Hey everyone,
i've made a tool that allows you to query Wikidata in a visual way
without using SPARQL. It's called VizQuery:
http://tools.wmflabs.org/hay/vizquery/
The possibilities of using Wikidata to do interesting queries are
endless, and the current query service allows for very powerful
queries indeed. However, i feel that for the general public,
especially those who are not that technical, it might be a bit
overwhelming and difficult for them to learn a complex language such
as SPARQL. To make people familiar with the concept of queries i
believe a somewhat less intimidating approach might be useful, hence
this tool.
VizQuery is only capable of doing a subset of possible queries. It's
basically simple triples, variables (prefixed with '?') and literals
(between "quotes"). You can do pretty powerful queries with only those
things though. For example, here's a query with vegetarians who are
married to a vegetarian:
http://bit.ly/2sydpmW
Under the hood VizQuery uses Ruben Verborgh's SPARQL.js library to
convert between JSON and SPARQL, so theoretically every SPARQL query
you could do in the regular query service can be done in VizQuery.
However, many queries won't work because the visual interface only
supports a subset of options: it's pretty hard to create user-friendly
GUI representations of many of the complex SPARQL features. :)
Anyway, i'd like to hear what you think. Bugs, feature request and
pull requests are also welcome on my Github page:
https://github.com/hay/wiki-tools
Kind regards,
-- Hay