Wiki

The wiki is the central data access point for SwissEx. As well as providing a collaborative web site where all partners in SwissEx may show the latest stage of their research, the SwissEx wiki is a central point for data entry and access.

The SwissEx MediaWiki pages are designed to facilitate collaboration between scientists based at geographically distributed sites.

Basic wiki usage

In its simplest form, the Wiki allows scientists to easily create pages to inform others of the experiments that are taking place and to provide a loosely structured Metadata store for Experiment Centric Static Information, i.e. information on what your project is doing, aims, progress etc. which can easily be searched for specific subjects using the search field. iFrames within the wiki provide data access through GSN and SensorMap.

On a slightly higher level, the MediaWiki (the type of wiki that you are looking at here) can be used with various extensions (providing calendars etc.) for greater experimental organisation within a team of scientists and also for real-time data access through the GSN extension (currently being developed).

'A user guide for the wiki is provided here

Other useful pages are:

If you are not sure how to do something in the wiki, we suggest that you find a page that contains what you want to do, edit it and copy the wiki text.

Use of semantics to provide structured information storage and query retrieval

On a higher level still, the MediaWiki (actually the Semantic MediaWiki) can be used as an organised Metadata store. The start page for the SwissEx fieldsite and sensor metadata store can be found here, although some projects are using the same principal for wider applications. Through the use of semantics, SwissEx users are able to enter metadata, either through simple form based entry or using more flexible wiki text. This is saved in the semantics database operating behind the wiki and can be queried like any other database. The metadata is also queried by the data access tools such as SensorMap using SPARQL to provide metadata along with the queried data.

Some of the advantages of Semantic Mediawiki can be found by browsing the pages found here

Assistance with using semantics within MediaWiki is provided here

Semantics Research

The University of Twente and EPFL-LSIR are carrying out semantics research which feeds into the work carried out in this wiki. During this research, several wiki extensions have been developed:

Random Pages

A simple API for adding a wiki page using a URL [1]

GSN Queries

An extension for integrating GSN query and data display functionality into the wiki [2]

wan1 data accessible

record	24499.0
relative_humidity	74.8
air_temperature	-25.82
wind_speed_scalar_av	0.0
wind_speed_vector_av	0.0
wind_direction	0.0
wind_direction_stdev	0.0
wind_speed_max	0.0
wind_speed_northerly_component	null
wind_speed_westerly_component	null
wind_speed_vertical_component	null
incoming_shortwave_radiation	138.9
outgoing_shortwave_radiation	246.2
incoming_longwave_radiation	230.1
outgoing_longwave_radiation	211.5
timed	04/02/2012 15:00:00 +0100
geographical	Davos, Switzerland.
latitude	46.7952138889
longitude	9.77391388889
altitude	2455
name	WAN1
gps_precision	10
slope	0
exposition	NULL
metadata	http://www.swiss-experiment.ch/index.php/Wannengrat:Wan1

hide data

Powered by GSN, Distributed Information Systems Lab, EPFL 2007

Example code: {{#gsn_status:wan1|http://montblanc.slf.ch:22001}}

Example code: {{#gsn_query_button:wan1|http://montblanc.slf.ch:22001}}

Semantically annotate uploaded files

An extension to solve the file upload limitations in MediaWiki and to support the semantic annotation of uploaded files [3]

Geo-referenced Images

Introduces geo-referenced images and allows you to visualize semantic queries on the image [4]

export map

Example code: {{#semantic_mappoint:Image:Record_NNF_2008_DOP_1m_254.jpg|http://www.giswiki.org/images/1/1b/Reddot.gif|Easting|Northing|[[is a::Record:Piezometer]]|5|770|1|-1|699100|272550|maplink}}

Other Tools

There are many tools available through MediaWiki extensions. Some of these are listed below. If you wish to use a non-standard tool which is not installed, please contact the team at EPFL-LSIR.

Googlemaps

Googlemaps

Example code: {{#ask:[[Category:Fieldsites]][[Deployment Name::+]] |?Deployment Name|?Coordinates |mainlabel=Fieldsite HomePage |limit=10000|format=googlemap|width=750|height=300|map type=physical}}