Exploiting the RDF-based Linked Data Web using .NET via LINQ

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:58:19 GMT

Recently OpenLink has been investigating LinqToRdf, an exciting project from Andrew Matthews which aims to bring the Semantic Web to .NET. Because of their language bindings and heritage, existing RDF APIs such as Sesame, Jena and Redland predominantly favour non-Windows clients. Conversely Microsoft's ADO.NET Data Services provides a Redmond vision of exposing data on the Web but has no support for RDF. LinqToRdf is, as far as we're aware, the first serious effort to fill this gap and provide a bridge between Windows applications and the Semantic Web.

OpenLink has produced a whitepaper Exploiting the RDF-based Linked Data Web using .NET via LINQ which provides a brief overview of LinqToRdf and an example of its use to retrieve data from the MusicBrainz music metadatabase via an OpenLink Virtuoso Quad Store. The document also illustrates the use of the Virtuoso Sponger, an "RDFizer" forming part of the RDF toolset provided with OpenLink Virtuoso Universal Server, to convert the raw MusicBrainz data to RDF on-the-fly. A further aim of the whitepaper is to draw attention to Andrew's excellent effort and hopefully tempt members of the Semantic Web community to contribute.

Andrew was kind enough to incorporate some changes into LinqToRdf in response to OpenLink's testing. These have been included with major improvements of his own in a new release - LinqToRdf v0.8.

Carl Blakeley

OpenLink Virtuoso (Product Blog)

Exploiting the RDF-based Linked Data Web using .NET via LINQ