RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers (at New York Semantic Web Meetup)

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers Benjamin Nowack bnode.org / semsol.com

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 Two Perspectives (1) How can PHP developers benefit from the emerging Semantic Web (technologies)? (2) How can Semantic Web projects benefit from PHP (developers)?

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 Scripting Languages ● Templating ● Request handlers ● Controllers ● Framework extensions ● Glue code ● Prototyping

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 PHP/Ruby/... Developers ● talk with designers and UX teams ● understand data models ● talk with (or are) back-end developers ● know agency processes ● are efficient and cost-effective

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 Scripting language developers have strong and multidisciplinary front-end skills that lack in the current SemWeb landscape!

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 Win-Win ● demand will grow, good investment ● more interesting, possibly better paid projects ● improved productivity ● more (usable) semantic web apps ● reduced time to market

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 But there is more to the Semantic Web than „just“ direct business opportunities...

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 Two Other SemWeb Perspectives (1) A Web of machine-processable data (2) A collection of powerful technologies

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 Technical Issues ● Templating/UI: back-end-dependent ● Request handlers: custom code and APIs ● Controllers: local, fixed models only ● Framework extensions: no standards ● Glue code: many one-off conversions ● Prototypes: schema changes are painful

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 Semantic Web technologies address these technical limitations and related productivity issues.

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 SemWeb for Web Development ● a simple, unifying data model (RDF) ● standardized data exchange formats ● lossless data portability ● a powerful, simple data API (SPARQL) ● re-mixable schemas (RDFS/OWL) ● automated data processing

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 Technical Opportunities ● Templating/UI: back-end independence ● Request handlers: reusable code / APIs ● Controllers: distributed models ● Framework extensions: standards, reuse ● Glue code: less conversion code ● Prototypes: less painful schema changes

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 However...

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 The ROI has to justify the initial friction loss!

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 When SemWeb Tech (or not)? ● My projects integrate data from the Web ● (Semantic) web standards and openness matter to me and/or my clients ● I often work with non-stable schemas ● I can afford betting on an evolving technology stack

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 Re Friction Loss ● There is almost no developer-oriented learning material ● Some things work differently in RDF (validation, data quality, API control, ...) ● Identifying and getting used to needed specs and vocabularies takes time ● All toolkits have non-standard extensions

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 ARC RDF Classes: Motivation ● something light-weight and optimized for PHP environments (and mindsets) ● tools that are easy to combine with existing software ● support for Web 2.0 data formats, too (microformats, RSS2, Atom, JSON)

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 Pure-PHP RDF Software ● RAP (RDF toolkit) ● pOWL (CMS, app framework) ● ARC (RDF toolkit) ● OntoWiki / Erfurt (CMS, API) ● Drupal (soon w/ RDF in core) ● Trice (CMS, app framework)

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 More PHP(ish) RDF Software ● Redland (RDF toolkit w/ PHP bindings) ● Semantic MediaWiki (PHP-based) ● Talis platform (has lots of PHP tools) ● Virtuoso (PHP interpreter built in) ● paget (Linked Data publishing) ● Loomp (Semantic publishing)

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 ARC ● A pick-what-you-need RDF toolkit ● HTTP reading/posting ● Parsing (RDF formats, Atom, RSS, MFs) ● Serializing (XML, JSON, Turtle) ● Storage & Querying (local or remote) ● SPARQL Scripting

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 Trice ● A basic app framework on top of ARC ● Working with RDF stores made easy ● Path-based request handlers ● Forms with automatic RDF generation ● Sessions (OpenID or local user:pass) ● Themes (per request handler)

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 ARC / Trice Software requirements: ARC: Web server, PHP, MySQL (storage) Trice: ARC, mod_rewrite, .htaccess Setup: ARC: upload Trice: sys.php / upload / file cache / first request creates RDF store(s) and admin account

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 Examples & Demos ● Accelerated prototyping (Data First) ● Less painful schema changes (RDF) ● Reusable template sections (URIs) ● The page is a (standardized) API (RDFa) ● Less custom glue code (RDF formats) ● A powerful API for free (SPARQL)

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 Examples & Demos (ctd.) ● Lossless Backup/Deploy (UghRIs!) ● Simple remote data integration (LOD) ● Remote model access (LOD + SPARQL) ● Increasing data value (RDFa <=> LOAD) ● Inference scripts (Sparqlets) ● Putting it all together (Paggr/ConfX)

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 Some Lessons Learned (the hard way)

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 • Start small.

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 • Focus on the use cases at hand. (The „potential“ ones will come early enough.)

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 • Partition data when possible.

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 • Resist the „I could automate this even further, right now“ reflex.

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 • Respect the core standards, but expect the need for custom solutions here and there (and let the community know).

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 • Don't pick more from the SemWeb Menu than you can consume.

RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers – NY Semantic Web Meetup - May 21, 2009 Thank You ● http://arc.semsol.org/ ● http://trice.semsol.org/ (soon) ● http://semsol.com/ ● http://bnode.org/

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http://planetrdf.com	14
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RDF and SPARQL for PHP Developers (at New York Semantic Web Meetup)

by Benjamin Nowack

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