ANN: Linked Media Framework 2.2.0

[Sebastian]

Dear all,

we are very happy to announce the availability of our Linked Media Framework, Release 2.2.0, under Apache License:

http://code.google.com/p/lmf/ 

The Linked Media Framework (LMF) is a Linked Data Server with advanced functionalities like transparent Linked Data caching, querying, reasoning and versioning and has now been extended to a complete Linked Data Publishing suite that you can use for a number of frequent tasks:

- Linked Data Publishing of RDF or legacy data

- Semantic Search over your own data

- SKOS Thesaurus editing and content interlinking

For this purpose, the LMF Standalone Installation offers a combined and pre-configured installer for LMF Core, Google Refine and Apache Stanbol that simplifies the interaction between these components. Publishing Linked Data is made very easy with our framework.

With its built-in data management tools, we consider the LMF particularly useful for "casual" Linked Data users who want to publish small to medium-sized datasets (up to a few hundred million triples), e.g. in the Open Government or Linked Enterprise area. Another common use case is building small Linked Data applications combining local data with Web data.

Other scenarios (e.g. with custom legacy->RDF converters) can easily be implemented on top of the LMF by building custom projects that build upon the LMF modules. See the documentation on the website to learn how this can be achieved.

List of Major Changes since 2.0

- Apache Stanbol integration for content enhancement and interlinking

- Google Refine integration for data management and Linked Data publishing

- Semantic Search UI Editor for quickly building Semantic Search Interfaces

- SKOSjs Editor to build SKOS thesauruses (uses SPARQL Query/Update)

- improved user and security management

- native SPARQL implementation mapping queries directly to SQL

- improved performance for big datasets (imports, querying)

- integrated book demo to show Semantic Search configuration

LMF Demos (including some who show the "media" aspect) can be found at http://labs.newmedialab.at. Note that our labs.newmedialab.at server is still running older versions of the LMF. We will upgrade it to the latest release in the coming week.

I hope you will find our software useful and can spare 10 minutes to try it out!

I'd like to conclude with a testimonial from François-Paul Servant, Renault, whom we presented a pre-release two weeks ago:

"You cannot imagine how happy I've been to see such a great and neat demo. You know, I've been a long time believer in SW, but I was beginning to give up hope on getting well polished tools - useful things that work and look good. This demo changed my mind. Thanks! I can't wait to have LMF installed on my machine and use it!"

;-)

Greetings,

Sebastian, Sergio, Thomas, Jakob, Dietmar, Rupert and Christian

(and the rest of the Salzburg Research team)

-- 

| Dr. Sebastian Schaffert          sebastian...@salzburgresearch.at

| Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft  http://www.salzburgresearch.at

| Head of Knowledge and Media Technologies Group          +43 662 2288 423

| Jakob-Haringer Strasse 5/II

| A-5020 Salzburg

[François-Paul Servant]

Dear Sebastian,

On Friday, 6 July 2012 17:16:39 UTC+2, Sebastian wrote:

I'd like to conclude with a testimonial from François-Paul Servant, Renault, whom we presented a pre-release two weeks ago:

"You cannot imagine how happy I've been to see such a great and neat demo. You know, I've been a long time believer in SW, but I was beginning to give up hope on getting well polished tools - useful things that work and look good. This demo changed my mind. Thanks! I can't wait to have LMF installed on my machine and use it!"

I installed the LMF (deploying the war in Tomcat 7.0.26), now following the first steps and reading through the documentation. Cool! Some very early basic remarks and questions after just a couple of hours of use:

- I first installed the 2.2.1, then upgraded to 2.2.2. When deploying the 2.2.2 after un-deploying the 2.2.1 with tomcat manager, I got the cursor spinning for a very long time… long enough for me to stop waiting. After a computer restart, everything seems OK.

- http://127.0.0.1:8080/LMF/bonjour/admin/about.html is not available

- Core Services / first steps: PUT replaces the whole metadata for the resource. Is it possible to add triples to the description of a resource?

- Demo: Books: I followed the steps of the demo, without doing anything special (just clicking the proposed buttons).

- Step 7 : a bit perplex when reading the sentence: "( * ) Be sure that you have configured cover and genre facet to enable the demo!". Hmm, I hope it's OK.

