Hi Antero,

Thanks for the very useful documentation. If you could upload the md files as wiki pages in the Github project, that would be awesome. If that could be referenced somehow in the main documentation site, it would be even better.

Thank you,

Stefano


On 05/23/2016 08:44 AM, Antero Duarte wrote:
Hi there,

Okay, in order to keep this alive, I compiled a collection of the documentation that I have created related to Stanbol. I am sending this attached to this email as a zip file. If there is a better way to do it, just reply and tell me what it is.

Some parts of the documentation are just an expansion on the official docs, so a lot of it will be repeated, just worded differently or with some extra thing that I found useful.

To complement this, I have some specific questions about where stanbol is moving towards and I'd like to welcome anyone that know the answer to any of them to reply to the email.

What's the role of the Sesame Yard?
The reason why I ask this is because I was able to configure a kiwi repository in a marmotta instance and register it in stanbol as a remote Sesame Yard, but unlike the Solr yard, there seems to be no way of connecting this to an engine and put it on an enhancement chain. Doing this would allow greater flexibility as one could use marmotta as a remote triplestore. Is this implemented? Is it meant to work in a different way?

What is the current version of Solr bundled with Stanbol, and are we planning on moving on to some more recent version?

What is the status of connecting to a remote Solr instance?
Stanbol already uses Solr in an embedded way so from an abstract perspective, it shouldn't be too hard to just plug it in to a remote instance of Solr possibly running in a different server. The advantages of this would be obviously the decoupling of function and storage, more flexibility and control over the Solr instance (i.e applying a visualisation layer like banana <https://github.com/lucidworks/banana> on it), but also an easier route to connect directly to the solr instance which I don't know how everyone else sees it, but I see it as just having more flexibility.

What's both the current role and the "proposed" role of ontonet?
Is it supposed to define a namespace globally? For example, if I define an ontology in ontonet, I don't need to worry about defining it when I create a new custom vocabulary and I can just use it in the raw RDF data?

How far are we from accepting form data POST requests to the enhancer?
Frameworks and libraries like Express.js for node.js are deprecating the use of raw POST requests in favour of form data POST requests, is this something Stanbol will want to at least support?

Sorry for this huge dump of information, but these are just some things that have been on my mind for quite a while and this seemed like the best timing for sharing them with the community. As I said before, feel free to comment on those if you know any answers, criticize my lack of research if anything I ask has been said somewhere by someone before and comment on the documentation I am providing (especially the places where I ask for help).

Best Regards,
Antero

On Fri, 20 May 2016 at 23:06 Stefano Cossu <sco...@artic.edu <mailto:sco...@artic.edu>> wrote:

    Hello,

    Great to see so much feedback. As A. Soroka mentioned, some Fedora
    adopters are already using Stanbol or looking into it. We at the
    Art Insitute of Chicago fall in the latter category.

    Reading and understanding the documentation has been tough indeed.
    I have some use cases and I have been trying to figure out whether
    Stanbol is a good fit for them, but I cannot match what I read in
    the docs with what I have in my running Stanbol instance (for
    example, where is the content hub?). Also, without a reasonably
    regular release schedule or a 1.x release available, it is hard to
    rely on Stanbol for tasks beyond experimental or ancillary.

    With a massive introduction of Linked Data concepts in the latest
    version of Fedora I foresee it being just a matter of time until
    more folks will start looking at something to resolve semantic
    integration issues. If that is Stanbol's goal, it would be great
    to rely on a community project rather than on individual
    implementations.

    The AIC has very limited developer resources, but we may be able
    to contribute with use cases, ideas, testing, and spreading the
    word; and I am sure that if enough awareness arises, more
    contribution may come from other sides.


    Thanks,

    Stefano


    On 05/20/2016 06:34 AM, Antero Duarte wrote:
    Hi,

    I will gather all the documentation I have, create some comments
    on what I don't really understand and essentially got to work on
    a trial-error basis and then I will send these to everyone. I
    will also outline in the same email some features I don't
    understand, some features that I think are useful but don't know
    how to configure/ not sure if they are actually fully implemented
    and a list of items that I came across that no longer apply/are
    deprecated.

    Regards,
    Antero

    On Fri, 20 May 2016 at 11:39 Rafa Haro <rh...@apache.org
    <mailto:rh...@apache.org>> wrote:

        HI Antero,

        On Fri, May 20, 2016 at 12:23 PM Antero Duarte
        <a.fduar...@gmail.com <mailto:a.fduar...@gmail.com>> wrote:

        > Hi there,
        >
        > Stanbol is great and I would hate to see it die.
        >

        Couldn't be more agree!

        >
        > About the lack of feedback from users/developers, I can
        only say that it
        > took quite a while for me to be able to reply to someone on
        this mailing
        > list because the learning curve is so steep. I bet a lot of
        people still
        > read and are interested in stanbol updates, but they just
        don't have the
        > technical know-how to be involved. I include myself in this
        group, I have
        > answered a couple of questions, but only really basic ones,
        as I fear my
        > knowledge of the platform as a whole doesn't allow me to
        answer more
        > complicated questions.
        >
        > I think one step that definitely needs to be taken is
        improving/updating
        > the existing documentation. I know for a fact that one
        thing that really
        > put me off when I first started using stanbol was the that
        there was
        > documentation that was unclear, examples that were unable
        to be reproduced
        > for several reasons, and outdated documents that referenced
        components that
        > no longer existed in the latest stable release of stanbol
        (I'm not even
        > talking about the latest build from trunk).
        >

        That's true again imho. Also Development documentation, not
        only final user
        one is needed. And probably some work on making the APIs more
        comprehensible.


