This post was originally published on the Talis "Nodalities" blog. We’ve all read books that linger in our memories. And there are any number of reasons why they might do so; a stirring tale or thought-provoking argument, for example. One book that has stayed with me over the years is The House of Leaves by Mark Danielweski. … Continue reading The Web’s Rich Tapestry →

This week I co-chaired a plenary session at the ALPSP International Conference. The goal of the session, titled "The Web's Rich Tapestry" (abstract), was to discuss the continuing evolution of the web from a document-centric view of the world to one that was more data and link centric. The first half of the session was … Continue reading The Web’s Rich Tapestry →

Reading this interesting post containing lessons for ontology writers by Ian Davis this morning, it occured to me that the key lesson is applicable to open data publishing in general and not just to ontology design. Ian's post describes some of the techniques introduced in the Taming the Open World session at SemTech. I won't … Continue reading Say Everything →

I've written in the past about how both of my kids are star wars geeks thanks to Lego Star Wars. My son had a Star Wars Annual for Christmas which he's been poring over, in that obsessive way that young boys do. Anyway, we got to talking about some of the relationships between the different … Continue reading Teaching a Six Year Old About Triples →

I've created a Google Code project for Twinkle. It's called twinkle-sparql-tools. If you're a Java developer and/or a user of the tool and are interesting in contributing code then drop me a mail and I'll set up you up with source access.

Lets assume we have a stored graph Gstore. Also that we have been given another graph of incoming data Gin that contains some modifications to a specific sub-graph. Lets also assume that we have a function view() that can extract the "equivalent" sub-graph (i.e. equivalent view) of the original data. In pseudo code to apply … Continue reading Set Algebra For Updating a Triple Store →

On Sunday I posted about how constrained views of RDF can be useful in order to document the inputs into an application, validate those inputs, and also manage updates via application of set algebra. I explored the idea that a system may support many such views or "document types" without blessing any as the primary … Continue reading Graph Shape Sorting →

Lee Feigenbaum has put together a really nice posting discussing different ways of modelling statistical data using RDF. I wanted to contribute to that discussion and add in a few comments about how I've been modelling some of the OECD's statistical publications using RDF. Note the emphasis: what I've been doing is capturing metadata about … Continue reading Modelling Statistical Publications: Some Notes →

The notion of a "document" and a "document type" are core concepts in XML. The specification includes a precise description of document, what it means for a document to be well-formed, valid, and so on. Even if you're not using a DTD or XML schema, and are just using XML as a syntax for exchanging … Continue reading Documents Types in RDF →

I finally found time to attend one of the Oxford SWIG sessions last night and had a thoroughly enjoyable time. I gave a couple of presentations which I've posted to slideshare, and which I'll embed below. The first was a general introduction and mini-demonstration of Twinkle. I gave a basic overview of the key features … Continue reading Oxford SWIG Talks: Twinkle & SPARQL Query Forms →