Kingsley Idehen's Blog Data Space

At OpenLink Software, we've had an immense problem explaining the depth and breadth of our product porfolio via traditional Document Web pages. Thanks to SPARQL and Linked Data, we are now able to use Web Data Object IDs (HTTP based URIs) to produce super SKUs for every item in our product portfolio. Even better, we are able to handle the additional challenge of exposing features and benefits which by their very nature are mercurial across an array of fronts (products releases, product formats, and supported platforms etc).

Now I can simply state the following using Linked Data (hyperdata) links:

1. Universal Data Access Drivers Suite (UDA) for ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET, OLE-DB, and XMLA
2. OpenLink Data Spaces
3. Virtuoso

We no longer have to explain (repeatedly) why our drivers exist in Express, Lite, and Multi-Tier Edition formats, or why you ultimately need Multi-Tier Drivers over Single Tier Drivers (Express or Lite Editions) since you ultimately heed high-performance, data encryption, and policy based security across each of the data access driver formats.

Increasingly, I am encountering commentary from the ReadWriteWeb data space that highlights critical problems solved by a Linked Data Web. Unfortunately, most of the time, there is a disconnect between the problem and the solution. By this I mean: technology in the Semantic Web realm isn't seen as the solution.

A while back, I wrote a post titled:Why we need Linked Data. The aim of the post was to bring attention to the implications of exponential growth of User Generated Content (typically, semi-structured and unstructured data) on the Web. The growth in question is occurring within a fixed data & information processing timeframe (i.e. there will always be 24hrs in a day), which sets the stage for Information Overload as expressed in a recent post from ReadWriteWeb titled: Visualizing Social Media Fatigue.

The emerging "Web of Linked Data" augments the current "Web of Linked Documents", by providing a structured data corpus partitioned by containers I prefer to call: Data Spaces. These spaces enable Linked Data aware solutions to deliver immense value such as, complex data graph traversal, starting from document beachheads, that expose relevant data within a faction of the time it would take to achieve the same thing using traditional document web methods such as full text search patterns, scraping, and mashing etc.

Remember, our DNA based data & information system far exceeds that of any inorganic system when it comes to reasoning, but it remains immensely incapable of accurately and efficiently processing huge volumes of data & information -- irrespective of data model.

The Idea behind the Semantic Web has always been about an evolution of the Web into a structured data collective comprised of interlinked Data items and Data Containers (Data Spaces). Of course we can argue forever about the Semantics of the solution (ironically), but we can't shirk away from the impending challenges that "Information Overload" is about to unleash on our limited processing time and capabilities.

For those looking for a so called "killer application" for the Semantic Web, I would urge you to align this quest with the "Killer Problem" of our times, because when you do so you will that all routes lead to: Linked Data that leverages existing Web Architecture.

Once you understand the problem, you will hopefully understand that we all need some kind of "Data Junction Box" that provides a "Data Access Focal Point" for all of the data we splatter across the net as we sign up for the next greatest and latest Web X.X hosted service, or as we work on a daily basis with a variety of tools within enterprise Intranets.

BTW - these "Data Junction Boxes" will also need to be unobtrusively bound to our individual Identities.

Daniel Lewis has published another post about OpenLink Data Spaces (ODS) functionality titled:A few new features in OpenLink Data Spaces, that exposes additional features (some hot out the oven).

OpenLink Data Spaces (ODS) now officially supports:

• Attention Profiling Markup Language (APML).
• Meaning of a Tag (MOAT) in conjunction with Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS) and Social-Semantic Cloud of Tags (SCOT).
• OAuth - an Open Authentication Protocol

Which means that OpenLink Data Spaces support all of the main standards being discussed in the DataPortability Interest Group!

APML Example:

All users of ODS automatically get a dynamically created APML file, for example: APML profile for Kingsley Idehen

The URI for an APML profile is: http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/<ods-username>/apml.xml

Meaning of a Tag Example:

All users of ODS automatically have tag cloud information embedded inside their SIOC file, for example: SIOC for Kingsley Idehen on the Myopenlink.net installation of ODS.

