Re: Linked Data API

Nathan wrote:
> Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>   
>> Nathan wrote:
>>     
>>> Leigh Dodds wrote:
>>>  
>>>       
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> Yesterday, at the 2nd Linked Data London Meetup, Dave Reynolds, Jeni
>>>> Tennison and myself ran a workshop introducing some work we've been
>>>> doing around a "Linked Data API".
>>>>
>>>> The API is intended to be a middle-ware layer that can be deployed
>>>> in-front of a SPARQL endpoint, providing the ability to create a
>>>> RESTful data access layer for accessing the RDF data contained in the
>>>> triple store. The middle-ware is configurable, and is intended to
>>>> support a range of different access patterns and output formats. "Out
>>>> of the box" the system provides delivery of the standard range of RDF
>>>> serialisations, as well as simple JSON and XML serializations for
>>>> descriptions of lists of resources. The API essentially maps
>>>> parameterized URLs to underlying SPARQL queries, mediating the content
>>>> negotiation of the results into a suitable format for the client.
>>>>
>>>> The current draft specification is at:
>>>>
>>>> http://purl.org/linked-data/api/spec
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> If I may make a suggestion; I'd like you to consider including the
>>> formed SPARQL query in with the return; so that developers can get used
>>> to the language and see how similar to existing SQL etc etc..
>>>
>>> For all this middle-ware is needed in the interim and provides access to
>>> the masses, surely an extra chance to introduce developers to linked
>>> data / rdf / sparql is a good thing?
>>>   
>>>       
>> Of course!
>>
>> ODBC / JDBC don't take SQL out of scope. Thus, the EAV graph model
>> equivalent shouldn't take SPARQL out of scope.
>>
>> Entity Framework doesn't take EntitySQL out of scope (this the less
>> capable SPARQL equivalent in the ADO.NET realm).
>>     
>
> Yup, I wasn't going to say anything, but may as well for what it's worth
> (no disrespect meant, I totally sympathise with what you are all trying
> to do being in the web service / api land myself for many years).
>
> Here's what I see happening: Developers accessing the data through the
> API, downloading it, parsing it in to an RDBMS using their own table /
> class structure and then querying it locally with SQL. (And quite
> possibly then turning it in to a CSV!)
>   
Final destination is only a problem if the URIs get shredded along the 
way. Basically, nothing stops us having hypermedia CSV if the links are 
intact :-)

The API should simply provide a uniform high level RESTful interface 
performing CRUD operations against Linked Data Objects/Resources.

Kingsley.
> I wish I had something useful to say here, after the above, but I don't
> :( All I can say is that for those who SQL, SPARQL will take about a day
> to get started with, as probably will the linked data api (after you
> read the docs and get setup etc).
>
> Many Regards,
>
> Nathan
>
>
>   


-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	      
President & CEO 
OpenLink Software     
Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca: kidehen

Received on Thursday, 25 February 2010 18:40:18 UTC