[Developers] More information on '/type/reflect'

[Scott Meyer]

Sumit wrote:
> Hi John,
> Thanks for getting back. Here's what I am trying to do. We have a 
> database of people names along with some facts like which company they 
> work or worked for, whats their profession, etc. I am working on a 
> prototype to see if we can resolve these names to freebase ids (or how 
> many of them with the info we have).

Be forewarned that resolution is a hard task, however, if you have
several pieces of data in addition to a name it is tractable.
 
> I tried the query below to find out if I can find a link between Peter 
> Jackson and his employment_tenure, to see if I can get an guid for the 
> relation. Thinking, I can query this guid again and see if it has 
> Peter's name mentioned in it for the resolution issue.
> [
>   {
>     "master_property" : null,
>     "reverse" : null,
>     "source" : {
>       "id" : null,
>       "name" : "peter jackson",
>       "type" : "/people/person"
>     },
>     "target" : {
>       "id" : null,
>       "type" : "/business/employment_tenure"
>     },
>     "type" : "/type/link"
>   }
> ]
> 
> But it doesn't return anything.

Because you have source and target backwards.

This one works:

  {
    "master_property" : null,
    "reverse" : null,
    "source" : {
      "id" : null,
      "type" : "/business/employment_tenure"
    },
    "target" : {
      "id" : "/en/peter_jackson",
      "type" : "/people/person"
    },
    "type" : "/type/link"
  }
]

However I wouldn't use this to resolve names to
people.

If I try the simple query below
> [
>   {
>     "employment_history" : {},
>     "id" : "/en/peter_jackson",
>     "name" : "peter jackson",
>     "type" : "/people/person"
>   }
> ]

This is on the right track.  But the "id" constraint is
actualy what you're trying to find, the foreign key used
to locate a Freebase identity.

So if your data leads you to suspect that someone named
"peter jackson" worked for a company named "weta" the
following query could be used to check that:

[
  {
    "employment_history" : [
      {
        "company" : {
          "name~=" : "weta",
          "type" : "/business/employer"
        },
        "type" : "/business/employment_tenure"
      }
    ],
    "name~=" : "peter jackson",
    "type" : "/people/person",
    "id" : null
  }
]

A slightly deeper query could be used to check for
someon named "peter jackson" being married to someone
who worked for a company named "weta"

If you haven't found it yet, the explore view:

http://sandbox.freebase.com/tools/explore/business/employment_tenure

is an excellent way to figure out the data structure.

Hope this helps.

-Scott