But even better, MOAT has been implemented in the ODS Tagging System. This has been demonstrated in a recent test blog post by my colleague Mitko Iliev, the blog post comes up on the tag search: http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/imitko/weblog/Mitko%27s%20Weblog/tag/paris

Which can be put through the OpenLink Data Browser:

• OpenLink Data Browser with Mitko Iliev’s Paris Blog Tag

OAuth Example:

OAuth Tokens and Secrets can be created for any ODS application. To do this:

1. you can log in to MyOpenlink.net beta service, the Live Demo ODS installation, an EC2 instance, or your local installation
2. then go to ‘Settings’
3. and then you will see ‘OAuth Keys’
4. you will then be able to choose the applications that you have instantiated and generate the token and secret for that app.

Related Document (Human) Links

• OpenLink Data Spaces Official Page
• OpenLink Software Page
• OpenLink Data Spaces Wikipedia Page
• Attention Profiling Markup Language Project Website
• Meaning of a Tag Project Website
• Simple Knowledge Organisation Systems Project Website
• Social-Semantic Cloud of Tags Project Website
• OAuth Protocol Website
• DataPortability.org Website
• Semantically Interlinked Online Communities Project Website
  

Remember (as per my most recent post about ODS), ODS is about unobtrusive fusion of Web 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0+ usage and interaction patterns. Thanks to a lot of recent standardization in the Semantic Web realm (e.g SPARQL), we are now employ the MOAT, SKOS, and SCOT ontologies as vehicles for Structured Tagging.

Structured Tagging?

This is how we take a key Web 2.0 feature (think 2D in a sense), bend it over, to create a Linked Data Web (Web 3.0) experience unobtrusively (see earlier posts re. Dimensions of Web). Thus, nobody has to change how they tag or where they tag, just expose ODS to the URLs of your Web 2.0 tagged content and it will produce URIs (Structured Data Object Identifiers) and a lnked data graph for your Tags Data Space (nee. Tag Cloud). ODS will construct a graph which exposes tag subject association, tag concept alignment / intended meaning, and tag frequencies, that ultimately deliver "relative disambiguation" of intended Tag Meaning (i.e. you can easily discern the taggers meaning via the Tags actual Data Space which is associated with the tagger). In a nutshell, the dynamics of relevance matching, ranking, and the like, change immensely without futile timeless debates about matters such as:

What's the Linked Data value proposition?

What's the Linked Data business model?

XML vs RDF

XQuery vs SPARQL

What's the Semantic Web Killer application?

We can just get on with demonstrating Linked Data value using what exists on the Web today. This is the approach we are deliberately taking with ODS.

Related Items

Stefano Mazzocch's response to Clay Shirky's 2005 talk titled: Ontology is Overrated: Links, Tags and Post-hoc Metadata

Tom Gruber's post titled: Ontology of Folksonomy: A Mash-up of Apples and Oranges

Tip: This post is best viewed via an RDF aware User Agent (e.g. a Browser or Data Viewer). I say this because the permalink of this post is a URI in a Linked Data Space (My Blog) comprised of more data than meets the eye (i.e. what you see when you read this post via a Document Web Browser) :-)

The title of this post is a "Tongue in cheek" expression of euphoria now that I have FOAF and SIOC (pronounced SHOCK) based data spaces exposed via my FOAF and my SIOC information resource (RDF files) URIs.

If you want to explore who I know, what I read, and what I've tagged (amongst other things), all you have to do is:

1. Beam a SPARQL query down my data space URIs which expose FOAF or SIOC based interconnected Linked Data graphs.
2. Walkthrough using an RDF Browser until you reach a beachhead and then beam your SPARQL from there (remember you only need the URI of the RDF Data Source, and while in my Data Space every data item has a proper URI).

Some Tools that help you comprehend what I am saying:

Browsers

Zitgist Data Viewer (SIOC and FOAF data spaces)

OpenLink RDF Browser (SIOC and FOAF data spaces)

DISCO (SIOC and FOAF data spaces)

Tabulator

Query Tools

SPARQL Demo

iSPARQL QBE

The W3C officially unveiled the SPARQL Query Language today via a press release titled: W3C Opens Data on the Web with SPARQL.

