Re: [ANN] xOperator 0.1 (Semantic XMPP / Jabber Agent)

Hi, my 2c

dbin 2.0 is out (though we never announced it :-) (and it doesn't even
say on the homepage! just get it out of the download page) )

we removed the P2P part of dbin 0.x  and we went with the easiest and
most robust possible model : http publishing of RDF graphs.

I'll give you an example.

when you download dbin you select the name of a "base graph" for
yourself as a user. You call it, for example "giovanni.rdf" .. dbin
will tell you. .ok "your graph is
http://public.dbin.org/users/giovanni..rdf"  (but the base server can
be changed, just put a PHP file in your homepage and you're done)

at this point one can add instances, annotations etc.. and when one
presses the "commit" button, its all reflected at the location above.

to cooperate one can simply import other's people base graphs and
they're "superimposed" to one's base in the local vision.
Obviously any rdf graph can be imported and superimposed as well (e.g.
something from dbpedia, foaf files etc.. ). A Sindice
(www.sindice.com) search engine window is provided within dbin for
convenience (allows locating RDF graphs around).

 Pinging one's own graph to Dindice makes it possible that others can
discover our information in the open and import it. (there should be a
checkbox "automatically pinging sindice" but i am not sure if its on
the last downloadable version)

Obviously, one can import the outcome of a RDF processing engine
online like Semantic Web Pipes (http://pipes.deri.org)

by doing so one can create a pipe which imports base graphs from
people and other arbitrary RDF.  Thanks to the new patching operator
(pipes 2.0 one can even remove triples from certain  other graph by
creating "inverse" versions of RDF modells which can then be applied
as a "patch".

Why this seems preferrable (imo) to other methods, including jabber
etc (we had a jabber driver for the DBin 0.3 p2p engine i believe) ?
because its http:

* security and trust issues can be solved the http/dns/authentication tec way
* any programming language and web platform can access the data right
away with no extra library
* nothing new to learn in term of paradigm and technology
* using a publishing server (a silly php script or webdav will do) so
it doesn't require the user to be online for his data to be available
to others.
* works behind firewalls and very restrictive network configurations etc.

but there are shortcomings of course..  true cooperative editing of
RDF models (that is deleting triples other have said) using HTTP is ..
very difficult. So the best thing in this way is to share access to a
remote DB, e.g. a sesame, but then you forge tthe speed that you get
when using dbin (dozens of queries per second are needed to create a
nice UI when browsing the data locally) so some copy/caching mechanism
should be in place (etc etc.. ).

Anyway .. i believe that we (in general, as community) have now all
the basic i think also for information exchange.  But its an entirely
different matter from actually being any close to delivering something
that people actually want to use.

Giovanni


On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 9:31 AM, Dmitry Ulanov <dulanov@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I think, that xOperator is an amazing project, but I have an idea. Where are
> different useful projects already exist for personal usage (ala semantic
> desktop vision): Zotero [1], DBin [2], Gnowsis [3], Soprano (NEPOMUK
> reference implementation for KDE) [4] and others. But it's impossible to use
> RDF data from one application in another. We doesn't have something like a
> 'semantic system' for RDF by analogy with the file system for ordinal files.
>
> We'll take a lot of benefits if we start to use a 'semantic system' through
> a language, RDF storage and/or platform independent interface. We have
> examples of such attempts: semap's HTTP protocol [5] (doesn't independent
> from the Sesame RDF storage), Soprano API [6] (doesn't have a language and
> platform independence). I have just developed my own RESTful API from
> scratch [7] too. On top of such semantic systems we'll can to implement
> numerous useful semantic agents and information from one agent will be
> available in another immediately. It's like the old WinFS [8] idea in a new
> RDF-based point of view ;)
>
>  NEPOMUK [9] is a great European initiative to implement the semantic
> desktop vision, but it doesn't try to create a general semantic system. What
> do you think about it? Do you know similar ideas or projects?
>
> [1] http://www.zotero.org/
>  [2] http://dbin.org/
> [3] http://www.gnowsis.org/
> [4] http://soprano.sourceforge.net/node/1
>  [5] http://www.openrdf.org/doc/sesame/users/ch08.html
> [6] http://api.kde.org/kdesupport-api/kdesupport-apidocs/soprano/html/
>  [7] http://code.google.com/p/semap/wiki/RESTfulAPISpecification
> [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS
>  [9] http://nepomuk.semanticdesktop.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main1/
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 9:55 PM, Sebastian Dietzold
> <dietzold@informatik.uni-leipzig.de> wrote:
>
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > The AKSW research group (http://aksw.org) is pleased to announce the first
> > public release of our semantic xmpp / jabber agent xOperator.
> >
> > xOperator combines advantages of social network websites with instant
> > messaging. It tries to be a semantic agent for xmpp / jabber network which
> > finds and shares content about resources (using RDF / SPARQL) for you and
> > your jabber friends.
> >
> > This first release includes the following features:
> >
> > * basic xmpp account management (user account, proxy account)
> > * management of query templates, datastores and namespaces directly with
> >   your jabber client
> > * simple query templates for easy starting with xOperator
> > * query scripts in groovy for advanced queries and post processing
> >
> > Homepage:     http://aksw.org/Projects/xOperator
> > ZIP/Tar/BZ2:  http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=201552
> > Changelog:    http://aksw.org/Projects/xOperator/ChangeLog
> > Mailing list: http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id
> >
> > Inspired by Tim Berners-Lee's Semantic Agent the xOperator lifts personal
> > knowledge exchange to a new level. Imagine sharing exactly the information
> > you want with the people you trust. Need a phone number? Want to know the
> > birthday of your best friends girlfriend (and in a second step where to
> > buy her a present in a store near you)? Do you get tired to tell everybody
> > that you have a new cellphone number? xOperator enables users to share all
> > that knowledge in a trusted network. Built upon the already existing
> > jabber network (secure connections, widely available) an agent running on
> > your pc allows other users to query your RDF-database returning the favor
> > to you.
> >
> > --
> > Sebastian Dietzold - Department of Computer Science; University of Leipzig
> > Tel/Fax: +49 341 97 323-66/-29 http://bis.uni-leipzig.de/SebastianDietzold
>
>
>
> --
> Dmitry Ulanov
>  dulanov(at)gmail.com
> http://dulanov.wordpress.com

Received on Saturday, 23 February 2008 13:04:55 UTC