RE: "State of the Semantic Web" - personal opinions?

Eric's post doesn't seem to have made it to the list...
 
Apologies if this seems too commercially motivated for this list, but it
does seem completely relevant to the post by Alan Dean.  The fact is that
.NET developers haven't had a lot of choices for semweb developement (as
compared to java, php, ...). Our libs seek to address this by providing
comprehensive RDF support in .NET including support for in-memory SPARQL
query, rules-based inference, LINQ over RDF, etc. We've also tried to
improve the developer experience with Visual Studio integration -- e.g. we
have SPARQL query windows, debug visualizers, a wizard to create .NET
objects from ontologies, and much more in the works. Combined with SQL
Server integration, it's a pretty nice picture for the .NET developer. See:
 
    http://www.intellidimension.com/products/semantics-sdk/
 
Rgds,
 
-Geoff


  _____  

From: Eric Schoonover [mailto:Eric.Schoonover@microsoft.com] 
Sent: Monday, June 30, 2008 3:09 PM
To: semantic-web@w3.org
Cc: Paul.Miller@talis.com; danny.ayers@gmail.com; ivan@w3.org;
'gchappell@intellidimension.com'
Subject: Re: "State of the Semantic Web" - personal opinions?



Have you taken a look at the capabilities that Intellidimension provides in
their Semantic SDK?  It is a set of .NET libraries and Visual Studio
extensions that greatly simplify Semantic Web development on the Microsoft
.NET platform.

 

They are one of our partners in this space and we are actively engaging
Intellidimension around the development of these libraries.  I recently
presented with Geoff the CEO at the Semantic Technology conference in San
Jose.

 

My experience is that Geoff and his team are very reactive and open to
user/customer feedback.  I'm sure he will reply with some more details but
definitely check out the libraries at their website:
http://www.intellidimension.com/ 

 

Best Regards,

Eric Schoonover

Solutions Architect

Microsoft Corporation

 

 

This message in response to:

I chatted with Danny a while back, but I think it is worth putting my
tuppence in to the thread.
 
I develop for the Windows platform using .NET
 
Like it or not (and I know that many in the SemWeb community probably
don't care much for MS) this is where huge amounts of LoB development
gets done.
 
I am a huge fan of the semantic web 'promise' (also of REST, fwiw). My
problem is that there are no 'first-class' libraries out there for use
by .NET developers (especially those who are not experts in semantic
technologies).
 
Yes, there is SemWeb [1]. But although it is the nearest to being
useful, it is not 'first class' (and I mean Joshua Tauberer no offence
in saying this).
 
Yes, there is Redland [2]. The problem is that the windows binaries
have not maintained since before the dinosaurs (correction: April
2006) and unless you are a C++ guru I don't fancy your chances.
 
Yes, I could write my own library ... but I'm insufficiently expert on
semantic technologies to do so and, besides, I want to ship end-user
functionality - not core libraries.
 
The truth, however unpalatable, is that unless MS or another big beast
ships a library / framework that the .NET community can rely upon and
learn from then the number of business apps employing semantic
technologies will remain small.
 
I do not wish to sound like a doomsayer. On the contrary, I fervently
hope that we will get .NET framework support - it's just it feels like
we are in the Dark Ages right now. If I am incorrect, and there is
such a library already, I would be overjoyed to be proven wrong.
 
[1] http://razor.occams.info/code/semweb/
[2] http://librdf.org/
 
Regards,
Alan Dean
http://thoughtpad.net/alan-dean