[ANN] Thea-VBA v0.3: A Visual-Basic for Applications Semantic Web library

*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