I've written extensively on the subject of Data Spaces in relation to the Data Web for while. I've also written sparingly about OpenLink Data Spaces (a Data Web Platform that build using Virtuoso). On the other hand, I haven't shed much light on installation and deployment of OpenLink Data Spaces.

Jon Udell recently penned a post titled: The Fourth Platform. The post arrives at a spookily coincidental time (this happens quite often between Jon and I as demonstrated last year during our podcast; the "Fourth" in his Innovators Podcast series).

The platform that Jon describes is "Cloud Based" and comprised of Storage and Computation. I would like to add Data Access and Management (native and virtual) under the fourth platform banner with the end product called: "Cloud based Data Spaces".

As I write, we are releasing a Virtuoso AMI (Amazon Image) labeled: virtuoso-dataspace-server. This edition of Virtuoso includes the OpenLink Data Spaces Layer and all of the OAT applications we've been developing for a while.

What Benefits Does this offer?

  1. Personal Data Spaces in the Cloud - a place where you can control and consolidate data across your Blogs, Wikis, RSS/Atom Feed Subscriptions, Shared Bookmarks, Shared Calendars, Discussion Threads, Photo Galleries etc
  2. All the data in your Data Space is SPARQL or GData accessible.
  3. All of the data in your Personal Data Space is Linked Data from the get go. Each Item of data is URI addressable
  4. SIOC support - your Blogs, Wikis, Bookmarks etc.. are based on the SIOC ontology for Semantically Interlinking Online Communities (think: Open social-graph++)
  5. FOAF support - your FOAF Profile page provides a URI that is an in-road to all Data in your Data Space.
  6. OpenID support - your Personal Data Space ID is usable wherever OpenID is supported. OpenID and FOAF are integrated as per latest FOAF specs
  7. Two Integration with Facebook - You can access your Data Space from Facebook or access Facebook from your Data Space
  8. Unified Storage - The WebDAV based filesystem provides Cloud Storage that's integrated with Amazon S3; It also exposes all of your Data Space data via a traditional filesystem UI (think virtual Spotlight); You can also mount this drive to your local filesystem via your native operating system's WebDAV support
  9. SyncML - you can sync calendar and contact details with your Data Space in the cloud from your Mobile phone.
  10. A practical Semantic Data Web solution - based on Web Infrastructure and doesn't require you to do anything beyond exposing URIs for data in your Data Spaces.

EC2-AMI Details:

AMI ID: ami-e2ca2f8b
Manifest file: virtuoso-images/virtuoso-dataspace-server.manifest.xml

Installation Guide:

  1. Get an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account
  2. Signup for S3 and EC2 services
  3. Install the EC2 plugin for Firefox
  4. Start the EC2 plugin
  5. Locate the row containingami-7c31d515Manifestvirtuoso-test/virtuoso-cloud-beta-9-i386.manifest.xml(sort using the AMI ID or Manifest Columns or search on pattern: virtuoso, due to name flux)
  6. Start the Virtuoso Data Space Server AMI
  7. Wait 4-5 minutes (*take a few minutes to create the pre-configured Linux Image*)
  8. Connect to http://http://your-ec2-instance-cname:8890/ Log in with user/password dba/dba
  9. Go to the Admin UI (Virtuoso Conductor) and change the PWDs for the 'dba' and 'dav' accounts (*Important!*)
  10. Give the "SPARQL" user "SPARQL_UPDATE" privileges (required if you want to exploit the in-built Sponger Middleware)
  11. Click on the ODS (OpenLink Data Spaces) link to start an Personal Editon of OpenLink Data Spaces (or go to: http://your-ec2-instance-cname/dataspace/ods/index.html)
  12. Log-in using the username and password credentials for the 'dav' account (or register a new user note: OpenID is an option here also) Create an Data Space Application Instance by clicking on a Data Space App. Tab
  13. Import data from your existing Web 2.0 style applications into OpenLink Data Spaces e.g. subscribe to a few RSS/Atom feeds via the "Feeds Manager" application or import some Bookmarks using the "Bookmarks" application
  14. Then look at the imported data in Linked Data form via your ODS generated URIs based on the patterns: http://your-ec2-instance-cname/dataspace/person/your-ods-id#this (URI for You the Person), http://your-ec2-instance-cname/dataspace/person/your-ods-id (FOAF File URI), http://your-ec2-instance-cname/dataspace/your-ods-id (SIOC File URI)

(OAT) from your Data Space instance

Install the OAT VAD package via the Admin UI and then apply the URI patterns below within your browser:
  1. http://:8890/oatdemo - Entire OAT Demo Collection
  2. http://:8890/rdfbrowser - RDF Browser
  3. http://:8890/isparql - SPARQL Query Builder (iSPARQL)
  4. http://:8890/qbe - SQL Query Builder (iSQL)
  5. http://:8890/formdesigner - Forms Builder (for building Meshups based on RDF, SQL, or Web Servives Data Souces)
  6. http://:8890/dbdesigner - SQL DB Schema Designer (note a Visual SQL-RDF Mapper is also on it's way
  7. http://:8890/DAV/JS/ - To view the OAT Tree (there are some experimental demos that are missing from the main demo app etc..)

There's more to come!