A review of Freebase.com and the (now deprecated) Metaweb Query Language (MQL). This repo is a response to the increasing attention being given to Facebook's GraphQL, which was released in September 2015. Those who are familiar with MQL may have immediately noticed the similiarities of GraphQL with this now deprecated language.

The Freebase Wikipedia article provides a good overview of the knowledge base's nearly decade-long lifetime from its beginnings at Metaweb Technologies, Inc. in 2007, its acquisition by Google in 2010, and its eventual shutdown and move to Wikidata towards 2015-2016. Freebase data could be accessed through the Freebase API and the online Query Editor with queries written in the Metaweb Query Language (MQL).

Although the shutdown of freebase.com was set for as early as June 30, 2015 according to this initial Google+ post, the actual website was still accessible for quite a long time. On May 2, 2016, freebase.com was finally closed off as announced in this Google Group post. The freebase.com link now redirects to the Google Developers page for the remaining Freebase triples data dumps.

A screenshot of freebase.com on May 2, 2016 before it was shut down.

A data dump of 1.9 billion Freebase triples in N-Triples RDF format is available on the developers page under the CC-BY license. The freebase.com URL also redirects to this page following its shutdown. The file is listed as 22 GB gzip compressed and 250 GB uncompressed on the website, but recent downloads may exceed this size (a May 2016 download amounted to >30 GB compressed and >400 GB uncompressed).

Examining the compressed data with Z commands:

# Scan through the data with zmore or zless
$ zmore freebase-rdf-latest.gz

<https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/american_football.football_player.footballdb_id>    <https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/type.object.type>   <https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/type.property>      .
<https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/american_football.football_player.footballdb_id>    <https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/type.object.name>   "footballdb ID"@en      .
<https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/american_football.football_player.footballdb_id>    <https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/type.property.unique>       "true"  .
<https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/american_football.football_player.footballdb_id>    <https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/type.property.expected_type>        <https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/type.enumeration>   .
<https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/american_football.football_player.footballdb_id>    <https://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label>    "footballdb ID"@en      .

# You can also grep it
$ zgrep '/ns/film.film>' -m 5 freebase-rdf-latest.gz

<https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/film.film_song_relationship.film>   <https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/type.property.expected_type>    <https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/film.film>  .
<https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/film.film_song_relationship.film>   <https://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#range>    <https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/film.film>  .
<https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/g.112ygbz6_>    <https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/type.object.type>   <https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/film.film>  .
<https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/g.112ygbz6_>    <https://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type>   <https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/film.film>  .
<https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/g.113qbnjlk>    <https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/type.object.type>   <https://rdf.freebase.com/ns/film.film>  .

Freebase data is licensed under the CC-BY license. The Freebase API also has additional Terms and Conditions.

The Metaweb Query Language is covered briefly as a part of the Freebase Wikipedia article.

For additional insight, MQL was explained by a Metaweb engineer barakmich on a discourse.cayley.io technical discussion in July 9, 2016:

Metaweb

When Metaweb was getting started, there was graphd. It had a nigh-incomprehensible query language, GQL, that, the theory went, was easy for machines to compile to. As a separate service, we ran MQL, which compiled user and client queries into GQL and parsed the result back out again into . For reference, I joined in early 2008. MQL is an approximately late 2006 into 2007 creation and the query language to graphd predates that a bit.

...

MQL

Anyway, to actually make something for developers, there was the Metaweb Query Language, MQL. The idea was to leverage JSON -- an uncertain bet, at the time, when JSON was still not quite a de-facto lingua franca. JSON, combined with judicious semantics around objects, nulls, keys, and values

The rest of the write up goes over MQL in even more detail, covering various positive and negative points. Interestingly, a look back at MQL years after it was deprecated brings up some nice similarities with the more recent GraphQL by Facebook, as per this comment:

...

I want to call out how insightful it was for its day. It did JSON queries before they were cool. A tree template maps onto a graph (barring a few more advanced cases) in a surprisingly useable way. It was clever and fun. You could do a lot with a little.

There are some clear parallels to what I know about GraphQL, incidentally; a tree-structured template in a language that looks designer-friendly smells a lot like MQL. I'm not sure how to fully reconcile the ideas, though. Open question.

MQL was being rewritten from the ground-up when we were acquired.

Some samples of MQL scripts that I wrote are enclosed as txt files in the mql-queries folder. At the time, I used Python scripts to query the Freebase API with the MQL requests. Due to Python requirements, "None" may need to be replaced with "null" to convert it back into a "pure" MQL query.

The MQL Reference Guide presents the following as a first query using MQL.