- Peter's problem: 0 result - but indeed, I do not have anything in the "Color" facet when displaying the complete list of books. Considering following line from the definition of the search core:

thumb_color = owl:sameAs / owl:sameAs / foaf:thumbnail / fn:colors() :: lmf:color;

I've tried to follow the links for "A Game of Thrones" (the book which has a blue cover), until 

http://www4.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/bookmashup/books/0553103547

which contains

<foaf:thumbnail rdf:resource="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51WT4gebGdL._SL75_.jpg"/>

but I've not been able to find any description (color) for it.

- Mike and Suzan's problem: returns all the 10 books. My guess is: the solr search is an "OR" one, not an "AND" one. (If you remove "book" from the "third book of "A Song of Ice and Fire" search string, you get 4 results only, which is better)

- Restricting the results using the facets: a way to get an URI for the restricted list of results?

- Semantic Search:

- http://localhost:8080/LMF/solr/ui/ is not available

What I'd like to do now: I have a LD compliant app running on my machine and that I use very frequently: a tagging tool, where tags are SKOS concepts (cf. www.semanlink.net). What is the easiest way to connect it and LMF? How could I easily say that any of my tags (of the form http://127.0.0.1:8080/semanlink/tag/foo) correspond to an LMF resource, eg.http://127.0.0.1:8080/LMF/resource/tag/foo? (In the future, I could considerer the replacing of my aging application by something build using LMF / VIE / IKS - but for the moment, I'd just want to test things, have some real content to play with inside LMF and get a clearer idea about what and how I could do) 

Best Regards, 

fps

[Asraful Chowdhury]

Semantic is going to change the structure and service consumption technology .I use earlier release and will try latest release asap.

Regards

Asraful Forhad Chowdhury

Dhaka,Bangladesh

[Sebastian Schaffert]

Dear François,

I'll try to answer to your comments inline...

2012/7/13 François-Paul Servant <f...@semanlink.net>

Dear Sebastian,

On Friday, 6 July 2012 17:16:39 UTC+2, Sebastian wrote:

I'd like to conclude with a testimonial from François-Paul Servant, Renault, whom we presented a pre-release two weeks ago:

"You cannot imagine how happy I've been to see such a great and neat demo. You know, I've been a long time believer in SW, but I was beginning to give up hope on getting well polished tools - useful things that work and look good. This demo changed my mind. Thanks! I can't wait to have LMF installed on my machine and use it!"

I installed the LMF (deploying the war in Tomcat 7.0.26), now following the first steps and reading through the documentation. Cool! Some very early basic remarks and questions after just a couple of hours of use:

- I first installed the 2.2.1, then upgraded to 2.2.2. When deploying the 2.2.2 after un-deploying the 2.2.1 with tomcat manager, I got the cursor spinning for a very long time… long enough for me to stop waiting. After a computer restart, everything seems OK.

Upgrading currently does not really work. It might be necessary that you clean up the installation manually (in case of a webapp installation, remove the directory from tomcat/webapps, in case of a standalone installation, remove the whole installation directory).

 

- http://127.0.0.1:8080/LMF/bonjour/admin/about.html is not available

Yes. Bonjour implementation is not yet finished and should not be part of the installation.

 

- Core Services / first steps: PUT replaces the whole metadata for the resource. Is it possible to add triples to the description of a resource?

Currently only via a SPARQL Update. We are also considering supporting some kind of "diff" format, but we are waiting for the "Linked Data Platform" working group to specify how such updates might look like.

 

- Demo: Books: I followed the steps of the demo, without doing anything special (just clicking the proposed buttons).

- Step 7 : a bit perplex when reading the sentence: "( * ) Be sure that you have configured cover and genre facet to enable the demo!".

Guess we need more documentation here ;)

 

Hmm, I hope it's OK.

- Peter's problem: 0 result - but indeed, I do not have anything in the "Color" facet when displaying the complete list of books. Considering following line from the definition of the search core:

thumb_color = owl:sameAs / owl:sameAs / foaf:thumbnail / fn:colors() :: lmf:color;

I've tried to follow the links for "A Game of Thrones" (the book which has a blue cover), until 

http://www4.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/bookmashup/books/0553103547

which contains

<foaf:thumbnail rdf:resource="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51WT4gebGdL._SL75_.jpg"/>

but I've not been able to find any description (color) for it.

The color information is computed from the image file. The color facet is a special kind of widget to be added in the search interface editor. The problem here is that sometimes some of the Linked Data servers are not available or unreliable, so we cannot get the image.

