ODO - Ontologies, Databases, and Optimizations
I have been working at IBM for the past couple years on a project called the IBM Semantic Layered Research Platform . The project is a collection of software components that provide support for semantics through the entire application-middleware stack.
We released the source code for the entire project in November under the Eclipse Public License .
My part of the project originates from my work on the LSID project. I had been working with a lot of RDF metadata while maintaining the Perl LSID development stack and realized that (back in early 2004) that a clean, useful and relatively bug free RDF framework didn’t exist. It turns out that a number of people shared my concerns and were independently creating their own ad hoc Perl libaries for RDF processing.
I started to collect my various RDF manipulating Perl scripts from my LSID work and began to organize them in to a framework that I called ODO . ODO is an acronym for “Ontologies, Databases, and Optimizations,” which are the three items I was most interested in experimenting with at the time. They were also the three categories of functionality I couldn’t find in the existing Perl RDF libraries.
ODO is still evolving and I have some more features to push out but right now it supports:
- Nodes, statements and graph backed by memory
- RDFS and OWL-Lite to Perl code generators
- Queries using RDQL with SPARQL on its way
- RDF/XML and NTriple parsers
Each of these items is built inside the ODO framework so it is possible to extend and enhance the library over time without breaking applications (hopefully!).
I have some more components of the library to push out over the next few weeks. I am in the process of making the POD available on the IBM Semantic Layered Research Platform web site and will write some demo applications soon!
Comments
EOL - LSIDs - Drupal - RDF - TCS - Oh My!
Hi Stephen.
I’m responding to an old post, but hopefully you’ll get a note …
I came across this post when looking for info about LSID search services (still haven’t found any useful ones) for use to plug into my Drupal Life Science Taxonomy Import mechanism.
Given your expressed interest in topics you discuss here, and the fact you are running Drupal, I thought I’d drop you a note.
I recently participated in the EOL-Drupal Taxonomy Code Sprint and have been working on extending the Encyclopedia of Life – Drupal project to support distributed taxonomies using taxonomy_xml.module and associated tools.
The project is best described in Vince Smiths presentation here
I have built taxonomy_xml up to the point where it reads both TCS and RDF representations of taxons, drawn from a growing number of disparate sources.
TCS because it’s available, and RDF because it’s better. I’ve been doing a lot with Drupal+RDF over the last few years.
Our results so far are a Drupal Install Profile with a dozen add-on modules (half stock, half custom) publically available through http://code.google.com/p/eol-drupal
Highly unstable on a day-to-day basis (my fault) but you may be interested in the proof-of-concept going on there. The D6 Drupal branch will bootstrap itself and provide an import of a preset shard of the EOL data feed.
I’m adding in utilities which allow Drupal to import shared taxonomies from public sources such as GBIF, uBio, EOL, TDWG and, well, anything I can interpret.
LSID support is an important part of that, although I haven’t found much working examples in the wild.
Anyway, I just thought I’d draw your attention to activity in this area. If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to drop in to the Drupal Taxonomy Group or maybe the EOL forum
Vince Smith (Cybertaxonomist of the year!) would be open to any input, I’m sure.