Re: [SMW-devel] Current status and future plans of (REST) API:s and import in SMW?

[Samuel L. <sam...@gm...>]

Yeah, sorry, you're right. I'm too indulged in my own thoughts, so I 
forget to provide context ...

So, a quick overview of the motivation, history and current status of RDFIO:

== Two usa cases ==

The start of RDFIO was when me and Denny realized we were thinking of 
the same thing:
"Providing a means of updating the (semantic) text in wiki articles, 
using SPARQL."

I aditionally wanted to be able to:
"Import *plain RDF triples*, with no need for an ontology, into wiki 
pages, keep the original URI:s, and be able to export / query the 
triples in their *original* format"

This was not possible at the time, since the existing "ontology import", 
would AFAIK only import the "classes" of an OWN ontology. Not the 
"instances" of plain RDF triples.


== Low hanging fruit, using existing parts ==

As most pieces was there already to implement these two features, it 
seemed kind of a low hanging fruit.  At that point, the existing pieces 
were:

* SMWWriter
Denny's extension for updating semantic text in wiki articles, via MW API

* PageObjectModel
An extension providing a programmatic API to access and modify content 
of wiki pages

* ARC2
A PHP RDF library, providing parsers between most common RDF formats and 
SPARQL, and also including a pure  PHP based SPARQL endpoint.

Later, the SMWWriter and PageObjectModel were dropped, since 
WikiObjectModel could do the same (except expose the functionality via 
MW API), and provided better stability.

== Current status ==

In the first version (the one currently in the MW repos), RDFIO was a 
large and ugly hack, and almost impossible to maintain.

Since a year or two back, I've been working on a complete rewrite of 
RDFIO (currently hosted at github) with a much more straightforward 
approach, and with a bit less dependencies (and hope to improve that still).

I have now, the last weeks, tried to improve the reliability of the code 
by adding a bunch of unit tests, and some system tests, and I think it 
is now stable enough for wider testing.

=== Current features ===

The current features are:

1. RDF Import - Import plain RDF triples into wiki pages and facts, with 
some configurable logic for how to figure out suitable wiki titles for 
URI:s.

2. SPARQL endpoint - A Pure PHP SPARQL endpoint with write capabilities 
(using ARC2:s custom SPARQL+ syntax) to update wiki article content. 
Also has options to query by using original URI:s (those used when 
importing external RDF data), rather than SMW:s internal format (on eht 
form "http://...Special:URIResolver/...").

3. SPARQL Import - Point at an external SPARQL endpoint and start 
importing it's triples (Only manually, 10 triples at a time, so far).



Hope it provide the context needed! ... otherwise, feel free to ask more!

Best
// Samuel


On 2013-10-21 16:53, Yaron Koren wrote:
> Hi Samuel,
>
> Perhaps a bit of background information would be helpful. What does 
> RDFIO do? What, if anything, do you want it do further? What did 
> SMWWriter do? How do POM/WOM fit into this whole thing? And how does 
> this relate to the RDF triplestore functionality that SMW now has?
>
> -Yaron
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 10:30 AM, Samuel Lampa <sam...@gm... 
> <mailto:sam...@gm...>> wrote:
>
>     Just another note ... future work would probably need to do something
>     about the RDF library dependency situation. The current state of ARC2,
>     with 30 open issues [1], and no SPARQL 1.1 support, is a little
>     worrying.
>
>     Haven't got my head around EasyRDF [3] enought to say if it covers all
>     the functionality of ARC2 though, so can't tell.
>
>     [1] https://github.com/semsol/arc2/issues?state=open
>     [2] https://github.com/semsol/arc2/issues/57
>     [3] http://www.easyrdf.org/
>
>     Best
>     // Samuel
>
>     On 2013-10-21 15:30, Samuel Lampa wrote:
>     > To give some more background for my thoughts, I realize that the
>     main
>     > reasons for not including SMWWriter in core at the time, have
>     been the
>     > dependencies it was relying upon (Page Object Model):
>     >
>     > http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:SMWWriter
>     >
>     > The size of the code is also mentioned, but I wonder whether that is
>     > really a case anymore, with the growing size of the SMW core library
>     > itself anyway?
>     >
>     > I could mention that RDFIO currently depends on Wiki Object
>     Model [1],
>     > rather than Page Object Model, due to better stability, but I had in
>     > my plans to try to drop even that dependency if possible, as the
>     next
>     > step for RDFIO.
>     >
>     > // Samuel
>     >
>     >
>     > On 2013-10-21 15:23, Samuel Lampa wrote:
>     >> Hi all,
>     >>
>     >> What is the current status of (REST) APIs and import
>     functionality in
>     >> SMW?
>
>     <snip>
>