Benjamin Cogrel and Peter Hopfgartner, Ontopic
At the core of the CyclOps platform is the Integrated Knowledge Base (IKB), a unified layer that brings together all the knowledge the platform produces and consumes. The IKB is composed of two complementary types of knowledge graphs. The first is a metadata knowledge graph, which integrates all the metadata generated by CyclOps components using the CyclOps ontology, capturing descriptions, lineage, quality indicators, and usage restrictions across the entire data landscape. The second type consists of data knowledge graphs, which provide direct access to data from sources both internal to the organisation and external, including data arriving through data spaces.
Ontopic Suite manages both kinds of knowledge graphs as virtual knowledge graphs. Rather than copying data into a dedicated graph database, this approach leaves the data in place, in relational databases, data lakes, or other storage systems, and exposes it as a knowledge graph on the fly. The result is fewer redundant copies and data that stays as fresh as the underlying source.
Defining a virtual knowledge graph requires two ingredients: an ontology describing the domain concepts and a mapping that connects tables and columns in the source to the classes and properties of that ontology. When the ontology already exists, Ontopic Suite offers AI-assisted mapping generation to accelerate setup. Alternatively, ontologies and mappings produced by other CyclOps modules can be imported directly.
By combining the metadata and data knowledge graphs within the IKB, users gain a powerful capability: they can query actual data while simultaneously being informed of any usage restrictions that apply to it, ensuring that governance and access go hand in hand.