The SIOC data format enables mash-ups of community focused content. This presentation introduces the SIOC format, and the SIOC explorer web application, which allows you to browse and navigate such data. The slides also show how the SIOC explorer is implemented with ActiveRDF and Ruby on Rails
Leveraging existing Web Frameworks for a SIOC explorer (Scripting for the Semantic Web Workshop 2007)
1. Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Leveraging existing Web
frameworks for a SIOC explorer
Benjamin Heitmann and Eyal Oren
Digital Enterprise Research Institute,
National University of Ireland, Galway
Chapter 1
Copyright 2007 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved. www.deri.org
2. Overview
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Part 1:
Introducing SIOC
Enabling Mash-Ups of community focused content
Part 2:
Faceted browsing of community sites
Balancing between domain specific and domain agnostic
Part 3:
Reusing existing web frameworks
Ruby on Rails meets the Semantic Web
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Part1:
Introducing SIOC
Chapter 3
Copyright 2007 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved. www.deri.org
4. Use case: tracking a music community
?
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5. Solving the use case
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Tracking an emerging music community over time
Question: What is happening in the Dubstep scene
in Dublin?
Solutions that do not work:
Google:
– Sites updated too frequently
– Bad results: new and relevant pages get buried due to ranking
RSS:
– not all types of sites have RSS
– RSS feeds do not include all relevant information
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6. SIOC: enables community mashups
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linked data:
web site
exporters
microformats (contact,
location, event)
after
aggregation:
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7. Details: the SIOC ontology
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SIOC allows re-using the data at the center of a
community:
content:
– blog and forum posts
– wiki pages
– freeform text (new types can be defined)
topics:
– tags and categories
– complex hierarchies possibly with SKOS
user relations:
FOAF and openID identities
the next SIOC version will be geared towards major
social networking sites and Web 2.0 hub sites
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Part 2:
Faceted browsing of community
sites
Chapter 8
Copyright 2007 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved. www.deri.org
9. Exploring SIOC data
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SIOC Explorer
crawls and aggregates SIOC data
allows exploring and browsing
– filter by topic
– view posts of a certain day
Implements faceted browsing
step-wise filtering of displayed content
filtering works across sites
Available at http://activerdf.org/sioc/
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11. Faceted browsing done right
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Balance between
domain specific
– only show SIOC forums and SIOC posts
– focus user attention
domain agnostic
– all other data is used for navigation
– use unexpected data as filter
– example: use author hobbies @@foaf interests as filter
fine tuning: disable a-priori unwanted predicates
complex facets
use entities with multiple properties as filter
example: see all post of a FOAF person with a FOAF
homepage http://eyaloren.org
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Part 3:
Reusing existing web frameworks
Chapter 13
Copyright 2007 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved. www.deri.org
14. Comparing the nature of Web and
Semantic Web applications
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Semantic Web
Web applications
applications
semi-structured and
data: schema compliant
dynamic
arbitrary and
schema: fixed
evolving
single and multiple and
data sources:
centralised distributed
model semantics: closed world open world
runtime state: closed system open system
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15. Frameworks for the Semantic Web?
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enough sophisticated Web ActiveRDF fits transparently
Application Frameworks into the Ruby on Rails
exist today: architecture
View
Controller
Model
Active Active
but: no integration of
Resource RDF
Semantic Web libraries into
the framework architecture
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16. ActiveRDF bridges the gaps
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between data models
object oriented access to RDF triples:
eyal.foaf::knows = knud
ActiveRDF can provide model objects for Rails
Ruby meta-programming allows ActiveRDF to emulate
open world semantics
between developer communities
Semantic Web developers:
– benefit from existing Ruby and Rails ecosystem
Web and Web 2.0 developers:
– gain access to Semantic Web infrastructure
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17. ActiveRDF code examples:
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Model: create a Rails model objects from RDF schema
Namespace.register :sioc, 'http://rdfs.org/sioc/ns#'class
Controller: application logic access to RDF data
class PostController < ApplicationController
require_dependency ‘sioc’
def display_all_posts
@displayed_posts = SIOC::Post.find_all
render :action => ‘list’
end
end
View: display RDF data in user interface
<% @displayed_posts.each do |p| %>
<%= p.title %>
<% end %>
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18. Summary
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SIOC explorer
SIOC enables re-use of the data at the centre communities
and social networks
The SIOC explorer allows faceted browsing of community
data
All data included in the SIOC export can be use for
navigating the community content
ActiveRDF
transparently integrates with Ruby on Rails
bridges the gaps between
– Web developers and Semantic Web developers
– Semantic Web data model and Ruby scripting
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