Development of a Movies
Ontology and a Semantic Web
Application that Suggests Movies
Based on User's Favor Criteria
Yüce TEKOL
Overview
Introduction
 IMDB Ontology
 Cwmovies
 Test Database
 Test 1
 Test 2
 Test 3

Introduction
The Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com) lists details of millions of
movies, tv shows, etc. with many detatils such as the director, the cast and
genre for cinema fans. Being a vast database, it presents a good opportunity to
study and experiment Semantic Web concepts; also, developed tools may be
useful for many people.
Cwmovies is a Python application that recommends movies based on a
user's favor criteria. Cwmovies uses Tim Berner's Lee's Cwm as its
reasoning engine.
IMDB Ontology
The ontology used by Cwmovies is designed in SWOOP. The ontology imports
the IMDB ontology written by Gunnar Aastrand Grimnes, and adds “genre”
property which is missing from it.
IMDB Ontology (cont'd)
Below is the ontology used by Cwmovies.
Cwmovies
Cwmovies is invoked from the command line together with the full path name of
a file which contains the user's favor criteria, such as “the movie should be a
science-fiction movie and its director should be Steven Spielberg” written in N3
query format.
Cwmovies has two functions:
1.Builds the movies database which is in RDF/XML by fetching information
from IMDB.
2.Runs Cwm on the database and the user favor criteria file and interprets the
outputs, finding the movies that correspond to the criteria.
Cwmovies - Screenshot
Cwmovies - Tools
Following tools have been used for the development of Cwmovies:
1.Python 2.4.3 <http://www.python.org>
2.IMDbPy 2.8 <http://imdbpy.sourceforge.net>
3.rdflib 2.3.3 <http://rdflib.net>
4.Pawk 0.0.1 <http://code.google.com/p/py-pawk/>
Test Database
All the tests run on an RDF/XML file which is automatically fetched and
converted by Cwmovies and contains title, year, director and genre
information of 153 movies which are in IMDB's top movies of the
following genres: Crime, Thriller, Horror and Science-fiction.
Test Database (cont'd)
Test 1
Favor criteria
All thriller movies produced after 2000
N3 Query
@prefix dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/> .
@prefix imdb: <http://purl.org/NET/tekol/yuce/2007/imdb-ns#> .
@prefix cwmv: <http://purl.org/NET/tekol/yuce/2007/cwmovies-ns#> .
@prefix math: <http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/math#> .
{ ?x imdb:genre "Thriller".
?x.imdb:year math:greaterThan 2000. }
=> { ?x a cwmv:favorite } .
Test 1 (cont'd)
Results
Batman Begins
Children of Men
Donnie Darko
El Laberinto del Fauno
Hotel Rwanda
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
Minority Report
Serenity
Sin City
Spider-Man 2
The Departed
The Others
V for Vendetta
X2

Test 2
Favor criteria
Any of Francis Ford Coppola's Films
N3 Query
@prefix dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/> .
@prefix imdb: <http://purl.org/NET/tekol/yuce/2007/imdb-ns#> .
@prefix cwmv: <http://purl.org/NET/tekol/yuce/2007/cwmovies-ns#> .
{ ?x imdb:director "Francis Ford Coppola" }
=> { ?x a cwmv:favorite } .
Results
The Conversation
The Godfather
The Godfather: Part II

Test 3
Favor criteria
Crime movies produced between 1960 and 1975
N3 Query
@prefix dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/> .
@prefix imdb: <http://purl.org/NET/tekol/yuce/2007/imdb-ns#> .
@prefix cwmv: <http://purl.org/NET/tekol/yuce/2007/cwmovies-ns#> .
@prefix math: <http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/math#> .
{ ?x imdb:genre "Crime".
?x.imdb:year math:greaterThan 1960.
?x.imdb:year math:lessThan 1975. } => { ?x a cwmv:favorite } .
Test 3 (cont'd)
Results
A Clockwork Orange
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Cape Fear
Chinatown
In Cold Blood
Le Samouraï
The Conversation
The Godfather
The Godfather: Part II
The Sting
Yojimbo

Conclusions
A Semantic Web application that makes use of vast movies database of
IMDb together with an ontology is presented. The system is capable of
presenting movies which conform to user's favor criteria.
Currently, only genre, title, year and director fields can be included in the
query, but adding other fields is not hard.
That's All...