Kingsley Idehen's Blog Data Space

Runtime hosting is functionality realm of Virtuoso that is sometimes easily overlooked. In this post I want to provide a simple no-hassles HOWTO guide for installing Virtuoso on Windows (32 or 64 Bit), Mac OS X (Universal or Native 64 Bit), and Linux (32 or 64 Bit). The installation guide also covers the instantiation of phpBB3 as verification of the Virtuoso hosted PHP 3.5 runtime.

What are the benefits of PHP Runtime Hosting?

Simple, this means that like Apache, Virtuoso is a bona-fide Web Application Server for an PHP application. Unlike Apache, Virtuoso is also the following:

• a DBMS Engine (SQL, XML, RDF, and unstructured Text) that is accessible via industry standard interfaces (solely)
• a Virtual DBMS or Master Data Manager (MDM) for heterogeneous and distributed SQL, XML, RDF, unstructured Text based data sources
• an RDF Middleware solution for RDF-zation of non RDF resources across the Web and enterprise Intranets and/or Extranets (in the form of Cartridges for SOA & REST Servers and RDF Views (Semantic Covers) over SQL and/or XML data sources)
• an RDF Linked Data Server (meaning it can deploy RDF Linked Data)

As result of the above, when you deploy a PHP application using Virtuoso, you inherit the following benefits:

1. Use of PHP-iODBC for in-process communication with Virtuoso
2. Easy generation of RDF Linked Data from the SQL schemas of PHP applications
3. Easy deployment of RDF Linked Data
4. Less LAMP monoculture (*there is no such thing as virtuous monoculture*) when dealing with PHP based Web applications.

As indicated in prior posts, producing RDF Linked Data from the existing Web, where a lot of content is deployed by PHP based content managers, should simply come down to RDF Views over the SQL Schemas and deployment / publishing of the RDF Views in RDF Linked data form. In a nutshell, this is what Virtuoso delivers via its PHP runtime hosting and pre packaged VADs (Virtuoso Application Distribution packages) for popular PHP based applications such as: phpBB3, Drupal, WordPress, and MediaWiki.

In addition, to the RDF Linked Data deployment, we've also taken the traditional LAMP installation tedium out of the typical PHP application deployment process. For instance, you don't have to rebuild PHP 3.5 (32 or 64 Bit) on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux to get going, simply install Virtuoso, and then select a VAD package for the relevant application and you're set. If the application of choice isn't pre packaged by us, simply install as you would when using Apache, which comes dow to situating the PHP files in your Web structure under the Web Application's root directory.

Installation Guide

1. Download the Virtuoso installer for Windows (32 Bit msi file or 64 Bit msi file), Mac OS X (Universal Binary dmg file), or instantiate the Virtuoso EC2 AMI search for pattern: "OpenLink, when using the Firefox extension or Web Interface based EC2 management consoles or look for:
•  AMI ID: ami-c46084ad and Manifest Name: openlink/virtuoso-uim-unisvr-psnl/5.0/i686-fedora-linux-9.manifest.xml (32 bit edition)
• AMI ID:  ami-59628630 and Manifest Name: openlink/virtuoso-uim-unisvr-psnl/5.0/i686-fedora-linux-9.manifest.xml (64 bit edition)
   
2. Run the installer (or download the movies using the links in the related section below)
3. Go to the Virtuoso Conductor (*which will show up at the end of the installation process* or go to http://localhost:8890/conductor)
4. Go to the "Admin" tab within the (X)HTML based UI and select the "Packages" sub-menu item (a Tab)
5. Pick phpBB3 (or any other pre-packaged PHP app) and then click on "Install/Upgrase"
6. The watch one of my silent movies or read the initial startup guides for Virtuoso hosted phpBB3, Drupal, Wordpress, MediaWiki.

Related

At the current time, I've only provided links to ZIP files containing the Virtuoso installation "silent movies". This approach is a short-term solution to some of my current movie publishing challenges re. YouTube and Vimeo -- where the compressed output hasn't been of acceptable visual quality. Once resolved, I will publish much more "Multimedia Web" friendly movies :-)

• Windows Vista (x64) Installation Movie
• Mac OS X (x64 & Universal binary) Installation Movie
• Virtuoso EC2 Cloud Edition Installation Movie

As articulated in timeless fashion by Albert Einstein:

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.

