Re: [semanticweb] Purl.org offline?

Hi Martin, all, yes,  it is a service that was planned,

unfortunately the cache system we have is based on HBase, which is
still in a very early stage and badly crashed on us recently. We're in
the process of updating, restoring it etc.
It will take some time but it is coming, will announce it when ready.
(probably together with a simple library for transparent fallover)

So a semantic web client could simply do an HTTP on the URL and if
fails switch back to Sindice or whoever else wants to do that.

I agree this service is badly needed. I dont think Semantic Web can be
that interesting if a client doesnt mash or chains together several
resources automatically, with the consequent dramatic chances of
failure, thus the need for one or more backup servers.. (which however
should somehow commit to keep information fresh)

Giovanni



On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 1:48 PM, Martin Hepp (UniBW)
<martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org> wrote:
> Hi Dan, all:
> The purl.org service seems to be back on-line this very minute.
>
> For the future: Maybe Semantic Web indices like Sindice.com can contribute
> to providing a reliable fall-back option for retrieving vocabularies?
> Giovanni - any ideas?
>
> Best
> Martin
>
>
> Dan Brickley wrote:
>>
>>
>> Martin Hepp (UniBW) wrote:
>>
>>> Dear all:
>>>
>>> At least from two testpoints in Germany and Austria, the whole purl.org
>>> service seems to be currently unavailable. I cannot fetch any purl-based
>>> vocabularies and documentation at the moment,
>>
>> [...]
>>>
>>> Does anybody have any information on this?
>>
>> Thanks for this; I've passed this on to the new purl/purlz list and some
>> OCLC folks.
>>
>>> I assume many SW-related applications will run into trouble fetching
>>> files today if this problem persists.
>>
>> Well, I'm sure it's inconvenient, but this is probably a good reminder to
>> everyone that apps can always be made more robust. Having a local schema
>> cache is a good idea. I think also having some habits around PGP-signing of
>> schemas so that authentic copies can be picked up from directories and
>> registries would be a healthy thing for us all to be doing also. I always
>> used to PGP sign the FOAF schema document and point to it with a
>> wot:assurance link. This got a bit fiddly when I set up content negotiation
>> so I didn't keep up with the practice for a while, but I reckon it's worth
>> doing. Then maybe schema and app authors can sign each other's keys at SW
>> conferences etc., to allow some basic checking of schema copies that are
>> bundled with apps...
>>
>> cheers,
>>
>> Dan
>>
>> --
>> http://danbri.org/
>>
>

Received on Monday, 13 October 2008 23:40:30 UTC