Leveraging existing Web Frameworks for a SIOC explorer (Scripting for the Semantic Web Workshop 2007)

Chapter Copyright 2007 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved. www.deri.org

Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie

Leveraging existing Web frameworks for a SIOC explorer

Benjamin Heitmann and Eyal OrenDigital Enterprise Research Institute,National University of Ireland, Galway

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Benjamin Heitmann and Eyal Orenof 18

Overview

Part 1: Introducing SIOC Enabling Mash-Ups of community focused content

Part 2: Faceted browsing of community sites Balancing between domain specific and domain agnostic

Part 3:Reusing existing web frameworks Ruby on Rails meets the Semantic Web

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Part1: Introducing SIOC

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Use case: tracking a music community

?

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Solving the use case

Tracking an emerging music community over time Question: What is happening in the Dubstep scene

in Dublin? Solutions that do not work:

Google:– Sites updated too frequently– Bad results: new and relevant pages get buried due to ranking

RSS: – not all types of sites have RSS– RSS feeds do not include all relevant information

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SIOC: enables community mashups

web siteexporters

linked data:

microformats (contact, location, event)

after aggregation:

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Details: the SIOC ontology

SIOC allows re-using the data at the center of a community: content:

– blog and forum posts– wiki pages– freeform text (new types can be defined)

topics: – tags and categories– complex hierarchies possibly with SKOS

user relations:

FOAF and openID identities

the next SIOC version will be geared towards major social networking sites and Web 2.0 hub sites

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Part 2:Faceted browsing of community

sites

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Exploring SIOC data

SIOC Explorer crawls and aggregates SIOC data allows exploring and browsing

– filter by topic– view posts of a certain day

Implements faceted browsing step-wise filtering of displayed content filtering works across sites

Available at http://activerdf.org/sioc/

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http://activerdf.org/sioc/

http://activerdf.org/sioc/



Filtering demonstration

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Faceted browsing done right

Balance between domain specific

– only show SIOC forums and SIOC posts– focus user attention

domain agnostic– all other data is used for navigation– use unexpected data as filter– example: use author hobbies @@foaf interests as filter

fine tuning: disable a-priori unwanted predicates

complex facets use entities with multiple properties as filter example: see all post of a FOAF person with a FOAF

homepage http://eyaloren.org

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http://eyaloren.org

http://eyaloren.org



Complex facets demonstration

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Part 3: Reusing existing web frameworks

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Comparing the nature of Web and Semantic Web applications

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Web applicationsSemantic Web applications

data: schema compliant semi-structured and dynamic

schema: fixed arbitrary and evolving

data sources: single and centralised

multiple and distributed

model semantics: closed world open world

runtime state: closed system open system



Frameworks for the Semantic Web?

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enough sophisticated Web Application Frameworks exist today:

but: no integration of Semantic Web libraries into the framework architecture

ActiveRDF fits transparently into the Ruby on Rails architecture

View

Controller

Model

ActiveResource

ActiveRDF



ActiveRDF bridges the gaps

between data models object oriented access to RDF triples:

eyal.foaf::knows = knud ActiveRDF can provide model objects for Rails Ruby meta-programming allows ActiveRDF to emulate

open world semantics

between developer communities Semantic Web developers:

– benefit from existing Ruby and Rails ecosystem

Web and Web 2.0 developers:– gain access to Semantic Web infrastructure

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ActiveRDF code examples:

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Model: create a Rails model objects from RDF schemaNamespace.register :sioc, 'http://rdfs.org/sioc/ns#'class

Controller: application logic access to RDF dataclass PostController < ApplicationController require_dependency ‘sioc’ def display_all_posts @displayed_posts = SIOC::Post.find_all render :action => ‘list’ endend

View: display RDF data in user interface<% @displayed_posts.each do |p| %> <%= p.title %><% end %>

http://activerdf.org/test/'

http://activerdf.org/test/'



Summary

SIOC explorer SIOC enables re-use of the data at the centre communities

and social networks The SIOC explorer allows faceted browsing of community

data All data included in the SIOC export can be use for

navigating the community content

ActiveRDF transparently integrates with Ruby on Rails bridges the gaps between

– Web developers and Semantic Web developers– Semantic Web data model and Ruby scripting

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Technology

Leveraging existing Web Frameworks for a SIOC explorer (Scripting for the Semantic Web Workshop 2007)