Presented at Drupalcon DC 2009 - http://dc2009.drupalcon.org/session/practical-semantic-web-and-why-you-should-care An overview of Semantic Web concepts and RDF. Exploration of RDFa. How open data fits. Examples of modules and functionality in Drupal today, and a plan for Drupal 7.

1. Practical Semantic Web
(and why you should care)
Boris Mann • http://bmannconsulting.com
Presented at DC DrupalCon 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009

2. Outline
What is the Semantic Web?
Open Data!
Why should you care?
Where does Drupal come in?
What’s next?
Saturday, March 7, 2009

3. Before we begin…
Saturday, March 7, 2009

4. Before we begin…
How many people in the room are academics?
Saturday, March 7, 2009

5. Before we begin…
How many people in the room are academics?
How many people know what RDF stands for / is?
Saturday, March 7, 2009

6. Before we begin…
How many people in the room are academics?
How many people know what RDF stands for / is?
How many people are already sick of the term Web
3.0?
Saturday, March 7, 2009

7. The
Semantic
Web…
Saturday, March 7, 2009

8. The
Semantic
Web…
…is for propeller
heads with PhDs
Saturday, March 7, 2009

9. Semantic Web
Saturday, March 7, 2009

10. Semantic Web
More meaning to the web
Saturday, March 7, 2009

11. RDF
Resource Description Framework
Triples, subject-predicate-object expressions
…
Saturday, March 7, 2009

12. RDF
Resource Description Framework
Triples, subject-predicate-object expressions
…
Math is hard, let’s go shopping!
Saturday, March 7, 2009

13. RDF, basically
Saturday, March 7, 2009

14. RDF, basically
Apple is a fruit
Saturday, March 7, 2009

15. RDF, basically
Apple is a fruit
Apple is a company
Saturday, March 7, 2009

16. RDF, basically
Apple is a fruit
Apple is a company
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple
Saturday, March 7, 2009

17. RDF, basically
Apple is a fruit
Apple is a company
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple_Inc
Saturday, March 7, 2009

18. RDF, basically
Apple is a fruit
Apple is a company
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple_Inc
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple_Corps
Saturday, March 7, 2009

19. RDF, basically
Apple is a fruit
Apple is a company
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple_Inc
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple_Corps
http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple_River
Saturday, March 7, 2009

20. RDF is Robot Food
Saturday, March 7, 2009

21. RDF and RDFa
[RDFa] provides a set of
On October 14, 2008 RDFa XHTML attributes to
augment visual data with
became a W3C
machine-readable hints.
Recommendation (a Web
standard) …turn the existing human-
visible text and links into
Embed RDF directly in XHTML machine-readable data
without repeating content.
Saturday, March 7, 2009

22. The link has a flavor
Saturday, March 7, 2009

23. RDFa is Robot Food
Saturday, March 7, 2009

24. RDFa Screencast
by bhuga / scor
Saturday, March 7, 2009

25. Open Data!
Saturday, March 7, 2009

26. Recovery.gov
Saturday, March 7, 2009

27. Recovery.gov
Saturday, March 7, 2009

28. Apps for Democracy:
District CTO Vivek Kundra
“While the immediate goal of the Applications for
Democracy contest is to develop innovative software to
present District data, its long-term goals are broader,” said
District CTO Vivek Kundra. “By making government data
easy for everyone to access and use, the District
hopes to foster citizen participation in government, drive
private-sector technology innovation and growth, and build
a new model for government-private sector collaboration
that can help all governments address the technology
challenges of today and tomorrow.”
Saturday, March 7, 2009

29. Apps for Democracy by
DevSeed
Saturday, March 7, 2009

30. Apps for Democracy by
DevSeed
Saturday, March 7, 2009

31. Apps for Democracy by
DevSeed
Saturday, March 7, 2009

32. “Just” Open
Have to download /
import data
Pure robot food - still
needs programmers to
make it play nice with
humans
Saturday, March 7, 2009

33. Processing is moving
Saturday, March 7, 2009

34. Processing is moving
Past:
Move the data to where the processing is
Saturday, March 7, 2009

35. Processing is moving
Past:
Move the data to where the processing is
Future:
Move the processing to where the data is
Saturday, March 7, 2009

36. Amazon gives away free TB
Amazon is storing public datasets - over 1 TB of data
It actually saves them money, but it also makes their
customers’ applications faster (processing next to
data)
Trevor O: if other hosting companies did this, then if
even 2 people used it, they would save money -
moving data across the LAN is cheaper than across the
WAN
Saturday, March 7, 2009