What is SPARQL?

A query language for the burgeoning Structured & Linked Data Web (aka Semantic Web / Giant Global Graph). Like SQL, for the Relational Data Model, it provides a query language for the Graph based RDF Data Model.

It's also a REST or SOAP based Web Service that exposes SPARQL access to RDF Data via an endpoint.

In addition, it's also a Query Results Serialization format that includes XML and JSON support.

Why is it Important?

It brings important clarity to the notion of the "Web as a Database" by transforming existing Web Sites, Portals, and Web Services into bona fide corpus of Mesh-able (rather than Mash-able) Data Sources. For instance, you can perform queries that join one or more of the aforementioned data sources in exactly the same manner (albeit different syntax) as you would one or more SQL Tables.

Example:

-- SPARQL equivalent of SQL SELECT * against my personal data space hosted FOAF file

SELECT DISTINCT ?s ?p ?o
FROM <http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen> 
WHERE {?s ?p ?o}

-- SPARQL against my social network -- Note: My SPARQL will be beamed across all of contacts in the social networks of my contacts as long as they are all HTTP URI based within each data space

PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
SELECT DISTINCT ?Person
FROM <http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen>
WHERE {?s a foaf:Person; foaf:knows ?Person}

Note: you can use the basic SPARQL Endpoint, SPARQL Query By Example, or SPARQL Query Builder Demo tool to experiment with the demonstration queries above.

How Do I use It?

SPARQL is implemented by RDF Data Management Systems (Triple or Quad Stores) just as SQL is implemented by Relational Database Management Systems. The aforementioned data management systems will typically expose SPARQL access via a SPARQL endpoint.

Where are it's implementations?

A SPARQL implementors Testimonial page accompanies the SPARQL press release. In addition the is a growing collection of implementations on the ESW Wiki Page for SPARQL compliant RDF Triple & Quad Stores.

Is this really a big deal?

Yes! SPARQL facilitates an unobtrusive manifestation of a Linked Data Web by way of natural extension of the existing Document Web i.e these Web enclaves co-exist in symbiotic fashion.

As DBpedia very clearly demonstrates, Linked Data makes the Semantic Web demonstrable and much easier to comprehend. Without SPARQL there would be no mechanism for Linked Data deployment, and without Linked Data there is no mechanism for Beaming Queries (directly or indirectly) across the Giant Global Graph of data hosted by Social Networks, Shard Bookmarks Services, Weblogs, Wikis, RSS/Atom/OPML feeds, Photo Galleries and other Web accessible Data Sources (Data Spaces).

Related items

Cool URIs

Publishing Linked Data Tutorial

Detailed SPARQL Query Examples using SIOC Data Spaces

Detailed SPARQL Query Examples using FOAF Data Spaces

As 2007 came to a close I repeatedly mulled over the idea of putting together a usual "year in review" and a set of predictions for the coming year etc. Anyway, the more I pondered, the smaller the list became. While pondering (as 2008 rolled around), the Blogosphere was set ablaze with the Robert Scoble's announcement of his account suspension by Facebook. Of course, many chimed in expressing views either side of the ensuing debate: Who is right -- Scoble or Facebook. The more I assimilated the views expressed about this event, the more ironic I found the general discourse, for the following reasons:

1. Web 2.0 is fundamentally about Web Services as the prime vehicle for interactions across "points of Web presence"
2. Facebook is a Web 2.0 hosted service for social networking that provides Web Services APIs for accessing data in the Facebook data space. You have to do so "on the fly" within clearly defined constraints i.e you can interact with data across your social network via Facebook APIs, but you cannot cache the data (perform an export style dump of the data)
3. Facebook is a main driver of the term: "social graph", but their underlying data model is relational and the Web Services response (data you get back) doesn't return a data graph, instead it returns an tree (i.e XML)
4. Scoble's had a number of close encounters with Linked Data Web | Semantic Data Web | Web 3.0 aficionados in various forms throughout 2007, but still doesn't quite make the connection between Web Services APIs as part of a processing pipeline that includes structured data extraction from XML data en route to producing Data Graphs comprised of Data Objects (Entities) endowed with: Unique Identifiers, Classification or Categorization schemes, Attributes, and Relationships prescribed by one or more shared Data Dictionaries/Schemas/Ontologies
5. A global information bus that exposes a Linked Data mesh comprised of Data Objects, Object Attributes, and Object Relationships across "points of Web presence" is what TimBL described in 1998 (Semantic Web Roadmap) and more recently in 2007 (Giant Global Graph)
6. The Linked Data mesh (i.e Linked Data Web or GGG) is anchored by the use of HTTP to mint Location, Structure, and Value independent Object Identifiers called URIs or IRIs. In addition, the Linked Data Web is also equipped with a query language, protocol, and results serialization format for XML and JSON called: SPARQL.

