Practical RDF - First Draft

The complete first draft of the book on RDF and RDF/XML I'm writing for
O'Reilly, Practical RDF, has been posted to the support weblog
http://rdf.burningbird.net. Look for each chapter (in Word Doc, viewable by
OpenOffice) in the TOC to the left side of the page. I want to emphasis
'complete', as many of you have seen bits and pieces, previously. The book
is in a pre-edit state, and therefore very rough. When I write, my first
drafts are almost always an attempt to put some form of coherent thought on
paper in addition to creating all the examples and figuring out all the
tools. The real writing enters when I edit the material.

I am in the process of editing each of the chapters now, including making
changes based on feedback from people who have sent technical edits.

For those who might have specialized interests, following is a brief run
down of the tools, APIs, and other applications I used in each chapter:

Chapters 1-6: Overview of the specs. Chapter 2 covers the Concepts and
Abstract and the Semantics document. Chapter 3 and 4, the syntax. Chapter 5
the vocabulary. Chapter 6 pulls them together to build a model, and also
introduces DC.

Chapter 7: Covers BrownSauce, ICS-FORTH's VRP, Jena's ARP2, IsaViz, RDF
Editor Written in Java. I've already received feedback from Damien on
BrownSauce, and Emmanuel from IsaViz on their applications, and need to
incorporate their feedback.

Chapter 8: Jena

Chapter 9: Three P's - PHP, Python, and Perl. Covered Ginger Alliance
PerlRDF, RDF API for PHP (will be adding additional material to this section
on the parser, from feedback of creator), and RDFLib. I may also try to add
in RDFStore. We'll see how time goes.

Chapter 10: RDF as Data and querying. More Jena and RDQL, SquishQL and
Inkling, the PHP XML classes. I am adding in Sesame and RQL if time permits
and can get running on my box (my boxes are getting a mite crowded with
RDF-based software at the moment, and some have taken to tromping on each
other).

Chapter 11: C# Driver, Redland (the newest release, which installed on Mac
OS X without a problem), Redfoot, very brief mention of Wilbur. I have two
other tools I'm looking at covering if time permits.

Chapter 12: Ontologies, briefly on DAML+OIL, primarily on OWL. I've seen the
light, and been converted over to ontologies. I think OWL's the best thing
since sliced bread, with peanut better and raspberry jam. I also covered two
editors: SMORE and Protégé. Time permitting would like to add in at least a
blurb on KAON and Jena's DAML+OIL classes.

Chapter 13: RSS, including AmphetaDesk, Meerkat, and NetNewsWire. In
addition, I use the Informa RSS API and XML:RSS

Chapter 14: Mozilla and RDF, FOAF, Creative Commons License, MIT's DSpace
(would like to expand this coverage)

Chapter 15: Chandler (briefly), RDF Gateway, Siderean Software's Seamark,
Plugged In's Tucana KnowledgeStore, and the Adobe XMP. I've heard from the
vendors on these applications, and am incorporating feedback at this time.

We're hoping to get as much feedback as we can by end of the month (Feb
28th), and hope to get this into production quickly. Street date is
March/April timeframe, depending on how long it will take for final edits.

I appreciate the feedback I've received in the past, and appreciate any
feedback you can provide at this time. For those who provide significant
feedback (in-depth feedback on one or more chapters), you'll get
acknowledged in the book, and a free copy of the book. And my sincere
thanks.

Shelley


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Shelley Powers             shelleyp@burningbird.net

Burning Bird Network: http://www.burningbird.net

Received on Wednesday, 19 February 2003 11:52:33 UTC