1.
Everyday Tools for the Semantic
Web Developer
Rob Vesse
rvesse@dotnetrdf.org
Cray Inc

2.
About Me
• Software Engineer at Cray
• Writing up my PhD Thesis in spare time
– “Link Integrity for the Semantic Web”
• Run the dotNetRDF Project
– Started January 2009
– Latest Releases
• 0.5.1 Beta (APIs)
• 0.4.0 Beta (Toolkit)
12/6/2011 http://www.dotnetrdf.org 2

3.
My Life as a Semantic Web Developer
• Constantly working with different data
sources, formats, vocabularies etc.
• Was frustrated by limited tooling around
conversion, query prototyping and editing
– Especially the *nix/Java bias of available tooling
• Seemed pointless to keep writing tiny
Java/.Net programs to do everyday tasks
12/6/2011 http://www.dotnetrdf.org 3

4.
Tools
• All free to use/open source
– All of which I’ve used at one stage or another
– Some of which I use on a daily basis
• Demos
– Going to demo my favourite tool in each category
– Slides have links to other useful tools and will be
available on SlideShare
12/6/2011 http://www.dotnetrdf.org 4

5.
Data Conversion - rapper
• Part of the Redland family of tooling by Dave
Beckett
– http://librdf.org/raptor/rapper.html
• *nix based – needs cygwin on Windows
• Example Usage:
– rapper –g –o turtle input.rdf > output.ttl
12/6/2011 http://www.dotnetrdf.org 5

6.
Editing - rdfEditor
• Part of the dotNetRDF Toolkit
– http://www.dotnetrdf.org/content.asp?pageID=rd
fEditor
• Windows only – Mono does not support the
required APIs unfortunately
• Notepad replacement for RDF editing with
syntax highlighting, auto-complete and
validation capabilities
12/6/2011 http://www.dotnetrdf.org 6

7.
Query Prototyping - Fuseki
• Part of the family of Jena Tooling
– http://openjena.org/wiki/Fuseki
• Provides a HTTP server for SPARQL Query and
Update runnable from the command line
• Can use persistent TDB storage (Jena’s native
triple store)
• Example Usage:
– java –jar fuseki-sys.jar --update --loc=DB
12/6/2011 http://www.dotnetrdf.org 7

8.
Management - Store Manager
• Part of the dotNetRDF Toolkit
– http://www.dotnetrdf.org/content.asp?pageID=St
ore%20Manager
• .Net Based – needs Mono on *nix
• GUI for working with a variety of Triple Stores
through a standard interface
12/6/2011 http://www.dotnetrdf.org 8

9.
Questions?
rvesse@dotnetrdf.org
Twitter: @RobVesse

10.
Other Recommended Tools
• Conversion
– riot (Jena ARQ)
• Query Prototyping
– SparqlGUI (dotNetRDF Toolkit)
– Twinkle (by Leigh Dodds)
• Management
– Sesame Windows Client
12/6/2011 http://www.dotnetrdf.org 10