Sinux: A Linux distribution for the Semantic Web Enthusiast

Mihai Valentin Caracostea

Abstract. A Linux distribution containing useful tools for developing applications or learning more about the Semantic Web. The distribution includes libraries, frameworks, editors, IDE1s, web browser extensions and links to Online applications.

Keywords: semantic, web, linux, RDF2, SPARQL3, ontology, triple, linux, microformat

1 Introduction

Sinux (Semantic Linux) is a Live CD Linux distribution based on PCLinuxOS4. The goal of the project is to facilitate the discovery of the Semantic Web initiative and to get a fast hands-on approach toward this domain.The tools included cover the following topics: microformats, RDF, SPARQL, ontologies and range from libraries and frameworks to editors, IDEs and query engines.

2 Installation

The distribution is already fully installed and configured. To get started make sure your PC is set to boot from your DVD drive, insert the Sinux DVD into your unit and restart your computer. You may be prompted to press any key to continue. When the boot loader appears, choose a convenient option to continue (Live CD recommended).

1 Integrated Development Environment2 Resource Description Framework3 SPARQL query language for RDF4 http://www.pclinuxos.com

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Current defined user accounts are:

─ root5 (password: root)─ semanticweb (password: semanticweb).

Make sure you proceed as semanticweb.

3 Featured software

The applications are accessible via the “Semantic Web Tools” icon located on the desktop or the “PC->Semantic Web Tools” menu.

5 root is the administrator account, hence no restrictions exist for this user; it is best to avoid logging in with this account to prevent any serious damage to your computer or files

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3.1 Development

3.1.1 Development Environments

MonoDevelop

MonoDevelop is the Development Environment provided with The Mono Project6 and can leverage the power of .NET toward creating gtk++ Forms, console and ASP.NET applications while running on UNIX systems.

MonoDevelop can use Microsoft’s .NET classes or an independent set of own classes. Among supported languages are: C#, VB.NET, C++ and many others.

6 Open source .NET runtime for UNIX, Windows and Mac OS X platforms - http://www.mono-project.com/

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NetBeans7 IDE 6.8

NetBeans is an open source java Development Environment that can run on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and Solaris operating systems. NetBeans can cover a vast range of projects from web applications, web services to forms and console projects. Among its features are code completion, error hints, documentation popups and many more.

The popular programming languages supported by NetBeans are Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, C and C++.

7 http://www.netbeans.org

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3.1.2 Tools

This section contains debuggers and code inspectors for the MonoDevelop environment.

─ Gendarme – Inspect .NET and Mono assemblies;─ Gsharp – Write c# in an interactive shell and inject the code into Mono

processes─ Kjscmd ─ Mono Heap Snapshot Viewer─ Mono IL Contrast – Identify differences in API exposed by Mono assemblies

3.2 Microformats

3.2.1 hCardCreator

Tool for creating hCards.

3.2.2 hCalendarCreator

Tool for creating hCalendar events.

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3.2.3 Optimus – Microformats Transformer

Web application capable of transforming microformatted content to XML, JSON or JSON-P.

3.3 Ontology

3.3.1 OwlSight

Online lightweight ontology browser that runs in any modern web browser.

3.3.2 Protégé

“Protégé is a free and open-source ontology editor and knowledge-base framework. The Protégé platform supports two main ways of modeling ontologies via the Protégé-Frames and Protégé-OWL editor.Protégé ontologies can be exported into a variety of formats including RDF, OWL and XML Schema.Protégé is based on Java, is extensible and provides a plug-and-play environment that makes if a flexible base for rapid prototyping and application development”.8

8 http://protege.stanford.edu/

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3.3.3 Swoop

Open-source tool for creating, editing and debugging ontologies.

3.4 RDF

RDF related tools.

3.4.1 Current SPARQL Endpoints

Up-to-date list of existing SPARQL endpoints which can be interrogated via any client that supports SPARQL.

3.4.2 Dublin Core Metadata Editor

Online application which can retrieve a web page and generate Dublin Core metadata either as HTML <meta> tags or suitable RDF/XML.

3.4.3 Extract RDF from XHTML/XML

Online tool for extracting RDF/XML from XHTML/XML web pages.

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3.4.4 IsaViz

IsaViz is a visual environment for browsing and authoring RDF models represented as graphs. It features a 2.5D user interface allowing smooth zooming and navigation in the graph, creation and editing of graphs drawing ellipses, boxes and arcs. RDF/XML, N3, N-Triple, SVG and PNG exports.

