forthcoming book "Practical RDF" has chapter on OWL

For those who don't monitor www-rdf-interest@w3.org,
here's a message of interest from yesterday.  Note
that the draft of the book is available online, the
author is enthusiastic about OWL, there is a chapter
on ontologies and OWL (http://rdf.burningbird.net/chapters/chap12work.doc),
and she is soliciting feedback by the end of February.
We should probably make sure that some of us read this closely
and provide her with corrections or suggestions.  Tim

----- Original Message -----
From: "Shelley Powers" <shelleyp@burningbird.net>
To: <www-rdf-interest@w3.org>
Cc: "Simon St. Laurent" <simonstl@oreilly.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 11:51 AM
Subject: Practical RDF - First Draft

The complete first draft of the book on RDF and RDF/XML I'm writing
for O'Reilly, Practical RDF, has been posted to the support weblog
http://rdf.burningbird.net. Look for each chapter (in Word Doc,
viewable by OpenOffice) in the TOC to the left side of the page. I
want to emphasis 'complete', as many of you have seen bits and pieces,
previously. The book is in a pre-edit state, and therefore very
rough. When I write, my first drafts are almost always an attempt to
put some form of coherent thought on paper in addition to creating all
the examples and figuring out all the tools. The real writing enters
when I edit the material.

I am in the process of editing each of the chapters now, including making
changes based on feedback from people who have sent technical edits.

For those who might have specialized interests, following is a brief run
down of the tools, APIs, and other applications I used in each chapter:

Chapters 1-6: Overview of the specs. Chapter 2 covers the Concepts and
Abstract and the Semantics document. Chapter 3 and 4, the
syntax. Chapter 5 the vocabulary. Chapter 6 pulls them together to
build a model, and also introduces DC.

Chapter 7: Covers BrownSauce, ICS-FORTH's VRP, Jena's ARP2, IsaViz, RDF
Editor Written in Java. I've already received feedback from Damien on
BrownSauce, and Emmanuel from IsaViz on their applications, and need to
incorporate their feedback.

Chapter 8: Jena

Chapter 9: Three P's - PHP, Python, and Perl. Covered Ginger Alliance
PerlRDF, RDF API for PHP (will be adding additional material to this
section on the parser, from feedback of creator), and RDFLib. I may
also try to add in RDFStore. We'll see how time goes.

Chapter 10: RDF as Data and querying. More Jena and RDQL, SquishQL and
Inkling, the PHP XML classes. I am adding in Sesame and RQL if time
permits and can get running on my box (my boxes are getting a mite
crowded with RDF-based software at the moment, and some have taken to
tromping on each other).

Chapter 11: C# Driver, Redland (the newest release, which installed on
Mac OS X without a problem), Redfoot, very brief mention of Wilbur. I
have two other tools I'm looking at covering if time permits.

Chapter 12: Ontologies, briefly on DAML+OIL, primarily on OWL. I've
seen the light, and been converted over to ontologies. I think OWL's
the best thing since sliced bread, with peanut better and raspberry
jam. I also covered two editors: SMORE and Protégé. Time permitting
would like to add in at least a blurb on KAON and Jena's DAML+OIL
classes.

Chapter 13: RSS, including AmphetaDesk, Meerkat, and NetNewsWire. In
addition, I use the Informa RSS API and XML:RSS

Chapter 14: Mozilla and RDF, FOAF, Creative Commons License, MIT's
DSpace (would like to expand this coverage)

Chapter 15: Chandler (briefly), RDF Gateway, Siderean Software's
Seamark, Plugged In's Tucana KnowledgeStore, and the Adobe XMP. I've
heard from the vendors on these applications, and am incorporating
feedback at this time.

We're hoping to get as much feedback as we can by end of the month
(Feb 28th), and hope to get this into production quickly. Street date
is March/April timeframe, depending on how long it will take for final
edits.

I appreciate the feedback I've received in the past, and appreciate any
feedback you can provide at this time. For those who provide significant
feedback (in-depth feedback on one or more chapters), you'll get
acknowledged in the book, and a free copy of the book. And my sincere
thanks.

Shelley

---------------------------------------------------
Shelley Powers             shelleyp@burningbird.net
Burning Bird Network: http://www.burningbird.net

Received on Thursday, 20 February 2003 12:36:44 UTC