	Query:
	{
	  "type" : "/music/artist",
	  "name" : "The Police",
	  "album" : []
	}

	Response:
	{
	  "type": "/music/artist",
	  "name": "The Police",
	  "album": [
	    "Outlandos d'Amour",
	    "Reggatta de Blanc",
	    "Zenyatta Mondatta",
	    "Ghost in the Machine",
	    "Synchronicity",
	  ]
	}

In comparison, the GraphQL documentation offers the following introductory query:

	Query:
	{
	  user(id: 3500401) {
	    id,
	    name,
	    isViewerFriend,
	    profilePicture(size: 50)  {
	      uri,
	      width,
	      height
	    }
	  }
	}

	Response:
	{
	  "user" : {
	    "id": 3500401,
	    "name": "Jing Chen",
	    "isViewerFriend": true,
	    "profilePicture": {
	      "uri": "https://someurl.cdn/pic.jpg",
	      "width": 50,
	      "height": 50
	    }
	  }
	}

The syntax is not exactly the same, but there are notable similarities in the general nested structure and query format. The query request essentially lays out the data structure that should be returned in the response.

As of late 2016, GraphQL continues to be a topic that is brought up on some notable technical forums: Hacker News (Search), Reddit's /r/programming (Search).

These are some further MQL queries. In most cases I have commented out the "return" parameter with "#" (due to the MQL being originally written in Python scripts). The "limit" parameter is also set to a reasonable amount and would have been adjusted accordingly.

Get all food dish topics (topics with /food/dish type):

{
    "name": None,
    "mid": None,
    "type": "/food/dish",
    "count": None,
    #"return": "count",
    "limit": 20,
    "sort": "name",
}

Get food dish topics and their ingredients:

{
    "name": None,
    "mid": None,
    "type": "/food/dish",
    "ingredients": [{
        "mid": None,
        "name": None,
        }],
    "count": None,
    #"return": "count",
    "limit": 100,
    "sort": "name",
}

Get cuisine topics' dishes and their ingredients:

{
    "name": None,
    "mid": None,
    "type": "/dining/cuisine",
    "dishes": [{
        "type": "/food/dish",
        "ingredients": [{
            "mid": None,
            "name": None,
            }],
        "name": None,
        "mid": None,
        "count": None,
        }],
    "count": None,
    #"return": "count",
    "limit": 100,
    "sort": "name",
}

. . .

Following the deprecation of the Freebase APIs, the new Knowledge Graph Search API (KG API) was released by Google on December 16, 2015 (Google+ post). As of April 2016, the new KG API does not support queries written in MQL as it once did on Freebase.

Some sources may no longer be available following the deprecation of the Freebase API on June 30, 2015.

Many Freebase and Knowledge Graph related updates are posted on the once active freebase-discuss Google Group and the Google+ community.

• Jul 16, 2010 (Freebase joining Google) https://groups.google.com/d/msg/freebase-discuss/NkCF1DayKzA/QQufQ9gDwBsJ
• Dec 16, 2014 (timeline for Freebase sunsetting announced) https://plus.google.com/u/0/109936836907132434202/posts/bu3z2wVqcQc and https://groups.google.com/d/msg/freebase-discuss/s_BPoL92edc/Y585r7_2E1YJ
• Mar 26, 2015 (details on Wikidata and new KG API projected) https://plus.google.com/u/0/109936836907132434202/posts/3aYFVNf92A1
• Sep 28, 2015 (short update on KG API) https://plus.google.com/u/0/109936836907132434202/posts/3aYFVNf92A1
• Dec 16, 2015 (KG Search API releasted) https://plus.google.com/u/0/109936836907132434202/posts/iY8NZGFF6DN
• Jan 28, 2016 (KG Search Widget released) https://plus.google.com/u/0/109936836907132434202/posts/MCKpjUpx1H1
• May 02, 2016 (Freebase.com shutdown) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/freebase-discuss/WEnyO8f7xOQ

• https://www.freebase.com/ (shutdown on May 02, 2016, now redirects to the data dumps)
• https://wiki.freebase.com/wiki/Main_Page
• https://wiki.freebase.com/images/8/87/MQLReferenceGuide.pdf (extensive 220 page PDF)

• https://www.google.com/intl/bn/insidesearch/features/search/knowledge.html (Google Inside Search explaining the Knowledge Graph)

Freebase API

• https://developers.google.com/freebase/
• https://developers.google.com/freebase/mql/

Knowledge Graph Search API

• https://plus.google.com/109936836907132434202/posts/iY8NZGFF6DN (released on Dec 16, 2015)
• https://developers.google.com/knowledge-graph/

Google Search

• https://developers.google.com/search/
• https://developers.google.com/structured-data/
• https://developers.google.com/structured-data/customize/overview