This quote also applies to the current global financial mess because the essence of this crisis remains inextricably linked to dependency on outdated "closed world" systems.

How we got here (5,000 ft. view)

We have a global human network that depends on systems driven by, and confined to, data silos! Every time you hear a CEO, Government Official, work colleague, neighbor, sibling, or relative tell you they didn't see it coming, just remember:

• For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction
• For every debit there is a credit
• What goes around, comes around
• No man is an Island (little tweak: Human)
• We are all Linked whether we like it or not
• System preserving reboots are a feature of all intelligently designed systems.

Why there won't be a Depression

There won't be a depression because we can't afford one. Just like we couldn't afford to continue with the manner in which our systems work today. Unlike the '30s, we all know that there are no absolute safe havens right now, we have enough information at our disposal to eventually understand (post panic) that stuffing the mattress isn't an option (even government bonds won't cut it, ditto money market accounts).

The Opportunity

Take a deep breadth and tell traditional media to "shut up". As per usual, the traditional mass media wants to have it both ways by stoking the panic and maxing out on the frenzy with reckless abandon (as per usual). If there is a time to appreciate the blogosphere and quality journalism etc.. It's now.

Anyway, as the saying goes: "It's always darkest before dawn", and as bizarre as this may sound in some quarters, things will ultimately change for the better. It just so happened that a really big cane was required in order for us to change our dysfunctional ways :-(

I recently wrote a post about "zero based cognition" that sought to bring attention to the power of "Human Thought" in relation to value creation.

Innovative creation and dissemination of value is how we will eventually get out of the current mess (as we've done in the past). The predictability of the aforementioned reality is significantly increased by the sheer link density and resulting "network effects" potential of the Internet and World Wide Web. Our ability to "connect the dots" as part of our value creation, dissemination, and consumption processing pipelines is what will ultimately separate the winners from the losers (individuals, enterprises, nations).

Related

• Yihong Ding's insightful perspectives
• Jason Kolb's poignant piece titled: The Year Innovation Died
• Tech Start-ups and the Economy's Best Hope
• Money as Debt - (a documentary spotted by Danja)
• Peter Kalfka's post: Smart Startup Advice: Don't Panic - Profit
• George Soros Interview
• Mark Cuban (Blog Maverick) echoing "Entrepreneurship is the key" sentiment.

The title of this post is an expression of my gut reaction to the quotes below, which originate from Leo Sauermann's post about the Nepomuk Semantic Desktop for KDE:

Ansgar Bernardi, deputy head of the Knowledge Management Department at Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz (DFKI, or the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence) and Nepomuk's coordinator, explains, "The basic problem that we all face nowadays is how to handle vast amounts of information at a sensible rate." According to Bernardi, Nepomuk takes a traditional approach by creating a meta-data layer with well-defined elements that services can be built upon to create and manipulate the information.

The comment above echoes my sentiments about the imminence of "information overload" due to the vast amounts of user generated content on the Internet as a whole. We are going to need to process more an more data within a fixed 24 hour timeframe, while attempting to balance our professional and personal lives. Be rest assured, this is a very serious issue, and you cannot event begin to address it without a Web of Linked Data.

"The first idea of building the semantic desktop arose from the fact that one of our colleagues could not remember the girlfriends of his friends," Bernard says, more than half-seriously. "Because they kept changing -- you know how it is. The point is, you have a vast amount of information on your desktop, hidden in files, hidden in emails, hidden in the names and structures of your folders. Nepomuk gives a standard way to handle such information."

If you get a personal URI for Entity "You", via a Linked Data aware platform (e.g. OpenLink Data Spaces) that virtualizes data across your existing Web data spaces (blogs, feed subscriptions, wikis, shared bookmarks, photo galleries, calendars, etc.), you then only have to remember your URI whenever you need to "Find" something, imagine that!

