Wikidata:Orb Open Graph

The Orb Open Graph is an experimental graph query service, currently offering a real-time Wikidata Query Service with no timeout. Other data graphs can be added on demand.^[1] We are also considering other data APIs such as an identifier mapping service.

This service, under development by a community member since 2019, rose out of frustrations with Wikidata Query Service timeouts as the size of query responses grew. There is a growing opportunity for apps that plug into an open data graph, such as Scholia and DAAP, and this creates a need to scale query services beyond the Wikimedia Foundation's servers. The service entered private beta testing in 2022 and public beta in 2024.

Try it out

https://try.orbopengraph.com

This frontend operates directly on top of a Blazegraph endpoint with no caching.

https://query-direct.orbopengraph.com/bigdata/namespace/wdq/sparql

This endpoint is load-balanced but not cached. Please do not use it for production web apps.

If you are interested in a cached endpoint for app development, contact User:Harej, who can provide you with a dedicated API key.

Scheduled queries

Queries added to Wikidata:Orb Open Graph/Queries will be submitted at periodic intervals, with the results cached for viewing via the frontend user interface as well as JSON.

Query templates

You can configure query templates that, once supported, will enable API-based access to configured prefabricated queries. Just bring your own values to substitute in the template.

Technical details

This service is largely similar to the private-wikidata-query repository previously published. This Docker Compose-based setup allows you to operate your own Wikidata Query Service with web frontend and HTTPS terminating proxy. This in turn draws off of earlier work by Wikimedia Deutschland to facilitate private Wikibase deployments. To this setup, Orb Open Graph adds caching, which was very hard to get right (and will probably be more work to perfect). Cloudflare is used for load balancing.

The cached endpoint at https://query-api.orbopengraph.com is read-only without an authorization key. New queries can be submitted with an authorization key. The aforementioned query-direct endpoint allows for the submission of new queries without an authorization key, but there are no pre-cached results.

There are two instances of the frontend. The "try" variant linked above connects directly to its own Blazegraph endpoint (one "try" frontend per Blazegraph server), with the "try" subdomain load balancing between the two. There is also https://results.orbopengraph.com which works off of the app API and therefore does not allow the submission of new queries.

Contact

For more information contact Harej:

Special:EmailUser/Harej
jamesscatter.red
Mastodon: @hare@wikis.world

Notes

↑ Currently this is limited to standalone Wikibases with their own properties, which means no federated Wikibases such as Wikimedia Commons. We will post updates as this changes.

[1] Currently this is limited to standalone Wikibases with their own properties, which means no federated Wikibases such as Wikimedia Commons. We will post updates as this changes.

[1]