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The goal is to build a web application that operates on a domain model that's given as an ontology. Our initial attempts at modeling the domain indicate that we'll probably need to work in OWL-Full or just raw RDF. We're looking for a tool chain, ideally one that's free and open, with the following layers: 1) A highly scalable triple store. So far we've tried a Virtuoso/SuRF stack and a 4Store/ORDF stack. We can't identify a good OWL-Full editor to support either. (Protege is OWL-DL only.) We don't mind changing the stack if there are better options available. Suggestions? Thanks in advance! |
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I'll try to keep a running list of various tool chains I've tried and my experience with each so that people don't have to go down the same blind alleys. You can find a structured summary on SemanticWeb.org. Please contribute to it. My own editorial follows: The format is (triple store) / (orm) / (editor) : Virtuoso / SuRF / Ontowiki
4Store / ORDF / ?
AllegroGraph / SuRF / TopBraid Composer
? / ? / Protege
? / ? / NeOnAnybody think I should make this entry a "community wiki?" I wish they'd let me build a table but there's no support for it in the markup. Howdy. Maybe consider editting it into your question à la http://www.semanticoverflow.com/questions/1/where-can-i-learn-about-the-semantic-web ... currently, it's a bit lost down here. |
It's not clear that the AllegroGraph/Composer combo works without paying money to TopBraid. I got AllegroGraph 3.3 and Composer 3.4 Free Edition up and running only to discover that you need a non-free plugin to glue them together. I would really rather try before I buy. Any thoughts? Composer has a 30-day trial period for full-featured versions of TBC (http://www.topquadrant.com/products/TB_install.php). This can often be extended by contacting TopQuadrant. I don't recall it being a non-free plugin, that's news to me. Franz now makes the plugin for version 4.0 of AG, it installs via the usual eclipse plugin mechanism: http://bit.ly/f4sa4Z |
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I believe TopBraid Suite satisfies all three, although the criteria for the object-relational mapper may be a bit unclear. TopBraid includes a D2RQ server and a mapping wizard to get you started. D2RQ will map Relational back-ends to RDF/RDFS/OWL in a read-only capacity. If that's what you're looking for then it's a trifecta. For scalable triple stores, TopBraid includes Jena TDB and SDB. TDB is a native RDF store and SDB maps triples to a relational back-end. TopBraid also plays nicely with AllegroGraph, Sesame, and Oracle RDF. AllegroGraph and Oracle are not open source, although it may be best to see the triple store as doing just that (storing triples) and writing features around it. I.e. view the triple store as the blackest of boxes in your tool chain. In terms of a "graphical editor", I take this to mean a GUI editor for RDF/RDFS/OWL, including OWL 2. Others have already stated how Composer and Protégé compare ;-). More to the point, though, TopBraid Composer is a full-featured RDF editor, and therefore works with OWL Full. Composer is just the editor, and you may want to look at Live, Ensemble, and Enterprise Vocabulary Network (EVN) to see how semantic application development is supported by TopBraid Suite. TopBraid has SPARQL and OWL-based tools for scripting solutions on top of RDF/RDFS/SPARQL/OWL, and hence works over triple stores. If you move the "open" criteria from the triple store to the editor/browser/framework, this may do what you need. However, except for TopBraid Composer-Free, which is just the GUI editor (and some import/export features), the platform is not free. (+1) nice answer. Though the OP said he has an ontology (not an RDBMS) and I take ORM to mean things like Hibernate, GORM, etc. Thanks for pointing Allegrograph is not open source, I edited my answer. I'd like to test the TopBraid option, but installing Composer on Eclipse 3.6.0 is not going very well. I'm trying to do it through the Update Manager and it's failing in spectacularly cryptic fashion. Any ideas? See http://www.topquadrant.com/products/TB_Update.html 1
I suggest that to start, you keep TBC and your other eclipse development separate. Just download TBC as bundled with eclipse. If you really want it to co-exist with your current eclipse environment, then give it a go later when you have had a chance to get your feet wet. |
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This is the stack used by oreilly.com for RDF. It's mostly open source. Triple/Quad Store Tenuki (Jena SDB or Jena TDB based) https://github.com/norcalrdf/Tenuki Fuseki (Jena SDB or Tena TDB based) http://openjena.org/wiki/Fuseki Either can be hooked up to Pellet (Open Source but AGPL, not sure of your application) Python API rdflib... doesn't do much in the way of pythonic access, have not been very happy with it. Pymantic https://github.com/norcalrdf/pymantic Our own ORMish wrapper on rdflib, now also working on replacing rdflib itself. The public version is still in early development but we would love feedback. The earlier private version runs http://oreilly.com/catalog/ Tools TopBraid as mentioned by other folks is a great tool for Ontology design. If it doesn't work with Fuseki and Tenuki (which it should, as both are "just" SPARQL 1.1 servers) that should get fixed. A correction to the reference on "TopBraid". TopBraid Suite includes a number of products, not just an editor (Composer). TopBraid Live is a full-featured semantic web server. This indeed has many to all of the features seen in Fuseki, but adds a number of features, such as scripting (SPARQLMotion), SPIN inference,technologies for creating applications, including TopBraid Ensemble and SPARQL Web pages, etc. It is also a supported product, which is what really costs, and where the real value comes for most enterprises. |
Made a couple of quick clarity edits based on your feedback.