Content Management with RDF

Leigh Dodds, Chief Technology Officer, Ingenta

ldodds@ingenta.com

25th April 2007

Why?How?

A Digression: The RDF Model

<http://www.example.org/article/1>

Alan Turing worked at Bletchley Park

</person/turing> workedAt </place/bletchley>

</person/turing> hasName “Alan Turing”

</person/turing> workedAt </place/bletchley>

</place/bletchey> hasName “Bletchley Park”

< /p er s o n / tu r in g > "Alan T u r in g "h as N am e

< /p ers o n /tu rin g > " A lan Tu rin g "h as N ame

< /p lace/b letch ley >" B letch ley P ark " h as N ame

w o rk ed A t

< /p ers o n /tu rin g > " A lan Tu rin g "h as N am e

< /p lace/b letch ley >" B letch ley P ark " h as N am e

w o rk ed A t

< /s d s d s d s >

< /p d fd s fs d >

< /erey ty y rty >

< /p lab led fd ftch ly >

< /p lace/b letch ley >

" ab c"

" s d s d aa"

" fg ee " fg ee " fg ee

" s d d s b c"

" 1 0 "

" 1 0 "

< /p lab led fd ftch ly > < /p lab led fd ftch ly >

" s d d d d c"

" s 2 3 "

" 3 .2 "

Why Use RDF?• Encourages modelling of resources

• Simple extensibility

• Ease of Storage

• Data Merging

• Networked data

• Re-wiring publications

Where Would You Use RDF?

F u ll T e xtCo n te n t M etad ata

S ear c h Br o w s e

T em p la tin g

..and Where Wouldn’t You Use RDF?

It’s Not For Content!

How?

Assigning Identifiers

http://metastore.ingenta.com/article/456

Vocabularies

Dublin Core• Basic set of generic

properties

• Title• Creator• Publisher• Created, Updated, Modified• Format• Identifier• Subject

• ..etc

PRISM• Publishing Requirements for

Industry Standard Metadata • Builds on XML, RDF, Dublin

Core

• DOI, eISSN• startingPage, endingPage• isPartOf, hasParts• related• references• hasTranslation,• hasCorrection

FOAF• “Friend of a Friend”• Community driven

specification• Some useful stable terms

for describing people and organizations

• Person• Organization• Document• homepage, weblog• topic, primaryTopic

SKOS• Simple Knowledge

Organization System• Thesauri, subject

classifications• Drive navigation and

indexing

• Terms• broaderTerm,

narrowerTerm• relatedTerms• preferred label, alternate

label

Generating RDF• XML to RDF

– XSLT– XQuery

• Database to RDF– D2R

• XHTML to RDF– GRDDL

Manipulating RDF

< /p ers o n /tu rin g > " A la n T u rin g "h a s N a m e

< /p la ce/b letch ley>" B letch ley Pa rk" h a s N a m e

w orkedAt

< /s d s d s d s >

< /p d fd s fs d >

< /ereytyyrty>

< /p lace/b letch ley >

< /p lace/b letch ley >

" a b c"

" d ef"

" fg ee " fg ee " fg ee

" s d d s b c"

" 1 0 "

< /p ers o n /tu rin g > " A la n T u rin g "h a s N a m e

< /p la ce/b letch ley>" B letch ley Pa rk" h a s N a m e

w orkedAt

< /s d s d s d s >

< /p d fd s fs d >

< /ereytyyrty>

< /p lace/b letch ley >

< /p lace/b letch ley >

" a b c"

" d ef"

" fg ee " fg ee " fg ee

" s d d s b c"

" 1 0 "

SPARQL• W3C Query Language for RDF

SELECT ?resource, ?name

WHERE {

?resource hasName ?name

}

?resource ?name</person/turing> “Alan Turing”

</place/bletchely> “Bletchley Park”

Problem Areas

Duck Typing for Data

Questions?

Picture Attributions“The Confusion of Tongues”, Gustav Doré

– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Confusion_of_Tongues.png

“So many ducks…Ducking Hell”, Gaetan Lee– http://flickr.com/photos/gaetanlee/298160427/