- From: Tudhope D S (AT) <dstudhope@glam.ac.uk>
- Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:47:16 +0100
- To: "Alistair Miles" <alistair.miles@zoo.ox.ac.uk>, "Johan De Smedt" <johan.de-smedt@tenforce.com>
- Cc: <public-esw-thes@w3.org>, <public-swd-wg@w3.org>
Hi - following up on this and Al's subsequent email >> wrt other implementations, i know doug tudhope and ceri binding have an implementation of the skos web service api with some extensions, but i don't know what the release status is. >> Ceri Binding developed a set of web services, based upon SKOS Core data model (v1) for the purposes of the STAR project [3]. The services currently provide term look up across the thesauri held in the system, along with browsing and semantic concept expansion within a chosen thesaurus. The service is based on a subset of the SWAD Europe SKOS API with extensions for concept expansion. Details and the API at http://hypermedia.research.glam.ac.uk/kos/terminology_services/ (may need to copy/paste the url to avoid our email server) and background references at [1,2], including a review of previous work on KOS APIs and use patterns. Anyone interested is welcome to inspect the API or download a client demonstrator of basic functionality. SKOS_WS is a SOAP web service written in C#, running on Microsoft .NET framework. The current implementation is SOAP based but we believe that a REST based http version would not a big step. We haven't made the service code available to date as it is still under development for STAR and a new Tag Recommnder project just starting. However, we are committed to publishing the server software as open source by the end of the STAR project and anyone interested in collaborative API development is welcome to contact me regarding an interim snapshot version. The current version uses the SemWeb RDF library. Within the project, we've also been discussing the relative pros/cons of a specialist SKOS web service vs a general RDF query language (SPARQL) and would be interested in any wider discussion. Different conditions may favour the one or the other. A SPARQL endpoint lets you do anything supported by SPARQL and does not restrict to the specific services exposed. However it may be found that some functionality is not easy/possible in SPARQL. A service API could be implemented on top of SPARQL or via another platform and does not have to be a web service, although web services offer a platform neutral capability (potentially available as an external, third party service). Al (Dan) mentioned issues as to whether any API functionality might be hard to realise efficiently in SPARQL, eg text-based query or iterative cost-based concept expansion. Other reasons for a specialised API (or program library) could be if some developers, making use of SKOS, prefer not to be constrained to SPARQL for any reason (eg security issues in exposing the database, skillset issues or existing platform constraints), or if the API functions correspond to common use cases that can be provided at a higher level. Doug 1. Background on KOS services and user interface patterns - Binding C., Tudhope D. 2004. KOS at your Service: Programmatic Access to knowledge Organisation Systems. Journal of Digital Information, 4(4) http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/view/110/109 2. Concept based query expansion paper Tudhope D., Binding C., Blocks D., Cunliffe D. 2006. Query expansion via conceptual distance in thesaurus indexed collections. Journal of Documentation, 62 (4), 509-533. Emerald. http://hypermedia.research.glam.ac.uk/media/files/documents/2008-04-02/J DOCfinal-Tudhope.doc 3. STAR - Semantic Technologies for Archaeological Resources http://hypermedia.research.glam.ac.uk/kos/STAR/ Douglas Tudhope Professor, Faculty of Advanced Technology University of Glamorgan Pontypridd CF37 1DL Wales, UK Tel +44 (0) 1443-483609 Fax +44 (0) 1443-482715 Editor : The New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia -----Original Message----- From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org [mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Alistair Miles Sent: 14 April 2009 12:47 To: Johan De Smedt Cc: public-esw-thes@w3.org; public-swd-wg@w3.org Subject: Re: SKOS API and web-service hi johan On Wed, Apr 08, 2009 at 08:42:32AM +0200, Johan De Smedt wrote: > Dear, > > Following the new CR for SKOS, > is there an update planned for > http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/thes/skosapi.html ? no, this wasn't in scope for the swdwg. if folks would like to use this list to discuss a community-led update to the skos web service api that would be great. i know doug tudhope and ceri binding at glamorgan have worked on this fairly recently, they use concept expansion methods to support information retrieval. adding to what dan said, the skos ws api was written before there was sparql. it would be nice to look again at the skos ws api, in light of sparql, and to ask which methods really add something over sparql, either in terms of convenience or functionality. e.g. you can't do cost-based expansions with sparql, at least not easily. you also can't do very efficient text-based queries. some stuff you can do tho, e.g. see [1]. cheers, alistair [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-esw-thes/2009Mar/0017.html > > Thanks for information or advice. > > Kind Regards, > Johan De Smedt > ================= > johan.de-smedt@tenforce.com > mobile: +32 477 475 934 > ================= > > -- Alistair Miles Senior Computing Officer Image Bioinformatics Research Group Department of Zoology The Tinbergen Building University of Oxford South Parks Road Oxford OX1 3PS United Kingdom Web: http://purl.org/net/aliman Email: alistair.miles@zoo.ox.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0)1865 281993
Received on Monday, 20 April 2009 17:48:17 UTC