harvest it from a remote catalogue. Piveau is based on Virtuoso triple store and DCAT-based metadata profiles, allows user management using Keycloak, and indexing in Elasticsearch. Typical flow starts with original resources, harvesting them, analysing and discovering them, and reusing them in other tools, such as statistical dashboards. Most of the tools use UI only for end users, catalogue and metadata management is usually done using API, described in Piveau hub-repo service.

Presentation slides can be found here.

Upcoming Open Mic - Publishing RDF metadata in dedicated catalogues

2025-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

On Friday 9th January 2026 at 10:30 Michal Med will talk about effective publishing of RDF based metadata (based on RDF top level vocabularies for metadata description, such as SKOS, Dublin Core, DCAT etc.). You can join us live at this link.

Abstract

In the recent years, more and more projects and initiatives focus on publication of (not only) open data in the machine readable form. This is however related to the discovery of information about published dataset for various reasons, from finding relevant data sources to the overall statistics about published data, creating dashboards or reusing and interconnecting data. For all these targets, the data must be properly described with metadata. In various fields of research, various metadata profiles are well-known and widely used. It is best practice to reuse top level concepts of metadata ontologies, such as SKOS[1], Dublin Core[2], DCAT[3] etc. This is something that is already taken into account in the process of creation of metadata profiles. But it is also important to publish metadata using the catalogues that allow users to fully utilize the benefits of using graph metadata.

In this talk we will dicuss how the RDF metadata are usually published, which tools are used and how can it be enhanced. The focus is aimed at the data management ecosystem called piveau[4] as a metadata catalogue for publishing and harvesting metadata from various providers. This tool is used as a metadata catalogue for european data portals and we are thinking about using it in the Czech node of European Open Science Cloud [5] as a metadata management tool and catalogue.

Knowledge-based and Software Systems Group

Upcoming Open Mic - FAIR Digital Objects

The problem

FAIR Principles

Fair Digital Objects as a solution

Further reading:

Upcoming Open Mic - Development and Debugging of Docker Services (part 2)

The abstract

Upcoming Open Mic - Is your SPARQL query portable?

Abstract

Jana Ahmad Defended Her PhD Thesis

Generating Synthetic Event Report Data for Software Evaluation

Abstract

Further reading:

Upcoming Open Mic - Generating Synthetic Event Report Data for Software Evaluation

Abstract

Further reading:

TermIt: proposal of changes to underlying ontologies

Abstract

Further reading:

Upcoming Open Mic - TermIt: proposal of changes to underlying ontologies

Abstract

Publishing RDF metadata in dedicated catalogues

Problem definition

Piveau catalogue as an solution

Upcoming Open Mic - Publishing RDF metadata in dedicated catalogues

Abstract