To conclude, "information overload" is the imminent challenge of our time, and the keys to challenge alleviation lie in our ability to construct and maintain (via solutions) few context lenses (URIs) that provide coherent conduits into the dense mesh of structured Linked Data on the Web.

After listening to the latest Semantic Web Gang podcast, I found myself agreeing with some of the points made by Alex Iskold, specifically:

-- Linked Data does not implicitly imply making all your data public

-- Linked Data principles benefit Intranet and Extranet style data integration (trumps alternative distributed database integration approaches any day)

-- Business exploitation of Linked Data on the Web will certainly be driven by the correlation of opportunity costs (which is more than likely what Alex meant by "use cases") associated with the lack of URIs originating from the domain of a given business (Tom Heath: also effectively alluded to this via his BBC and URI land grab anecdotes; same applies Georgi's examples)

-- History is a great tutor, answers to many of today's problems always lie somewhere in plain sight of the past.

Of course, I also believe that Linked Data serves Web Data Integration across the Internet very well too, and the fact that it will be beneficial to businesses in a big way. No individual or organization is an island, I think the Internet and Web have done a good job of demonstrating that thus far :-) We're all data nodes in a Giant Global Graph.

Daniel lewis did shed light on the read-write aspects of the Linked Data Web, which is actually very close to the callout for a Wikipedia for Data. TimBL has been working on this via Tabulator (see Tabulator Editing Screencast), Bengamin Nowack also added similar functionality to ARC, and of course we support the same SPARQL UPDATE into an RDF information resource via the RDF Sink feature of our WebDAV and ODS-Briefcase implementations.

One of the biggest impediments to the adoption of technology is the cost burden typically associated with doing the right thing. For instance, requirements for making the Linked Data Web (GGG) buzz would include the following (paraphrasing TimBL's original Linked Data meme):

-- identifying the things you observe, or stumble upon, using URIs (aka Entity IDs)

-- construct URIs using HTTP so that the Web provides a channel for referencing things elsewhere (remote object referencing)

-- Expose things in your Data Space(s) that are potentially useful to other Web users via URIs

-- Link to other Web accessible things using their URIs.

The list is nice, but actual execution can be challenging. For instance, when writing a blog post, or constructing a WikiWord, would you have enough disposable time to go searching for these URIs? Or would you compromise and continue to inject "Literal" values into the Web, leaving it to the reasoning endowed human reader to connect the dots?

Anyway, OpenLink Data Spaces is now equipped with a Glossary system that allows me to manage terms, meaning of terms, and hyper-linking of phrases and words matching associated with my terms. The great thing about all of this is that everything I do is scoped to my Data Space (my universe of discourse), I don't break or impede the other meanings of these terms outside my Data Space. The Glossary system can be shared with anyone I choose to share it with, and even better, it makes my upstreaming (rules based replication) style of blogging even more productive :-)

Remember, on the Linked Data Web, who you know doesn't matter as much as what your are connected to, directly or indirectly. Jason Kolb covers this issue in his post: People as Data Connectors, and so doesFrederick Giasson via a recent post titled: Networks are everywhere. For instance, this blog post (or the entire Blog) is a bona fide RDF Linked Data Source, you can use it as the Data Source of a SPARQL Query to find things that aren't even mentioned in this post, since all you are doing is beaming a query through my Data Space (a container of Linked Data Graphs). On that note, let's re-watch Jon Udell's "On-Demand-Blogosphere" screencast from 2006 :-)

While I continue to wrestle with screencast production etc.. Here is are some screenshots that guide you through the process of providing Data Web URIs to the SPARQL Query Builder (first cut of an MS Query or MS ACCESS type tool for the Data Web).

1. Step 1 - Enter a Data Source URI
2. Step 2 - Click on the Run Control (">" video control icon)
3. Step 3 - Interact with Custom Grid hosted results (comprised of Resource Identifiers (S), Properties (P), and Property Values (O).

