Notes from Tuesday afternoon Semantic Technology Conference

Here are my notes from Tuesday afternoon at www.semantic-conference.com

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Tuesday afternoon, 6/16/2009
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Book signing

_Semantic Web Programming_
John Hebeler, Matthew Fisher, Ryan Blace, 
Andrew Perez-Lopez, Mike Dean
http://www.amazon.com/Semantic-Web-Programming-John-Hebeler/dp/047041801X
Gave lab at JavaOne two weeks ago

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EXHIBIT HALL

textwise - complement to Calais
collibra - model transforms; runtime transformer; plug into ESB
Zepheira/Freemix.it - data mashups

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Conference Sessions 2:00PM - 3:00PM

Active PURLs: Stored Procedures for the Semantic Web
Wood, David, Zepheira
Technology - Intermediate
Digital Integration and Mashups

http://purlz.org/

Steps
- Identify resources by PERSISTENT URIs (PURLs)
- Use "See Also" (HTTP 303) PURLs to ensure cross-boundary data integrity
- Share or use a PURL service
- Coordinate info space level, not the coe or even API - Give metadata
- local control, global access
- Investigate Active PURL to identify, describe and access a web service

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Conference Sessions 3:15PM - 4:15PM

gist: a minimalist upper ontology
McComb, Dave, Semantic Arts Inc.
Technology - Intermediate
Ontology Concepts

Main concepts
- time, place, people, location, stuff/substance (occupies space and has mass),
  doc, behavior, agreements, organization, 
- properties (hasA, governs, affects, p2p, geo, datatype)
- collections

Commerce
- Organization
- Units of measure, including currency
- Ownership and rights
- Documents and content
- Recorded events, including transactions
- Agreements, contracts, obligations and offers

Units of Measure
- declare base unit and how to convert to base
  seconds (duration), kilograms (weight), meter (extent),
  kelvin (temperature), ampere (power), candela (light), mole (Avolgado's)
- each (count), USDollar (money), square meter (area), 
  cubic meter (volume), ratios (speed, acceleration), percent

Concepts of "now", "here", "me", "us"

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Conference Sessions 4:30PM - 5:30PM
Faceted Browsing Tools
Technology - Introductory
Developing Semantic Applications

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Albornoz Mulligan, Jordi, Cambridge Semantics Inc

Three semantic lens frameworks: 
- Exibit http://simile‐widgets.org/exhibit/ 
- Fresnel http://www.w3.org/2005/04/fresnel‐info/ 
- Anzo on the Web http://www.cambridgesemantics.com/products/anzo_on_the_web

Other interesting faceted browsing & lens work: 
- Longwell: http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/Longwell 
- OpenLink Data Explorer: http://demo.openlinksw.com/ode/ 
- Freebase Parallax: http://mqlx.com/~david/parallax/ 
- JSpace: http://clarkparsia.com/jspace/

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Grove, Michael H, Clark & Parsia

http://clarkparsia.com/jspace/

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Nifty Tools For Making the Move From Web 2.0 to Web 3.0
Technology - Intermediate
Data Integration and Mashups

Ogbuji, Uche, Zepheira
Akara - XML Mashup Platform

Origins: 4Suite - Akara is ground up rewrite
- Think Spring or Ruby on Rails
- Focuses on data pipelining

4Suite innovations
- XML/RDF triggered transforms (inspired GRDDL)
- Path-based RDF query mounted across an XML/RDF repository
  (Versa, which inspired many others)
- Rules-based (rather than strongly-type schema) data binding for XML and RDF
- RDF query within XSLT
- Push-style data-driving multiple dispatch to code
  Triggering off of patterns into code

xml3k community : data web tools
SpringPython port of Java web framework

Positioning
- Platform for data and services on web
- declarative, REST transformation pipeline
- Encapsulates 10 years of experience in XML data transforms

REST wrapper
- Take any utility function, remote web service, or data scrpaer and add a 
  couple of lines to turn it into a REST endpoint:
  Wikis, google search, geocoders, calais, RDF, RSS/Atom, 
  Arbitrary Web pages, XML, SPSS

Service framework
- discovery through REST
- service classes have ID and location

Web triggers/hooks
- like DBMS triggers: declare that one event accuates another
- events are REST/HTTP messages
- enables assembly of transform pipelines

Pipes
- kind of like Yahoo or DERI pipes except that Freemix is an
  example of 
...

Has server
- Threads suck
- Process oriented (like Google chrome)

Developer notes
- Implemented in C and Python
- Transforms in phython (available via web service)
- Apache style license

Coming up
- Generic query framework across pipeline results
- Support for API keys/metering
- Additional transform implementation languages

Sample
- RDFa scraper - point to web site containing RDFS, get RDF

Validations are Transforms

Contact
- xml3k.org/akara
- uche@zepheira.com

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Exhibit Reception 5:30PM - 7:00PM

www.getblue.com - socialize any web page your browse
   (e.g., see friend's comments on movies on page, even if
    page does not have commenting system)
www.getblue.com/api - tap into glue's database and semantic recognition engine
mark@adaptiveblue.com

www.topquadrant.com - Gave session at JavaOne two weeks ago.model
data, connect data sources, design queries, rules and semantic
processing chains.