3.4.5 RDF Editor

Online simple RDF Editor.

3.4.6 RDFPic9

Application for setting and retrieving RDF information from JPEG pictures.

9 http://jigsaw.w3.org/rdfpic/

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3.4.7 RDF Validator10

Online tool for validating RDF/XML documents. Also offers 3-uple representation of the corresponding data model and graphical visualization of the model.

10 http://www.w3.org/RDF/Validator/

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3.4.8 Twinkle11

Twinkle is a simple GUI interface that wraps the ARQ SPARQL query engine. The tool should be useful both for people wanting to learn the SPARQL query language as well as those doing Semantic Web Development.

11 http://www.ldodds.com/projects/twinkle

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3.5 Swoogle

A semantic search engine covering over 10.000 ontologies

3.6 WordNet12 Browser

Simple GUI for query-ing the WordNet installed into Sinux. WordNet is a large lexical database of English developed under the direction of George A. Miller.

Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are grouped into sets of cognitive synonyms (synsets), each expressing a distinct concept. Synsets are interlinked by means of conceptual-semantic and lexical relations. The resulting network of meaningfully related words and concepts can be navigated with the browser. WordNet is also freely and publicly available for download. WordNet's structure makes it a useful tool for computational linguistics and natural language processing.

12 http://wordnet.princeton.edu

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3.7 Frameworks and libraries

3.7.1 Java Developer Kit + Java Runtime Environment

Software Development Kit and Java Runtime for creating and running java applications. Applications written in java can be executed in most operating systems nowadays including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, etc.

3.7.2 Jena13

Jena is a java framework for building Semantic Web applications. It provides a programmatic environment for RDF, RDFS and OWL, SPARQL and includes a rule-based inference engine.

The Jena Framework includes:

─ A RDF API─ Reading and writing RDF in RDF/XML, N3 and N-Triples─ An OWL API─ In-memory and persistent storage─ SPARQL query engine

13 http://jena.sourceforge.net

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3.7.3 PHP-RAP

RDF API for PHP.RAP is a software package for parsing, searching, manipulating, serializing and

serving RDF models.Its features include:

─ statement-centric methods for manipulating an RDF model as a set of RDF triples

─ resource-centric methods for manipulating an RDF model as a set of resources─ ontology-centric methods for manipulating an RDF model through vocabulary

specific methods─ quad- and named graph-centric methods for manipulating RDF datasets─ integrated RDF/XML, N3, N-TRIPLE, TriX, GRDDL, RSS parser─ integrated RDF/XML, N3, N-TRIPLE, TriX serializer─ in-memory or database model storage─ SPARQL query engine supporting all features of the W3C SPARQL

Recommendation─ SPARQL client library─ RDQL query engine─ inference engine supporting RDF-Schema reasoning and some OWL

entailments─ integrated RDF server providing similar functionality as the Joseki RDF server─ integrated linked data frontend─ graphical user-interface for managing database-backed RDF models─ support for common vocabularies─ drawing graph visualizations

3.7.4 Redland

─ Redland is a set of free software C libraries that provide support for the Resource Description Framework (RDF).

─ Modular, object based libraries and APIs for manipulating the RDF graph, triples, URIs and Literals.

─ Storage for graphs in memory and persistently with Sleepycat/Berkeley DB, MySQL 3-5, PostgreSQL, AKT Triplestore, SQLite, files or URIs.

─ Support for multiple syntaxes for reading and writing RDF as RDF/XML, N-Triples and Turtle Terse RDF Triple Language, RSS and Atom syntaxes via the Raptor RDF Parser Library.

─ Querying with SPARQL and RDQL using the Rasqal RDF Query Library.─ Data aggregation and recording provenance support with Redland contexts.─ Language Bindings in Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby via the Redland

Bindings package.─ Command line utility programs rdfproc (RDF), rapper (parsing)

and roqet (query).─ Portable, fast and with no known memory leaks.

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3.7.5 Soprano

Soprano (formerly known as QRDF) is a library which provides a highly usable object-oriented C++/Qt4 framework for RDF data. It uses different RDF storage solutions as backends through a simple plugin system. Soprano is targetted at desktop applications that need a RDF data storage solution. It has been optimized for easy usage and simplicity.