        >
        > I have a couple of documents that I have written over time
        that made it
        > easier for me to understand how stanbol works and I could
        share these but
        > they would need to be reviewed by someone who understands
        stanbol a lot
        > better than me.
        >

        Please share, for sure we can all take benefit from it and
        improve the
        documentation


        >
        > I understand that you have busy lives and as developers,
        you'd rather use
        > the little time you have to code than to write
        documentation, but if we can
        > make stanbol more approachable to newcomers, I believe the
        developer pool
        > would increase greatly and we could make Stanbol great again.
        >

        +1. It would be great to have also concrete examples about
        what features,
        components and son on are not clear enough or just deprecated
        in the
        current live documentation so we can start by those

        Thanks a lot!


        >
        > My two cents.
        >
        > Best Regards,
        > Antero Duarte
        >
        > On Fri, 20 May 2016 at 10:26 Rafa Haro <rh...@apache.org
        <mailto:rh...@apache.org>> wrote:
        >
        > > Hi Soroka,
        > >
        > > First of all, reading this kind of emails is, in my
        opinion, a cause of
        > > happiness as a new attempt to somehow reactivate the
        project. I share the
        > > same feeling about Apache Stanbol since sometime ago.
        More than one month
        > > ago, there was a Google Hangout meeting joined by some
        committers and
        > also
        > > users. We tried to sketch an immediate roadmap and
        planned to release
        > > version 1.0 in the following weeks after that meeting. We
        sent an email
        > to
        > > the list with the meeting minutes, but after that there
        was a lot of
        > > silence again.
        > >
        > > Probably the main problem right now is probably the lack
        of quality time
        > to
        > > dedicate to the project for the current active
        committers. I can only
        > speak
        > > for myself: in my particular case, in the last year I
        have used Stanbol
        > for
        > > a couple of projects, we developed a couple of custom
        engines that we can
        > > prepare for contribution, but we never found the proper
        time to do this,
        > > among other things because we didn't have clear if those
        engines could be
        > > useful for the community. And that is probably another
        symptom, we have
        > > been progressively losing feedback from users,
        developers....community:
        > > there are less and less messages in the mailing list
        every month. This
        > > scenario is probably not too much motivating for aiming
        contributions and
        > > finding new committers. There are probably more reasons,
        like Stanbol is
        > > not technically very friendly to be approached.
        > >
        > > Of course I'm not saying this situation is someone fault.
        I'm not very
        > sure
        > > about the best recipe for improving the situation either.
        > >
        > > Thoughts?
        > >
        > > On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 5:49 PM A. Soroka
        <aj...@virginia.edu <mailto:aj...@virginia.edu>> wrote:
        > >
        > > > Hi, Stanbol folks!
        > > >
        > > > I'm writing to you on behalf of the community of Fedora
        Commons (
        > > > http://fedora-commons.org). Fedora is an information
        architecture with
        > > > open source reference implementation that has come into
        wide use over
        > the
        > > > last fifteen years in the "cultural heritage" world of
        libraries,
        > > archives,
        > > > museums, etc. For many years, we've been intensely
        concerned with the
        > > ideas
        > > > that go under the loose label of "the Semantic Web". In
        fact, the
        > latest
        > > > edition of Fedora is an Linked Data Platform
        implementation, amongst
        > > other
        > > > things.
        > > >
        > > > Several institutions using Fedora are also using
        Stanbol for various
        > > tasks
        > > > (supporting OpenRefine, metadata entity management,
        NER, etc.), and
        > some
        > > > discussion has occurred about its state and future
        potential. It's not
        > > > totally clear to us what kind of development community
        and commitment
        > > > therefrom currently exists. There has been discussion
        about a 1.0
        > release
        > > > of Stanbol, but there doesn't seem to be much other
        activity in the
        > > > codebase, with very few of the listed committers making
        commits.
        > > >
        > > > We were wondering if it is possible to get a better
        sense of the
        > > > near-mid-term future of the project. Is there a road
        map beyond the 1.0
        > > > release? Is Stanbol seeking new developers? What kinds
        of resources are
        > > > missing to put more vitality back into Stanbol? It's an
        excellent
        > project
        > > > filled with great ideas and we'd like to see it move
        forward.
        > > >
        > > > We'd be happy to get together for a telephone call /
        Google Hangout /
        > > > other meeting, if that seems useful!
        > > >
        > > > ---
        > > > A. Soroka
        > > > The University of Virginia Library
        > > >
        > > >
        > >
        >


--
    Stefano Cossu
    Director of Application Services, Collections

    The Art Institute of Chicago
    116 S. Michigan Ave.
    Chicago, IL 60603
    312-499-4026


--

Stefano Cossu
Director of Application Services, Collections

The Art Institute of Chicago
116 S. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL 60603
312-499-4026

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