Hello Folks, I recently had an idea that is sort of similar to the way Exhibit works, and I'd appreciate your thoughts on it.
I was writing a php template, marking it up with eRDF[1], and I realised that what I was doing was describing variables with triples - which is essentially what I would be doing to write a SPARQL query to retrieve data for the template. So the core of the idea is: using semantic markup in a template to generate queries, retrieve data and populate the template. I have started to implement the idea, using eRDF for the semantic markup, SPARQL as the query language I generate to, and Smarty[2] as the templating language. (I use the ARC RDF PHP classes[3] for parsing the eRDF into triples, and for running the SPARQL queries). You can read more about how it works so far, and download code to try it out, from http://semwebdev.keithalexander.co.uk/blog/ and see a rough demo, showing template, generated queries, and output at: http://semwebdev.keithalexander.co.uk/blog/erdft-demo I've been wondering for a while in what ways semweb technologies and concepts might make the process of web development easier (or at least different). Do you think this approach could be one of the ways? I had thought maybe fresnel could be an alternative to the usual process of: Write query, Set variables, Populate template; but I think that would operate on a higher plane of abstraction than would be comfortable a lot of the time for regular web development. Templating with semantic markup, although maybe less flexible when it comes to multiple output formats, leaves you with direct control over the html. Exhibit, similarly, uses semantic hooks in html to populate the html with data, and we obviously all think it's great :) . But is the approach also suitable for general, server-side web development? If so, what do you think of the way I have started to implement it? Would it be any better using RDFa, or an Exhibit-like syntax, for example? What would be appropriate syntax for things like aggregate functions (COUNT, MAX, MIN), FILTERs, and LIMITs? (And if you really want to get down to the fine detail, I'd also appreciate pointers on generating better SPARQL queries, and any other technical improvements you'd care to suggest.) Cheers, Keith Alexander [1] http://research.talis.com/2005/erdf/wiki/Main/RdfInHtml [2] http://smarty.php.net/ [3] http://arc.web-semantics.org/home _______________________________________________ General mailing list [email protected] http://simile.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/general