Once you grasp the concept of entering values into the "Default Data Source URI field", take a look at: http://programmableweb.com and other URIs (hint: scroll through the results grid to the QEDWiki demo item)

The simple demo use our Ajax based Visual Query Builder for the SPARQL Query Language (this isn't Grandma's Data Web UI, but not to worry, that is on it's way also). Here goes:

1. go to http://demo.openlinksw.com/isparql
2. Enter any of the following values into the "Default Data URI"; field:
- http://www.mkbergman.com/?p=336
- http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/02/pipes_and_filte.html
- http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/008513.html
- Other URIs

What I am demonstrating is how existing Web Content hooks transperently into the "Data Web". Zero RDF Tax :-) Everything is good!

Note: Please look to the bottom of the screen for the "Run Query" Button. Remember, it not quite Grandma's UI but should do for Infonauts etc.. A screencast will follow.

Stefano Mazzocchi, via his blog: Stefano's Linotype, delivers insightful contribution to the ongoing effort to recapture the essence of the original Semantic Web vision.

The Semantic Web is about granular exposure of the underlying web-of-data that fuels the World Wide Web. It models "Web Data" using a Directed Graph Data Model (back-to-the-future: Network Model Database) called RDF.

In line with contemporary database technology thinking, the Semantic Web also seeks to expose Web Data to architects, developers, and users via a concrete Conceptual Layer that is defined using RDF Schema.

The abstract nature of Conceptual Models implies that actual instance data (Entities, Attributes, and Relationships/Associations) occurs by way of "Logical to Conceptual" schema mapping and data generation that can involve a myriad of logical data sources (SQL, XML, Object databases, traditional web content, RSS/Atom feeds etc.). Thus, by implication, it is safe assume that the Semantic Web's construction is basically a Data Integration and exposure effort. The point that Stefano alludes to in the blog post excerpts that follow:

The semantic web is really just data integration at a global scale. Some of this data might end up being consistent, detailed and small enough to perform symbolic reasoning on, but even if this is the case, that would be such a small, expensive and fragile island of knowledge that it would have the same impact on the world as calculus had on deciding to invade Iraq.

The biggest problem we face right now is a way to 'link' information that comes from different sources that can scale to hundreds of millions of statements (and hundreds of thousands of equivalences). Equivalences and subclasses are the only things that we have ever needed of OWL and RDFS, we want to 'connect' dots that otherwise would be unconnected. We want to suggest people to use whatever ontology pleases them and then think of just mapping it against existing ones later. This is easier to bootstrap than to force them to agree on a conceptualization before they even know how to start!

Additional insightful material from Stefano:

1. A No-Nonsense Guide to Semantic Web Specs for XML People [Part I]
2. A No-nonsense Guide to Semantic Web Specs for XML People [Part II]

Benjamin Nowack also chimes into this conversation via his simple guide to understanding Data, Information, and Knowledge in relation so the Semantic Web.

A quick dump that demonstrates how I integrate tags and links from del.icio.us with links from my local bookmark database via one of my public Data Spaces (this demo uses the kidehen Data Space).

SPARQL (query language for the Semantic Web) basically enables me to query a collection of typed links (predicates/properties/attributes) in my Data Space (ODS based of course) without breaking my existing local bookmarks database or the one I maintain at del.icio.us.

I am also demonstrating how Web 2.0 concepts such as Tagging mesh nicely with the more formal concepts of Topics in the Semantic Web realm. The key to all of this is the ability to generate RDF Data Model Instance Data based on Shared Ontologies such as SIOC (from DERI's SIOC Project) and SKOS (again showing that Ontologies and Folksonomies are complimentary).

This demo also shows that Ajax also works well in the Semantic Web realm (or web dimension of interaction 3.0) especially when you have a toolkit with Data Aware controls (for SQL, RDF, and XML) such as OAT (OpenLink Ajax Toolkit). For instance, we've successfully used this to build a Visual Query Building Tool for SPARQL (alpha) that really takes a lot of the pain out of constructing SPARQL Queries (there is much more to come on this front re. handling of DISTINCT, FILTER, ORDER BY etc..).

For now, take a look at the SPARQL Query dump generated by this SIOC & SKOS SPARQL QBE Canvas Screenshot.

You can cut and paste the queries that follow into the Query Builder or use the screenshot to build your variation of this query sample. Alternatively, you can simply click on *This* SPARQL Protocol URL to see the query results in a basic HTML Table. And one last thing, you can grab the SPARQL Query File saved into my ODS-Briefcase (the WebDAV repository aspect of my Data Space).