 

- Mike and Suzan's problem: returns all the 10 books. My guess is: the solr search is an "OR" one, not an "AND" one. (If you remove "book" from the "third book of "A Song of Ice and Fire" search string, you get 4 results only, which is better)

Yes, the SOLR search is an OR query. In most cases this is also the desired behaviour (e.g. in Google), because relevance is determined by ranking, but we'll look into it to improve the demo.

 

- Restricting the results using the facets: a way to get an URI for the restricted list of results?

Good idea. A kind of "bookmarkable search results". I'll add it to the list of improvements :)

 

- Semantic Search:

- http://localhost:8080/LMF/solr/ui/ is not available

A wrong link. I corrected it.

 

What I'd like to do now: I have a LD compliant app running on my machine and that I use very frequently: a tagging tool, where tags are SKOS concepts (cf. www.semanlink.net). What is the easiest way to connect it and LMF? How could I easily say that any of my tags (of the form http://127.0.0.1:8080/semanlink/tag/foo) correspond to an LMF resource, eg.http://127.0.0.1:8080/LMF/resource/tag/foo? (In the future, I could considerer the replacing of my aging application by something build using LMF / VIE / IKS - but for the moment, I'd just want to test things, have some real content to play with inside LMF and get a clearer idea about what and how I could do) 

The LMF actually goes beyond a Linked Data Server, so you could even get representations of resources like http://127.0.0.1:8080/semanlink/tag/foo in the LMF. When you want to get information about that tag, the LMF will dynamically get its triples. For example, you could do the following:

1. create the resource http://127.0.0.1:8080/semanlink/tag/foo so that the LMF knows about it by issuing a

curl -X POST "http://127.0.0.1:880/LMF/resource?http%3A%2F%2F127.0.0.1%3A8080%2Fsemanlink%2Ftag%2Ffoo"

(note the URL encoding of the parameter)

2. open the resource in the LMF Linked Data Explorer by entering

http://127.0.0.1:880/LMF/resource?http%3A%2F%2F127.0.0.1%3A8080%2Fsemanlink%2Ftag%2Ffoo

in your browser (should give you an HTML display of the triples)

3. repeat the same POST for other tags (e.g. using a script); unfortunately Linked Data does not provide any means to list resources, so it needs to be done in this way for now

4. use it e.g. for configuring a semantic search over tags; you will have to turn the Semantic Search configuration option "solr.local_only" to false (by default the LMF only considers resources for search where it thinks it is the "owner" and then you can define a search core as usual).

 

Hope it works!

Sebastian

[f...@semanlink.net]

Dear Sebastian,

thank you very much for your detailed answer, and apologizes for
getting back only now, (I'm traveling: holidays!)

Sebastian Schaffert <sebastian...@gmail.com> a écrit :

> Dear François,
>
> I'll try to answer to your comments inline...

[snip]

>> I installed the LMF (deploying the war in Tomcat 7.0.26), now following
>> the first steps and reading through the documentation. Cool! Some very
>> early basic remarks and questions after just a couple of hours of use:
>> - I first installed the 2.2.1, then upgraded to 2.2.2. When deploying the
>> 2.2.2 after un-deploying the 2.2.1 with tomcat manager, I got the cursor
>> spinning for a very long time… long enough for me to stop waiting. After a
>> computer restart, everything seems OK.
>>
>
> Upgrading currently does not really work. It might be necessary that you
> clean up the installation manually (in case of a webapp installation,
> remove the directory from tomcat/webapps, in case of a standalone
> installation, remove the whole installation directory).

it seems that things work if you undeploy, restart (tomcat only or the
machine?), re-deploy

[snip]

>> - Core Services / first steps: PUT replaces the whole metadata for the
>> resource. Is it possible to add triples to the description of a resource?
>>
>
> Currently only via a SPARQL Update.

ok

I have to look in more details to see what happens. Just tell me: what
is the answer of the query? Is it "A Game of Thrones"? (I have a blue
cover image for it)

>
>
>>
>> - Mike and Suzan's problem: returns all the 10 books. My guess is: the
>> solr search is an "OR" one, not an "AND" one. (If you remove "book" from
>> the "third book of "A Song of Ice and Fire" search string, you get 4
>> results only, which is better)
>>
>
> Yes, the SOLR search is an OR query. In most cases this is also the desired
> behaviour (e.g. in Google), because relevance is determined by ranking, but
> we'll look into it to improve the demo.

