/facet: A browser for heterogeneous semantic web repositories

Facet browsing has become popular as a user friendly interface to data repositories. We extend facet browsing of Semantic Web data in four ways. First, users are able to select and navigate through facets of resources of any type and to make selections based on properties of other, semantically related, types. Second, we address a disadvantage of hierarchy-based navigation by adding a keyword search interface that dynamically makes semantically relevant suggestions. Third, the interface of our browser, /facet, allows the inclusion of facet-specific display options that go beyond the hierarchical navigation that characterizes current facet browsing. Fourth, the browser works on any RDFS dataset without any additional configuration. These properties make /facet an ideal tool for Semantic Web developers that need a instant interface to their complete dataset. The automatic facet configuration generated by the system can then be further refined to configure it as a tool for end users. The implementation is based on current Web standards and open source software. The new functionality we provide is motivated using a scenario from the cultural heritage domain