Another example of
Data Spaces in action by John Breslin.. In this case
John visualizes the connections that are exploitable by creating
SIOC (Semantically-Interlinked
Online Communities) instance data from existing Distributed
Collaborative Application profiles (Web
2.0 in current parlance). Of course, SIOC is an Ontology for
RDF data since it describes the Concepts and Terms for a a network
mesh of online communities. Which by implication provides another
insight into the realization that the Web we know has always been a
"Web of Databases" (federation of Graph Model Databases
encapsulated in Data Spaces). The emergence of
SPARQL as the standard Query Language for
querying RDF Data Sets, alongside the SPARQL Protocol for
transmitting SPARQL Queries over HTTP, and the SPARQL Query Results
Serialization formats (XML or JSON) Results Serialization Format),
basically set the stage truly open and flexible data access across
Web Data Space clusters such as: the Blogosphere, Wikispehere,
Usenetverse, Linkspaces, Boardscapes, and others.
For additional clarity re. my comments above, you can also look
at the SPARQL
& SIOC Usecase samples document for our OpenLink
Data Spaces platform. Bottom line, the Semantic Web and SPARQL
aren't BORING.
In fact, quite the contrary, since they are essential ingredients
of a more powerful Web than the one we work with today!
Enjoy the rest of John's post:
Creating connections between discussion clouds with SIOC:
(Extract from our forthcoming BlogTalk paper about
browsers for SIOC.)
SIOC provides a unified vocabulary for content and interaction
description: a semantic layer that can co-exist with existing
discussion platforms. Using SIOC, various linkages are created
between the aforementioned concepts, which allow new methods of
accessing this linked data, including:
-
Virtual Forums. These may be a gathering of
posts or threads which are distributed across discussion platforms,
for example, where a user has found posts from a number of blogs
that can be associated with a particular category of interest, or
an agent identifies relevant posts across a certain timeframe.
-
Distributed Conversations. Trackbacks are
commonly used to link blog posts to previous posts on a related
topic. By creating links in both directions, not only across blogs
but across all types of internet discussions, conversations can be
followed regardless of what point or URI fragment a browser enters
at.
-
Unified Communities. Apart from creating a web
page with a number of relevant links to the blogs or forums or
people involved in a particular community, there is no standard way
to define what makes up an online community (apart from grouping
the people who are members of that community using FOAF or OPML).
SIOC allows one to simply define what objects are constituent parts
of a community, or to say to what community an object belongs
(using sioc:has_part / part_of): users, groups, forums, blogs,
etc.
-
Shared Topics. Technorati (a search engine for
blogs) and BoardTracker (for bulletin boards) have been leveraging
the free-text tags that people associate with their posts for some
time now. SIOC allows the definition of such tags (using the
subject property), but also enables hierarchial or non-hierarchial
topic definition of posts using sioc:topic when a topic is
ambiguous or more information on a topic is required. Combining
with other Semantic Web vocabularies, tags and topics can be
further described using the SKOS organisation system.
-
One Person, Many User Accounts. SIOC also aims
to help the issue of multiple identities by allowing users to
define that they hold other accounts or that their accounts belong
to a particular personal identity (via foaf:holdsOnlineAccount or
sioc:account_of). Therefore, all the posts or comments made by a
particular person using their various associated user accounts
across platforms could be identified.