So, unlike Scoble, I am able to make my Facebook Data portable without violating Facebook rules (no data caching outside Facebook realm) by doing the following:

1. Use an RDFizer for Facebook to convert XML response data from Facebook Web Services into RDF "on the fly" Ensure that my RDF is comprised of Object Identifiers that are HTTP based and thereby dereferencable (i.e. I can use SPARQL to unravel the Linked Data Graph in my Facebook data space)
2. The act of data dereferencing enables me to expose my Facebook Data as Linked Data associated with my Personal URI
3. This interaction only occurs via my data space and in all cases the interactions with data work via my RDFizer middleware (e.g the Virtuoso Sponger) that talks directly to Facebook Web Services.

In a nutshell, my Linked Data Space enables you to reference data in my data space via Object Identifiers (URIs), and some cases the Object IDs and Graphs are constructed on the fly via RDFization middleware.

Here are my URIs that provide different paths to my Facebook Data Space:

Personal URI

My Facebook Data Space (best viewed via a Linked Data Browser/Viewer session)

My Facebook Photo Gallery -- WWW2007 Photo Collection (also best viewed via a Linked Data Browser/Viewer session)

To conclude, 2008 is clearly the inflection year during which we will final unshackle Data and Identity from the confines of "Web Data Silos" by leveraging the HTTP, SPARQL, and RDF induced virtues of Linked Data.

Related Posts:

1. 2008 and the Rise of Linked Data
2. Scoble Right, Wrong, and Beyond
3. Scoble interviewing TimBL (note to Scoble: re-watch your interview since he made some specific points about Linked Data and URIs that you need to grasp)
4. Prior Blog posts my this Blog Data Space that include the literal patterns: Scoble Semantic Web

Question posed by Dan Brickley via a blog post: SQL, OpenOffice: would a JDBC driver for SPARQL protocol make sense?

Writing a JDBC Driver for SPARQL is a little overkill. OpenOffice.org simply needs to make XML or Web Data (HTML, XHTML, and XML) bonafide data sources within its "Pivot Table" functionality realm. Then all that would then be required is a SPARQL SELECT Query transported via the SPARQL Protocol with results sent back using the SPARQL XML results serialization format (all part of a single SPARQL Protocol URL).

Excel successfully consumes the following information resource URI: http://tinyurl.com/yvoccj (a tiny url for a SPARQL SELECT against my FOAF file).

Alternatively, and currently achievable, you could simply use SPASQL (SPARQL within SQL) using a DBMS engine that supports SQL, SPARQL, and SPARQL e.g. Virtuoso.

Virtuoso SPASQL support is exposed via it's ODBC and/or JDBC Drivers. Thus you can do things such as:

1. Use a SPARQL Query in the FROM CLAUSE of a SQL statement
2. Execute SPARQL via SQL processor by prepending SPARQL query text with the literals "sparql"

BTW - My News Years Resolution: get my act together and shrink the ever increasing list of "simple & practical Virtuoso use case demos" on my todo which now spans all the way back to 2006 :-(

I've been a little busier than usual, of late. So busy, that even minimal blog based discourse participation has been a challenge. Anyway, during this quiet period, a number of interesting data streams have come my way that relate to OpenLink Data Spaces (ODS). Thus, in typical fashion, I'll use this post (via URIs) to contribute a few nodes to the Giant Global Graph that is the Web of Structured Linked Data, also known as the Data Web, Semantic Data Web, or Web of Data (also see prior Data Web posts).

