introductions

As discussed in today's teleconf this is probably a good time for people 
to start introducing themselves per mail to the other members of working 
group. This applies to both new and old WG members to get known to each 
other... I'll make a start.

I am using the same structure we used in RIF for self-introductions:

At the start of your introduction, please state "Principal" or
"Alternate" representative of your organisation, to help people begin to 
form their picture of the group.

After that, the topics one generally covers are:

   -- a bio summarizing experience you have that's relevant to the
      work of this group

   -- as much contact info as you care to share on this public list

   -- what you expect to get out of this WG

   -- what you hope/expect to contribute.


Looking forward to a productive SPARQL working group! Here goes my own 
self-introduction:

=======================================================================
-- Role: co-chair, alternate for DERI

-- short bio:
   I obtained my PhD in Computer Science at the Vienna University of
   Technology, Austria, in 2003 working on AI Planning and Non-monotonic
   Reasoning. From 2003 to 2006 I worked at University of Innsbruck in
   the areas of Semantic Web Services, Ontologies, Rules & Query
   Languages and Logic Programming. While there, I started getting
   involved in standardisation work in rules languages (WRL W3C member
   submission). After that, I worked for one year at Universidad Rey
   Juan Carlos, Madrid under a "Juan de la Cierva" research award and
   joined the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI)  at National
   University of Ireland, Galway in April 2007.

   Previous experience in W3C groups:
   I am a member of the W3C RIF (Rule Interchange format) working group
   where I co-edit the Datatypes and built-ins draft (e.g. also keeping
   an eye on staying "compatible" with SPARQL's FILTER functions)
   and have been a member of the RDB2RDF XG until end of last year.
   I am W3C Advisory Committee representative of DERI.

   Experience/work with SPARQL:
   I have published about and implemented prototypes of translating
   SPARQL to extended Datalog rules, including proposals for extensions
   such as "SPARQL-extended" RDF graphs or aggregates [1,2]
   I reviewed the current SPARQL spec on behalf of DERI.
   Recently, I have worked on combining SPARQL with XQuery, [3]
   I have given several courses and tutorials on SPARQL and RIF at
   conferences, summer schools and in university courses, e.g. cf. [4]

   1. A. Polleres: From SPARQL to rules (and back). WWW 2007: 787-796
   2. A. Polleres, F. Scharffe, R. Schindlauer: SPARQL++ for Mapping
      Between RDF Vocabularies. OTM Conferences (1) 2007: 878-896
   3. http://xsparql.deri.org/
   4. http://www.polleres.net/sparqltutorial/

-- contact info:
   all my contact data can be found at http://www.polleres.net/

-- what I expect to get out of this WG

   A stabilized upwards-compatible version of SPARQL that adds a
   reasonable set of features driven by user-demands and that can be
   achieved within the chartered duration. Evolve SPARQL to a more mature
   and useful query language, by adding features such as data
   manipulation constructs and aggregates, etc. as mentioned per charter.

-- what I hope/expect to contribute.

   <chairhatOn>Help the group reaching its target by being a responsible
   co-chair of the group. Liaise with RIF and OWL wg to see how far we 
can bring the standards closer together with still remaining 
upwards-compatible (e.g. by Interoperability mechanisms as mentioned in 
the charter)</chairhatOn>

   <derihatOn>
   Together with Alex (principal representative for DERI) contribute our
   own experiences and feature suggestions to SPARQL, which mostly
   comprise  small but useful extensions experienced from our practical
   experiences.
   </derihatOn>

=======================================================================


best,
Axel


-- 
Dr. Axel Polleres
Digital Enterprise Research Institute, National University of Ireland, 
Galway
email: axel.polleres@deri.org  url: http://www.polleres.net/

Received on Wednesday, 25 February 2009 03:04:04 UTC