Building SPARQL queries - Wikidata tutorial by Navino Evans
Channel: Wikimedian in Residence - University of Edinburgh
Date: 2017-10-19

SPARQL Tutorial by Navino Evans (Histropedia) recorded at Repository Fringe on 4 August 2017.

Wikidata is a free linked database of secondary data (facts and statements) that can be read and edited by both humans and machines. Wikidata acts as central storage for the structured data of its Wikimedia sister projects including Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wikisource, and others.

SPARQL is a programming language for querying ‘linked data’ stored on the web. It’s essentially a set of commands that allow you to find exactly the data you want. Learning SPARQL will allow you to query Wikidata, but also the countless other data sources offering a SPARQL query service
E.g. Show me a list of all Female Chemists, along with their date of birth, place of birth, and the map coordinates of their place of birth.

How hard would it be to do that using Google!?!