Here goes:

1. Alan Wilensky recalls his early encounters with OpenLink Data Spaces (circa. 2004)
2. Daniel Lewis shares his "state of the Semantic Data Web" findings
3. Daniel Lewis experiences OpenLink Data Space first hand en route to creating Data Spaces in the Clouds (the Fourth Platform).

In addition, in one week, courtesy of the Web, UK Semnantic Web Gatherings in Bristol and Oxford, I discover, interview, and employ Daniel :-) Imagine how long this would have taken to pull off via the Document Web, assuming I would even discover Daniel.

As with all things these days, the Web and Internet change everything, which includes talent discovery and recruitment.

A Global Social graph that is a mesh of Linked Data enables the process of recruitment, marketing, and other elements of busines management to be condensed down to a sending powerful beams across the aforementioned Graph :-) The only variable pieces are the traversal paths exposed to your beam via the beam's entry point URI. In my case, I have a single URI that exposes a Graph of critical paths for the Blogosphere (i.e data spaces of RSS Atom Feeds). Thus, I can discover if your profile matches the requirements associated with an opening at OpenLink Software (most of the time) before you do :-)

BTW - I just noticed that John Breslin described ODS as social-graph++ in his recent post, titled: Tales from the SIOC-o-sphere, part 6. In a funny way, this reminds of a post from the early blogosphere days about platforms and Weblog APIs (circa. 2003) about ODS (then exposed via the Blog Platform realm of Virtuoso).

"The phrase Open Social implies portability of personal and social data. That would be exciting but there are entirely different protocols underway to deal with those ideas. As some people have told me tonight, it may have been more accurate to call this "OpenWidget" - though the press wouldn't have been as good. We've been waiting for data and identity portability - is this all we get?"
[Source: Read/Write Web's Commentary & Analysis of Google's OpenSocial API]

..Perhaps the world will read the terms of use of the API, and realize this is not an open API; this is a free API, owned and controlled by one company only: Google. Hopefully, the world will remember another time when Google offered a free API and then pulled it. Maybe the world will also take a deeper look and realize that the functionality is dependent on Google hosted technology, which has its own terms of service (including adding ads at the discretion of Google), and that building an OpenSocial application ties Google into your application, and Google into every social networking site that buys into the Dream. Hopefully the world will remember. Unlikely, though, as such memories are typically filtered in the Great Noise....

[Source: Poignant commentary excerpt from Shelly Power's Blog (as always)]

The "Semantic Data Web" vision has always been about "Data & Identity" portability across the Web. Its been that and more from day one.

In a nutshell, we continue to exhibit varying degrees of Cognitive Dissonance re the following realities:

1. The Network is the Computer (Internet/Intranet/Extranet depending on your TCP/IP usage scenarios)
2. The Web is the OS (ditto) and it provides a communications subsystem (Information BUS) comprised of
- HTTP Protocol
- URIs (pointer system for identifying, accessing, and manipulating data)
3. HTTP based Interprocess (i.e Web Apps are processes when you discard the HTML UI and interact with the application logic containers called "Web Services" behind the pages) ultimately hit data
4. Web Data is best Modeled as a Graph (RDF, Containers/Items/Item Types, Property & Value Pairs associated with something, and other labels)
5. Network are Graphs and vice versa
6. Social Networks are graphs where nodes are connected via social connectors ( [x]--knows-->[y] )
7. The Web is a Graph that exposes a People and Data Network (to the degree we allude to humans not being data containers i.e. just nodes in a network, otherwise we are talking about a Data Network)
8. Data access and manipulation depends inherently on canonical Data Access mechanisms such as Data Source Identifiers / Names (time-tested practice in various DBMS realms)
9. Data is forever, it is the basis of Information, and it is increasing exponentially due to proliferation of Web Services induced user activities (User Generated Content)
10. Survival, Vitality, Longevity, Efficiency, Productivity etc.. are all depend on our ability to process data effectively in a shrinking time continuum where Data and/or Information overload is the alternative.

