Summarized outcomes from 24 May DSpace discussion

On 05/24/2001, the DSpace team hosted a discussion with W3C team members 
and other members of the RDF community to discuss approaches (strategies 
and specific implementation approaches and toolkits) to establishing an RDF 
store for DSpace.  See pre-reading 
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-dspace/2001May/0019.html>.

An IRC Log of the discussion is available at: 
<http://www.w3.org/2001/05/24-dspace-irc>

This note summarizes the outcomes and followup actions that emerged from 
that dialogue.

Legend:
Followup Item:          => (owner) description

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Summarized Outcomes

I. Eric Prud'hommeaux offered an alternative strategy not described in the 
meeting's pre-reading, to split information storage between closed-world 
relational tables and an RDF store.  We called this approach 
(1C).  Approach 1C does not replicate information, but requires that 
requests for information be resolved to either the RDBMS or the triple 
store, as appropriate.

         => (ericp) writeup notes on RDF/RDBMS federation approach
                 and <mailto:www-rdf-dspace@w3c.org>
         => (pbreton, ericp) offline followup dialogue

II. Strong consensus around approach 1A (or 1C - but we deferred this to 
offline exploration).  Concern noted about potential issues regarding 
information coherency and transactional capabilities.

III. Given strong consensus, moved to identifying potential toolkits 
suitable for 1A/1C implementation on java/postgress implementation 
platform.  Identified five (no particular order):
         1. ICS-Forth RDFSuite <http://139.91.183.30:9090/RDF/>
         2. Jena <http://www-uk.hpl.hp.com/people/bwm/rdf/jena/>
         3. EOR <http://eor.dublincore.org/>
         4. Database-persistent SiRPAC <no URL available>
            (perhaps superseded by EOR, development currently orphaned)
         5. DoJo (builds on Jena) <no URL available>

         => (DSpace) offline investigation
         => (DSpace, der) dialogue re: storage APIs, requirements for 
schema support

IV. Discussion of "automatic / low-cost" generation of RDF
         => (pbreton) write note on two "poles" of RDF generation
                 (implicit, heuristic-driven?..... explicit driven by 
external schema)
                 and <mailto:www-rdf-dspace@w3c.org>

         observation:
                 record what you know with certainty,
                 also make assertions about what you know you don't know

         => (DSpace) consider indecs event model
                 <http://www.indecs.org>,
                 <http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january99/bearman/01bearman.html>
         =>  (DSpace, der) dialogue on bean-oriented RDF generation 
strategies (reflection)


=============================================
Mick Bass, Sloan MOT 2000

R&D Project Manager, Hewlett-Packard Company
Building 10-500 MIT, 77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307

617.253.6617 office    617.452.3000 fax
617.899.3938 mobile    617.627.9694 residence
bass@alum.mit.edu      mick_bass@hp.com
=============================================

Received on Friday, 25 May 2001 06:47:02 UTC