SparQL vs OSF

[Alex McLintock]

Hi Folks, 

Has anyone done a feature comparison of OSF and the new Drupal 7 SparQL modules?

I'm looking at doing a big Drupal system - possibly getting data from a SparQL data source, but eventually treating certain things as Entities/Nodes so that I can do lots of cool Drupal stuff with them. ( http://drupal.org/project/sparql )

Now I personally would prefer Drupal7 rather than 6. That seems to suggest that I need the SparQL contributed modules rather than OSF. But I don't really understand the functionality provided by either one. 

OSF is more than just Drupal modules. It is a whole RDF database + SolR cache as well. 

I get the impression that the new SparQL modules are a bit too new, and not fully documented yet.... but that may be me. 

I am particularly keen to understand how objects - once delivered to Drupal from the RDF system - are stored locally as Drupal entities/nodes thus not needing to be fetched from the external source all the time. 

Alex

[Frederick Giasson]

Hi Alex

> Has anyone done a feature comparison of OSF and the new Drupal 7
> SparQL modules?
>
> I'm looking at doing a big Drupal system - possibly getting data from
> a SparQL data source, but eventually treating certain things as
> Entities/Nodes so that I can do lots of cool Drupal stuff with them. (
> http://drupal.org/project/sparql )
>
> Now I personally would prefer Drupal7 rather than 6. That seems to
> suggest that I need the SparQL contributed modules rather than OSF.
> But I don't really understand the functionality provided by either one.
>
> OSF is more than just Drupal modules. It is a whole RDF database +
> SolR cache as well.
>
> I get the impression that the new SparQL modules are a bit too new,
> and not fully documented yet.... but that may be me.

I never used these modules on Drupal 7. However, here is what it looks
like: RDF Extensions does convert some internal Drupal data into RDF.
Then the SPARQL module would let you query that RDF data generated in
Drupal using the SPARQL query language.

OSF (in your case, structWSF + conStruct) is quite different, and has
many more fonctionalities.

Let's go back to the bases: structWSF is a set of web service endpoints
that let you Create, Delete, Update and Read any kind of structured,
semi-structured and unstructured data (via the Scones endpoint). This
means that all the functionalities, and all the data (as long as you
have the proper permissions) is accessible as a web service endpoint.
Basically, this means that anything that have access to the web, and to
that structWSF instance, can leverage structWSF's functionalities and data.

conStruct on its side is a set of Drupal 6 modules that interact with
all these web service endpoints. conStruct is a user interface to the
structWSF endpoints. Some of the modules have been developed to
administer a OSF instance, and others to create a web portal that uses
one, or a network, of structWSF instance(s).

with structWSF/conStruct you can import all kind of datasets. You can
access and manage these datasets from anywhere. Also you can tag textual
documents, you can import and manage ontologies used to describe the
content of your datasets. You can use the Semantic Component to create
graphs, maps and dashboards from your data. You have access to a
powerful faceting search endpoint powered by Solr, you have access to
mature SPARQL endpoint from Virtuoso (more than 10 years of
development), etc.

But at the end, all depends on what you want to be able to do with your
portal, and I guess: the quality of data you want to be able to manage
and publish.

Hope it helps to clarify the possible distinctions (but more
investigation would be needed on the two Drupal modules cited above).

Thanks,

Fred

[Terry Leach]

Fred,

When will the construct module work in Drupal 7 and will there be any new functionality added to that version?

Terry J. Leach

[Frederick Giasson]

Hi Terry,

> When will the construct module work in Drupal 7 and will there be any
> new functionality added to that version?

In short terms, there is no plan to port to Drupal 7. However, this may
change quite rapidly considering some possible short/middle term
projects that are coming.

One new notable addition will be to create a conStruct API for Drupal.
That way, all the structWSF capabilities will be accessible to other
Drupal modules. This should come along with the conStruct version for
Drupal 7, but this should also be available on the Drupal 6 version.

So, a good bet is in middle term (let's say, 6 months to a year). But
another thing that may change is that we jump directly to Drupal 8. But
again, nothing is yet planned on that regard.

Thanks,

Take care,

Fred

[Terry Leach]

Fred,

What would be the advantage of jumping directly to Drupal 8?

Terry J. Leach

[Mike Bergman]

Hi Terry,

This is probably not the forum to argue Drupal versions, but some of our
partners with strong Drupal presence have noted the possible usefulness
of skipping 7 and going to 8 with HTML5 support and other improvements.

As for Drupal 7, we also hear reluctance from many module-dependent,
speciality Drupal shops that certain critical Drupal 6 modules have yet
to be ported to 7.

Our standard stack and its associated modules can not yet be comfortably
ported to 7 and we are not going to undertake updates and corrections on
our own. When and if a client insists we no longer use Drupal 6, we will
evaluate 7 or 8 at that time.

Best, Mike