The Data Web is about Presence over Eyeballs due to the following realities:

1. Eyeballs are input devices for a DNA based processing system (Humans). The aforementioned processing system can reason very well, but simply cannot effectively process masses of data or information
2. Widgets offer little value long term re. the imminent data and information overload dilemma, ditto Web pages (however pretty), and any other Eyeballs-only centric Web Apps
3. Computers (machines) are equipped with inorganic (non DNA) based processing power, they are equipped to process huge volumes of data and/or information, but they cannot reason
4. To be effective in the emerging frontier comprised of a Network Computer and a Web OS, we need an effective mechanism that makes best use of the capabilities possessed by humans and machines, by shifting the focus to creation and interaction with points of "Data Web Presence" that openly expose "Structured Linked Data".

This is why we need to inject a mesh of Linked Data into the existing Web. This is what the often misunderstood vision of the "Semantic Data Web" or "Web of Data" or "Web or Structured Data" is all about.

As stated earlier (point 10 above), "Data is forever" and there is only more of it to come! Sociality and associated Social Networking oriented solutions are at best a spec in the Web's ocean of data once you comprehend this reality.

Note: I am writing this post as an early implementor of GData and an implementor of RDF Linked Data technology and a "Web Purist".

OpenSocial implementation and support across our relevant product families: Virtuoso (i.e the Sponger Middleware for RDF component), OpenLink Data Spaces (Data Space Controller / Services), and the OpenLink Ajaxt Toolkit (i.e OAT Widgets and Libraries), is a triviality now that the OpenSocial APIs are public.

The concern I have, and the problem that remains mangled in the vast realms of Web Architecture incomprehension, is the fact that GData and GData based APIs cannot deliver Structured Linked Data in line with the essence of the Web without introducing "lock-in" that ultimately compromises the "Open Purity" of the Web. Facebook and Google's OpenSocial response to the Facebook juggernaut (i.e. open variant of the Facebook Activity Dashboard and Social Network functionality realms, primarily), are at best icebergs in the ocean we know as the "World Wide Web". The nice and predictable thing about icebergs is that they ultimately melt into the larger ocean :-)

- RDF Views of SQL Data - Orri Erling on behalf of OpenLink Software

- Computer Science 2.0 (covering User Generated Content Explosion) - Michael Brodie

- Experiences re. solving SPARQL Access to Distributed Data Sources - Phil Ashworth

- Other presentations

A new release of Virtuoso is now available in both Open Source and Commercial variants. The main features and Enhancements associated with this release include:

* 64-bit Integer Support

* RDF Sink Folders for WebDAV - enabling RDF Quad Store population by simply dropping RDF files into WebDAV or via HTTP (meaning you can use CURL as an RDF in put mechanism for instance)

* Additional Sponger Cartridges from Audio binary files (i.e ID3 tag extraction and Music Ontology mapping which exposes the fine details of music as RDF based Structured Data; one for the DJs & Remixers out there!)

* New Sponger Cartridges for Facebook, Freebase, Wikipedia, GRDDL, RDFa, eRDF and more

* Support for PHP 5.2 runtime hosting (Virtuoso is a bona fide deployment platform for: Wordpress, MediaWiki, phpBB, Drupal etc.)

* Enhanced UI for managing RDF Linked Data deployment (covering Multi Homed domains, Virtual Directories associated with URL-rewrite rules

* Demonstration Database includes SQL-RDF Views & SQL Table samples for the THALIA Web Data Integration benchmark and test-suite

* Tutorial Application includes Linked Data style SQL-RDF Views for the Northwind SQL DBMS schema (which is the same as the standard Virtuoso demo atabase schema)

* SQL-RDF Views implementation of the TPC-D benchmark (Yes, we can run this grueling SQL benchmark via RDF views of SQL Data!)

* A new Amazon EC2 Image for Virtuoso that enables you to instantiate a fully configured instance comprising the Virtuoso core, OpenLink Data Spaces platform and the OpenLink Ajax Toolkit (OAT) (we now have bona fide Data Spaces in the Clouds as an addition to the emerging Semantic Data Web mesh).

Download Lnks:

* Open Source Edition

* Commercial Edition