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On 16 Mar 2011, at 16:07, Parnell Springmeyer wrote:
In a previous (Pylons) application I built an RDF based ACL system and
got started on an FOAF+SSL login setup. [...]
that experience has led me to the conclusion that Python RDF and OWL
tools have been stagnating...
That's not an entirely unreasonable conclusion to arrive at. However,
it's all volunteer effort and these days most everyone has a day job
and is hard-pressed to spare the time. It's also a little chicken-and-
egg, if there's little apparent user interest, the developers'
enthusiasm is understandably prone to ebb away over time. My own
tactic in such circumstances is to volunteer whatever help I can as
support to the dev team (/me waves at benbangert and mcdonc).
Nature may well abhor a vacuum but she also finds irony irresistible:
close on the heels of your post is gromgull's announcement of the
rdflib 3.1 release:
http://groups.google.com/group/rdflib-dev/msg/c92bcbd2a0caf9c6
and of a putative move to mercurial in order ease the way for
contributions:
http://groups.google.com/group/rdflib-dev/msg/ae732ce9e4ab0f89
Redland bindings haven't been updated for python binaries beyond 2.3
(if
I remember, or it was 2.4) and native python RDF libraries have /some/
features but aren't feature complete and/or are buggy.
Where rdflib is concerned, can I encourage you to detail any missing
features that you have identified? A brief argument for their
inclusion would be useful, assuming that it isn't already screamingly
obvious. I also encourage you to report any bugs that you may find
which aren't already appearing as ticketed issues or as known test
failures.
I think before a serious semantic web project can be undertaken, the
tools need to be caught up a bit.
Another take on it is that pursuing semantic web projects can help to
develop the tools further. The ordf library (Object RDF) built on top
of rdflib by Will Waites is a case in point. It provides the semweb
back-end for http://data.gov.uk/ which is definitely a "serious
semantic web project" by my lights.
It's when the OWL hits the fan that the interesting stuff has to come
into play, OWL can be hugely expensive in computational terms. I quite
like the messaging approach adopted by Will Waites in ordf, it's both
pragmatic and well-founded (on Hayes-Roth's mid-80s work with
blackboard systems).
It's one of my goals to start on that
by patching up the redland bindings (why duplicate functionality?) and
fleshing out the feature set with a wrapper on-top. I really liked the
intentions of the RDFAlchemy project too.
It's good that there is a range of choices, albeit a small one. Good
luck with the Redland work, that'd be a very useful contribution.
FWIW, I've recently brought RDFAlchemy up to spec for use with rdflib
3 [1]. I'll note that SuRF has its own approach, as does pymantic and
I've been investigating the even less Pythonic but potentially very
powerful approach offered by seth [2].
Just some thoughts.
Ditto. If there's enough interest, we could maybe start a small semweb
work group. The impact of Google's adoption of the Good Relations
ontology should start making itself felt before long and an accessible
Pyramid-focused how-to on publishing RDF / RDFa might be a useful, if
lightweight, contribution.
[1] https://bitbucket.org/gjhiggins/rdfalchemy-dev
[2] https://bitbucket.org/gjhiggins/seth
- --
Cheers,
Graham
http://bel-epa.com/gjh/
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