- From: Vangelis Vassiliadis <vangelis@semanticweb.gr>
- Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 00:48:51 +0300
- To: www-rdf-interest@w3.org
*Thea-VBA* *A Visual-Basic for Applications Semantic Web library* *Overview* Thea-VBA <http://www.semanticweb.gr/Thea-VBA> is a Visual Basic for Applications library for accessing, parsing, viewing and manipulating Semantic Web <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/> content (RDF <http://www.w3.org/RDF/> and OWL <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/>) from desktop applications that support VBA, namely Microsoft Office applications, and more specifically MS Excel. There are many tools and libraries that support the W3C’s core Semantic Web specifications; mostly RDF and, to a lesser extend, OWL. The majority of these tools[1] are Java-based and there are also implementations for scripting languages[2]. To our knowledge there are no any VBA tools or libraries that support either RDF or OWL. The objective of Thea-VBA is to make RDF and OWL content available to users of popular desktop applications (mostly MS-Excel) both at end-user and at macro/script developer level. The aim is to facilitate the adoption of Semantic Web by providing access to RDF and OWL data to a wider audience. *Architecture* At its current state Thea-VBA consists of a core VBA library for parsing RDF/XML content and results in an internal in-memory storage of RDF triples that can be accessed by an API interface. Thea-VBA parser is using MSXML2 parser. On top of the core VBA library there is a set of VBA macros for accessing RDF files or URIs and presenting the resulting RDF triples in MS-Excel’s UI. *Features* * Existing o RDF Parser o Native MS-Excel interface to access RDF/XML URLs and present RDF data models. · Planned o OWL parser o OWL Reasoner o Improved UI (support for OWL constructs) o Convert Relational DBMS data to OWL models. o OWL Ontology merging and aligning *License* Thea-VBA is available under GNU <http://www.gnu.org/> General Public License (GPL) *Downloads* Thea-VBA is a SemanticWeb.gr <http://www.semanticweb.gr/> project and it is hosted at SourceForge. You can download from the project page at SourceForge <http://sourceforge.net/projects/thea-vba/> Requirements: MS-Windows with MS-Office and MSXML2 *Documentation* Thea-VBA download package contains documentation for the core VBA parser API and the example Excel macros on how to use the API. *Version history* 0.1 Initial release 2002 as VB6 class. Support for earlier RDF recommendation. 0.2 Release May 2005, Port to VBA, convert to RDF/XML revised recommendation 0.3 July 2005. Full support of RDF/XML and datatypes. Native MS-Excel UI. *Support – Contact information* Thea-VBA is a SemanticWeb.gr project. Please send all questions, comments and suggestions to *_vangelis@semanticweb.gr_**__* *Related Links* [1] RDF Tools for developers <http://www.w3.org/RDF/#developers> [2] For a survey : http://www.semanticscripting.org <http://www.semanticscripting.org/>
Received on Tuesday, 19 July 2005 21:49:07 UTC