Re: Towards a Graph API was Re: [ba-ohs-talk] New backlink metadata; mhpurplev0.2 released
Eugene Eric Kim wrote:
[...]
> My proposal would be to create a graph-based repository (lets call it
> "Node Soup" for now, a term Nicholas Carroll coined) for the following
> projects:
>
> * Lucid Fried Eggs
>
> * Nexist
>
> * dialog mapping tools (QuestMap; Mifflin; perlIBIS)
>
> * Augment clones (OpenAugment, a2h) (01)
My project Ceryle would likely fall into this category. I've been working
toward providing this functionality already, both in the design and to
a lesser extent the implementation stage. (02)
> Here's the short term impetus. All of these projects are open source.
> All of them have a graph-like model for their data structures. All of
> them have their own interfaces to some database back-end, and implement
> their own security model, access control, and version control (if they
> implement any of these at all).
>
> Let's a design a distributed repository that all of these tools could
> easily plug into. This repository could store any data with a graph-like
> data model, but would focus on the tools above (to constrain the problem).
> The repository would handle issues like access control, version control,
> etc. (03)
Let me describe my approach briefly. (04)
As part of Sun's Web Services Pack, I worked on the UDDI Repository
project, which used a dbXML and now Xindice backend. I wrote a test
and demo application that is part of the package, called Indri. Indri
has a GUI interface and provides node-level access to Xindice "Collections."
Well, as part of that work I developed a node API called XNode, which
will someday after we're all dead and gone finally make it into the
Apache tree (it's been submitted). XNode is SSOAP, "simple SOAP",
basically an XML metadata wrapper for XML content going into the
Xindice database. It has an <xnode:Header> element that can be
extended either with attributes (preferred) or with element content,
to contain the necessary metadata to fit it into the Ceryle framework,
including hooks into the ontological categories (by URL, since everything
in Ceryle is via URL). (05)
Murray (06)
......................................................................
Murray Altheim <mailto:m.altheim @ open.ac.uk>
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK (07)
In the evening
The rice leaves in the garden
Rustle in the autumn wind
That blows through my reed hut. -- Minamoto no Tsunenobu (08)