Ah, OK. it looks like I'm not used enough to lists of results ordered
by ranking when it is about sw resources (too used to standard sparql
queries)! The right answer is indeed the first one in the list. Well
done

[snip]

>> What I'd like to do now: I have a LD compliant app running on my machine
>> and that I use very frequently: a tagging tool, where tags are SKOS
>> concepts (cf. www.semanlink.net). What is the easiest way to connect it
>> and LMF? How could I easily say that any of my tags (of the form
>> http://127.0.0.1:8080/semanlink/tag/foo) correspond to an LMF resource,
>> eg.http://127.0.0.1:8080/LMF/resource/tag/foo? (In the future, I could
>> considerer the replacing of my aging application by something build using
>> LMF / VIE / IKS - but for the moment, I'd just want to test things, have
>> some real content to play with inside LMF and get a clearer idea about what
>> and how I could do)
>>
>
> The LMF actually goes beyond a Linked Data Server, so you could even get
> representations of resources like http://127.0.0.1:8080/semanlink/tag/foo in
> the LMF.

I had done something with similar results (I think), creating a
resource http://127.0.0.1:8080/LMF/resource/tag/foo, and then
describing it using an owl:sameAs

> When you want to get information about that tag, the LMF will
> dynamically get its triples. For example, you could do the following:
>
> 1. create the resource http://127.0.0.1:8080/semanlink/tag/foo so that the
> LMF knows about it by issuing a
>
> curl -X POST "
> http://127.0.0.1:880/LMF/resource?http%3A%2F%2F127.0.0.1%3A8080%2Fsemanlink%2Ftag%2Ffoo
> "
>
> (note the URL encoding of the parameter)

I think you meant: http://127.0.0.1:8080/LMF/resource?uri=…

>
> 2. open the resource in the LMF Linked Data Explorer by entering
>
> http://127.0.0.1:880/LMF/resource?http%3A%2F%2F127.0.0.1%3A8080%2Fsemanlink%2Ftag%2Ffoo
>
> in your browser (should give you an HTML display of the triples)

it returns a kind of copy of the html returned when dereferencing
http://127.0.0.1:8080/semanlink/tag/foo (and requesting html): the LMF
seems to get the resource with an accept header set to receive html -
this is not bad, but would it be possible to decide between this html
returned by the original resource and the one that the LMF would
compute from the triples returned when getting the original resource
with an accept header set to return RDF (the 3-column view) ? Related
questions:
- you make this "copy" of the original html
- Why not just redirecting to the original resource?
- this "copy" may require some complicated transformation (eg. if
there are relative links in the html): I'm not sure you handle that
correctly in every case. For instance, I have in my HTML:
<link rel="foaf:primaryTopic" href="/semanlink/tag/foo" />
and it remains unchanged in the "copy" html (which is incorrect)
To make a "clean" copy, you have to parse the html, and this is not an
easy task. I had used once javax.swing.text.html, but it has several
bugs. What do you use?

- in the LMF "standard" description of a resource (the 3-columns
table), when clicking a resource, you sometimes gets the same
3-columns view, and sometimes the HTML returned by the resource. Do
you always return the HTML view of the original resource when there is
one, or does it depend on something else?

When dereferencing http://127.0.0.1:8080/semanlink/tag/foo, you get
triples where this resource is subject, but also triples where it is
object (and other statements also). When getting the corresponding
http://127.0.0.1:8080/LMF/resource?uri=…, you only get the triples
where it is subject. Can I still have access to the other ones?

>
> 3. repeat the same POST for other tags (e.g. using a script); unfortunately
> Linked Data does not provide any means to list resources, so it needs to be
> done in this way for now
>
> 4. use it e.g. for configuring a semantic search over tags; you will have
> to turn the Semantic Search configuration option "solr.local_only" to false
> (by default the LMF only considers resources for search where it thinks it
> is the "owner" and then you can define a search core as usual).
>
> Hope it works!

I have not tried it yet. Clearly I'll need to index my resources also
using statements where they appear as objects. But, as I said, I'm
traveling, and it is too hot to have my computer turned on for too
long! (I once got a melted battery and don't want to repeat the
experience). I didn't want to wait more before sending an answer to
your message. I'll tell you later.

>
> Sebastian
>

Thanks again,

fps