37. Read Write Web on Amazon
Public Data Sets
You've read, or can imagine, the impact that the first Public
Libraries had on human culture. Now imagine the opening
up of not just this, but other libraries of data, so huge that
economies of scale blast the project off beyond any analogy
that could be drawn with our everyday experience or historical
memories. It won't just be Amazon that offers up this kind of
data - it will be relatively commonplace soon, we imagine.
It will be like a network of libraries - for robots. Robots that
go to the library frequently, read very fast and make serious
use of what they've learned.
Saturday, March 7, 2009

38. Where does Drupal come in?
Saturday, March 7, 2009

39. Drupal is getting semantic
Looks to be the first general purpose CMS that has
significant semantic data out of the box
If we ship Drupal 7 with semantic data turned on out of
the box (i.e. content you create is automatically marked
up), will probably be the most widely deployed
semantic platform
200K downloads / month plus lots of people creating
content = lots of semantic data from the bottom up
Saturday, March 7, 2009

40. Linking
Open Data
…the data sets consist of
over two billion RDF
triples, which are interlinked
by around 3 million RDF
links (Oct. 2007)
Saturday, March 7, 2009

41. Bottoms up
Saturday, March 7, 2009

42. Bottoms up
Can Drupal help enable the growth of the semantic
web from the bottom up?
Saturday, March 7, 2009

43. Bottoms up
Can Drupal help enable the growth of the semantic
web from the bottom up?
200,000 downloads x 10 links per page
Saturday, March 7, 2009

44. Bottoms up
Can Drupal help enable the growth of the semantic
web from the bottom up?
200,000 downloads x 10 links per page
= 2,000,000 RDF links
Saturday, March 7, 2009

45. Bottoms up
Can Drupal help enable the growth of the semantic
web from the bottom up?
200,000 downloads x 10 links per page
= 2,000,000 RDF links
(per month)
Saturday, March 7, 2009

46. Drupal everywhere
Saturday, March 7, 2009

47. Drupal everywhere
Saturday, March 7, 2009

48. Drupal everywhere
Saturday, March 7, 2009

49. Drupal everywhere
Saturday, March 7, 2009

50. Why should you care?
Saturday, March 7, 2009

51. Views across the Web
Remember the first time you had your mind blown
when building views?
What if you could operate on any data, anywhere on
the web, with a similar interface?
That’s why you should care about the Semantic Web -
it enables this
This is where I mention SPARQL
Saturday, March 7, 2009

52. Or maybe you care about
money
Saturday, March 7, 2009

53. Or maybe you care about
money
What does “Blog” stand for?
Saturday, March 7, 2009

54. Or maybe you care about
money
What does “Blog” stand for?
Better Listings On Google
Saturday, March 7, 2009

55. Or maybe you care about
money
What does “Blog” stand for?
Better Listings On Google
CMS?
Saturday, March 7, 2009

56. Or maybe you care about
money
What does “Blog” stand for?
Better Listings On Google
CMS?
Content Made Semantic
Saturday, March 7, 2009

57. Or maybe you care about
money
What does “Blog” stand for?
Better Listings On Google
CMS?
Content Made Semantic
Semantic “land rush” will happen
Saturday, March 7, 2009

58. What’s next?
Saturday, March 7, 2009

59. Some examples
RDF, RDF CCK, RDF evoc,
SPARQL, etc.
MOAT - Meaning of a Tag
Exhibit - complex mashups
and visualization with no
coding or theming
…go forth and experiment
and build today
Saturday, March 7, 2009

60. Exhibit Examples
http://simile.mit.edu/exhibit/examples/senate/senate.html
Saturday, March 7, 2009

61. Exhibit Examples
http://simile.mit.edu/exhibit/examples/senate/senate.html
Saturday, March 7, 2009

62. Mission: Possible
Dries said “Every movement needs a mission”
Saturday, March 7, 2009

63. Mission: Possible
Dries said “Every movement needs a mission”
Drupal’s mission is to help evolve the web
Saturday, March 7, 2009

64. How do we do it?
We pioneered aggregation, multi user blogging,
taxonomy and more on a platform that runs anywhere
Help make Drupal 7 the first semantic enabled CMS
Not just “the first” - but the one that just works, while
you’re building powerful, usable sites
Saturday, March 7, 2009

65. How do we do it?
We pioneered aggregation, multi user blogging,
taxonomy and more on a platform that runs anywhere
Help make Drupal 7 the first semantic enabled CMS
Not just “the first” - but the one that just works, while
you’re building powerful, usable sites
Kickstart the semantic web from the bottom up
Saturday, March 7, 2009

66. FINIS
Questions? Comments? Discussion?
Saturday, March 7, 2009