Rapid Semantic Web Application Development

Rapid Semantic Web Application Development

using Callimachus

Bernadette Hyland, [email protected] @BernHyland

1Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Information overload, Impatient society, Change is the only constantSoftware is not valued by its usefulness ... but by its expected future value

• Linked Data is about publishing and consuming data using international data standards

• Based on 20 year old idea

• A system of linked information systems

• Goal is to solve organizational issues related to data silos, requirements for faster data integration and the environment of reduced IT budgets


Intro 3 Round Stones team, leaders in the international data integration standards published by the W3C ... authors of peer-reviewed publicationsChairs of W3C working groupsLeaders in Open Source community


Problem Statement•We are curating LOTS of data today

•Data model may change tomorrow

•Guided curation helpful

•Must be Web based


We need a solution that will be up and running today. Downloadable from the Web for developers to use immediately. Preferably Open Source to gain all the benefits that brings.Something that handles the change we know we’ll have tomorrowAnd ideally, deals with data quality & cleansing. Something that guides editors to collect and structure their data

Data Curation•Usual data management

concerns ...

•Updating, correcting, collecting, annotating, publishing, categorizing

•Promote data sharing

•Data authority & provenance are critical


Possible Solutions•Roll your own three-tier

•Content Management System

•Wiki-based

•Linked Data Management System


A few different possible solutions to the three challenges stated earlier

Content Management Systems

•Wordpress

•Drupal

•Joomla!


The big downside to 3 tier architecture is the upfront cost, as well as getting people to agree upfront on the schemaSo we then looked at CMSThese are systems that can be up and running the same day

Content Management System

•Support collaboration & data sharing

•Controls access

•Provides easy storage

•Reduces duplication

• Improves report writing

• Improves communication


Everyone is familiar with the benefits of CMS, but let’s highlight them as context for the rest of this talk ...

Content Management System

•Many features out of the box

•Compile time extendable

•Rigid data model, not agile

•Change & customization is expensive


CMS has a significant reduced upfront costHowever, like 3 tier architecture, change and customization is expensiveGeneral CMS do not quickly adapt to change

Wiki Software•Media Wiki

•Semantic Media Wiki


CMS are slow to adopt to changeSo we then looked at Wiki Systems.These are open ended, put whatever you want in them

Wiki Software•Collaboratively edit web pages

•Transparency, linking, a low barrier to entry

•Wikis focus is on unstructured content, ease of use


Wiki Software•Many features out of the box

•Easy to add new content data

•Unstructured data

•Blank page syndrome


When presented with infinite choice, it's sometimes hard to get startedHow do you ask multiple editors to provide particular information consistently?

Linked Data Management System

•Callimachus (kəәlĭm'əәkəәs) is a framework for data-driven applications based on Linked Data principles.

•Callimachus allows Web authors to quickly and easily create semantically-enabled Web applications.


Wiki Systems don't handle structured content well nor promulgate change well. A tool for Web 2.0 developers creating DATA RICH web sites was needed … We created Callimachus, a triples up & down solution (no mySQL under the covers). HIGHLY SCALABLE for real world use.Named for the father of Bibliography (The Pinakes) at the Great Library of Alexandria. Lived during 305-c. 240 BCE. He could not categorize his own work using Aristotle's hierarchical system. He was the first person who defined the use case for Linked Data.

http://linkeddata.org/

http://linkeddata.org/

Linked Data Management System•Web 2.0 developers can create data driven application

with templates in hours

•Triples up & down (no mySQL under the covers)

•Wiki editing of content

•Access control

•Collaboration via Web

•Change tracking (history)

•Page/form Templates


Callimachus is a great way to collaboratively manage your Linked DataMedia Wiki is to free text what Callimachus is to linked dataCallimachus uses a straight forward ACL for linked data


Reality ... We started with the usual CSV dump ... ugly, cumbersome data



An example of the wiki user interface.


This is an example of the view tab that took less than an hour to construct after loading 100M triples into a database. It was an easy, fast way to begin to navigate the content and explore what we have -- this is all possible because of the underlying data as RDF.


Example of the forms user interface in Callimachus


Callimachus allows us to visualize Google charts as pie charts, scatter plots, time series, bar charts, etc. It is easy to show data on a map too.






Note the fixed name and added comment.


A history of changes is kept. Note the change to the name and the added comment, along with the time/date and name of the user who made the edit.


Selecting a TRI report will take you to information about a particular report. In this case, 3 pounds of lead was released in 2010 by the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant.


Selecting a substance name (e.g. from a TRI report) will take you to information about that substance. This data comes from SRS.

Join the Community•Callimachus has benefited from 2+ years of corporate support

•We’re using it for real world Web applications in environmental protection, finance and healthcare

•We’d love to work with the publishing industry

•Open Source project

•Visit callimachusproject.org

• Join the discussion



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Rapid Semantic Web Application Development