Note the following SPARQL Protocol Endpoints:

1. MyOpenLink Data Space
2. Experimental Data Space SPARQL Query Builder (you need to register at http://myopenlink.net:8890/ods to use this version)
3. Live Demo Sever
4. Demo Server SPARQL Query Builder (use: demo for both username and pwd when prompted)

My beautified Version of the SPARQL Generated by QBE (you can cut and paste into "Advanced Query" section of QBE) is presented below:

PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>
PREFIX sioc: <http://rdfs.org/sioc/ns#>
PREFIX dct: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/>
PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>


SELECT distinct 
       ?forum_name, 
       ?owner, 
       ?post, 
       ?title, 
       ?link, 
       ?url, 
       ?tag
FROM <http://myopenlink.net/dataspace>
WHERE {
       ?forum a sioc:Forum;
                   sioc:type "bookmark";
                   sioc:id ?forum_name;
                   sioc:has_member ?owner.
       ?owner sioc:id "kidehen".
       ?forum sioc:container_of ?post .
       ?post  dct:title ?title .
       optional { ?post sioc:link ?link  }
       optional { ?post sioc:links_to ?url }
       optional { ?post sioc:topic ?topic.
                        ?topic a skos:Concept;
                                  skos:prefLabel ?tag}.
     } 

Unmodified dump from the QBE (this will be beautified automatically in due course by the QBE):

PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>
PREFIX sioc: <http://rdfs.org/sioc/ns#>
PREFIX dct: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/>
PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>


SELECT ?var8 ?var9 ?var13 ?var14 ?var24 ?var27 ?var29 ?var54 ?var56
WHERE
{
graph ?graph {
 ?var8 rdf:type sioc:Forum .
 ?var8 sioc:container_of ?var9 .
 ?var8 sioc:type "bookmark" .
 ?var8 sioc:id ?var54 .
 ?var8 sioc:has_member ?var56 .
 ?var9 rdf:type sioc:Post .
 OPTIONAL {?var9 dc:title ?var13} .
 OPTIONAL {?var9 sioc:links_to ?var14} .
 OPTIONAL {?var9 sioc:link ?var29} .
 ?var9 sioc:has_creator ?var37 .
 OPTIONAL {?var9 sioc:topic ?var24} .
 ?var24 rdf:type skos:Concept .
 OPTIONAL {?var24 skos:prefLabel ?var27} .
 ?var56 rdf:type sioc:User .
 ?var56 sioc:id "kidehen" .
 }
} 

Current missing items re. Visual QBE for SPARQL are:

1. Ability to Save properly to WebDAV so that I can then expose various saved SPARQL Queries (.rq file) from my Data Space via URIs
2. Handling of DISTINCT, FILTERS (note: OPTIONAL is handled via dotted predicate-links)
3. General tidying up re. click event handling etc.

1. Export some bookmarks from your local browser to the usual HTML bookmarks dump file
2. Create an ODS-Bookmarks Instance using your new ODS account
3. Use the ODS-Bookmark Instance to import your local bookmarks from the HTML dump file
4. Repeat the same import sequence using the ODS-Bookmark Instance, but this time pick the del.icio.us option
5. Build your query (change 'kidehen' to your ODS-user-name)
6. That's it you now have Semantic Web presence in the form of a Data Space for your local and del.icio.us hosted bookmarks with tags integrated

Quick Query Builder Tip: You will need to import the following (using the Import Button in the Ontologies & Schemas side-bar);

1. http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns# (RDF)
2. http://rdfs.org/sioc/ns# (SIOC)
3. http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/ (Dublin Core)
4. http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core# (SKOS)

Browser Support: The SPARQL QBE is SVG based and currently works fine with the following browsers; Firefox 1.5/2.0, Camino (Cocoa variant of Firefox for Mac OS X), Webkit (Safari pre-release / advanced sibling), Opera 9.x. We are evaluating the use of the Adobe SVG plugin re. IE 6/7 support.

Of course this should be a screencast, but I am the middle of a plethora of things right now :-)