Fusing search with knowledge graphs at KMWorld 2022

With a focus on what actually works and how graph technology adds value by enriching unstructured data and connecting disparate elements that might otherwise be unknown, knowledge graph leaders confronted the myths and realities of today’s search world at KMWorld 2022.

Joseph Hilger, COO, Enterprise Knowledge, LLC; Helmut Nagy, COO, strategic product manager, Semantic Web Company GmbH; Irene Polikoff, chief evangelist, TopQuadrant focused on all this and more during their session, “Knowledge Graph Technology Today.”

This panel of graph technology experts discussed the role of graphs in the enterprise search world, going beyond the marketing speak to concentrate on real-world examples.

“People want to search, they want to find stuff and that’s the goal of knowledge graphs,” Nagy said.

Hilger started the panel by noting the similarities between search and knowledge graphs. Knowledge graphs adds context and strings to things. They are wonderful aggregators, Hilger said.

He went through a case study regarding a company that didn’t have any way to search for what they needed. Hilger said they used a knowledge graph to pull in information to associate information to explain “why.” Once that information is gathered, it gets pushed to the search engine. Instead of an index routine, you can put it into the graph, it manages the relationships, and changes over time when necessary.

“You see this every day on Google,” Hilger said. “It’s easy in a graph database or a knowledge graph to make these associations.”

Nagy said to him it was always obvious that knowledge graphs work well with search. Semantic Web Company worked with a new government organization in another country that harvests medical information that created a knowledge graph for searching what to do in certain medical situations, Nagy explained.

“Once you start, you’ll realize you can create many applications with a knowledge graph,” Nagy said.

Polikoff presented a use case dealing with wildfires. The Department of Interior fire management program was encountering challenges sifting through information as it came in from other departments within the government. They wanted to create a system to gather that information and interpret it to manage the land and prevent wildfires from happening.

“They decided to go the knowledge graph approach and they have been very happy,” Polikoff said. “You can start small, and you can grow.”

KMWorld returned in-person to the J.W. Marriott in Washington D.C. on November 7-10, with pre-conference workshops held on November 7.

KMWorld 2022 is a part of a unique program of five co-located conferences, which also includes Enterprise Search & Discovery, Office 365 Symposium, Taxonomy Boot Camp, and Text Analytics Forum.