Hi all,
This is a vote on a previously posted proposal to start a rdf database
server project at apache. The entire proposal text is included below.
There is only one change from the one posted to the [proposal] thread --
we will start without a triplesoup-users@ mailing list.
Please place your votes!
+1 from me.
This vote will run until we have a huge amount of enthousiastic +1s,
with a sizeable amount of them from the Incubator PMC, and at a minimum
for 72 hours. If you're not a part of the incubator PMC, you're still
welcome to express support (or lack of it) for the proposal by voting; I
will sort out votes when counting. (formal voting rules on incubator
website)
cheers!
- Leo
---
= summary =
TripleSoup is the simplest thing that you can do to turn your apache
web server into a SPARQL endpoint.
TripleSoup will be an RDF [2] store [3], tooling to work with that
database, and a REST [4] web interface to talk to that database using
SPARQL [5], implemented as an apache webserver module.
{{{
Target: TLP
Sponsor: Incubator PMC
Champion: Leo Simons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Mentors: Dirk-Willem van Gulik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Ben Hyde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Stefano Mazzocchi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Leo Simons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Resources: SVN: https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/triplesoup/
Website: http://incubator.apache.org/triplesoup/
Jira: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/TRIPLES
Wiki: http://wiki.apache.org/triplesoup/
Mailing lists:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Moderators: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Initial committers:
Dave Beckett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, redland author
Dirk-Willem van Gulik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Ben Hyde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Stefano Mazzocchi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Andrea Marchesini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, b store author
Alberto Reggiori <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, rdfstore author
David Reid <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Leo Simons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Initial source: mod_sparql, commercial triple store,
existing open source triple store
Known risks: None
Technologies: c
Reference: http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/TripleSoupProposal
}}}
= Proposal details =
== Technology (basics) ==
What is RDF? It is just about any kind of data, represented as triples of
(subject, predicate, object), usually with a rich vocabulary describing the
semantics of the data (with the vocabulary typically also encoded as
triples).
This data has a representation as RDF/XML as well as using other formats
such
as N3, and a query language SPARQL for searching through it. See [6] for an
overview.
So if it is just some data in some format, why does it need a special
server? Because RDF data is fundamentally not constrained to a "file", and
there often is no "resource identifier" that readily identifies
something as a
"document" which can be served up over HTTP.
So why the REST interface? RDF is one of the building blocks proposed
for the
"semantic web", and that's why a system that works well with/over HTTP is
needed from the start.
== Technology (concrete) ==
This is just an example. Imagine that there is an application "someapp" on
the host foo.example.com which provides access to information about books,
and you want to get a list of those books (their URIs) and the names of the
books.
{{{
$ telnet foo.example.com 80
SELECT /someapp HTTP/1.0
Host: foo.example.com
Query-Language: http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/CR-rdf-sparql-query-20060406/
Accept: application/sparql-results+xml, rdf/xml, rdf/n3
PREFIX books: <http://example.org/book/>
PREFIX dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/>
SELECT ?book ?title
WHERE
{ ?book dc:title ?title }
HTTP/1.0 200 Ok
Content-Type: application/sparql-results+xml
Content-Length: 1234
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<sparql
xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#";
xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#";
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/sparql-results#";>
<head>
<variable name="book"/>
<variable name="title"/>
</head>
<results ordered="false" distinct="false">
<result>
<binding name="book">
<uri>http://example.org/book/book6</uri>
</binding>
<binding name="title">
<literal>Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince</literal>
</binding>
</result>
</results>
</sparql>
Connection closed by foo.example.com
$
}}}
It turns out there's only one book in the database in this example.
(Sample data taken from http://www.sparql.org/). David Reid has some
code that
does something not unlike this already [7], implemented as a httpd module,
using the Redland library [11,12] as its backend store.
== What would you use TripleSoup for? ==
* It could be a backend for piggy bank [8].
* It could be a backend for the next version of wikipedia.
* It could be a backend for an "open" version of iTunes or IMDB.
* It could be the backend for the information management system of the
Dutch ministry of water management [9].
* It could be the backend for projects.a.o [10] and similar applications.
* Most importantly, it could be a backend for dozens of useful new
innovative
projects that no-one has envisioned yet.
== The initial source ==
RDFstore is a standalone RDF storage system implemented as a C library,
licensed
under the ASL 1.1. It has perl bindings. Find its distribution at [15].
mod_sparql [7] is an in-development apache module that implements a SPARQL
endpoint. It is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. It uses redland as a
backend. The SVN repository can be found at [7].
B is an in-development storage backend for Redland implemented as a
standalone
C library. It is currently a closed source codebase. A code snapshot can be
found at [16].
== The initial committers ==
Dirk-Willem, Ben, Stefano, David and Leo are ASF members who hopefully
need no
introduction.
Dave Beckett is the primary author of the Redland RDF application
framework.
Alberto Reggiori is the primary author of rdfstore, an rdf store
developed by
asemantics [13], which will be contributed to TripleSoup. He is a
partner at
asemantics.
Andrea Marchesini is the primary author of B, a storage backend for RDF
developed at Joost [14], which will be contributed to TripleSoup.
All initial committers have experience working on open source projects.
They
work for at least 5 different companies.
== TripleSoup as an apache project ==
We think TripleSoup will have to reference dozens of specifications
from the
W3C (XML, RDF, OWL, SPARQL, their standards for URIs, and more) and
from the
IETF (HTTP, URL, URI, URN, and more), will make use of or integrate with
quite
a few existing open source projects (like the redland RDF libraries as
well as
apache apr&httpd). As such, it seems like TripleSoup should fit in
really well
at apache.
The responses we got from various members of the RDF and semantic web
communities so far when discussing this proposal with them have all been
quite positive, and we expect and hope there'll be quite a few people
new to apache joining the project soon after it starts.
Most importantly, we think this project will be useful, innovative, and
fun!
= References =
{{{
[1] http://incubator.apache.org/
[2] http://www.w3.org/RDF/
[3] these are often called "triple stores"
[4] http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm
[5] http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/
[6] http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/papers/ac2006.1.pdf
[7] http://david-reid.com/repos/public/mod_sparql/
[8] http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/Piggy_Bank
[9] http://www.wadi.nl/uk/
[10] http://projects.apache.org/
[11] http://www.librdf.net/
[12] http://svn.librdf.org/repository/
[13] http://www.asemantics.com/
[14] http://www.joost.com/
[15] http://rdfstore.sourceforge.net/downloads/RDFStore-0.51.tar.gz
[16] http://opensource.joost.com/libb/
}}}
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