This is a public chat log generated from the #semsol IRC channel.
10:26:48
bengee: http://n2.talis.com/svn/playground/kwijibo/PHP/arc/plugins/trunk/ARC2_IndexUtils
10:27:30
(a few functions for processing simpleindex structures)
10:28:13
diff, merge, intersect, filter
10:34:20
nice!
11:27:28
bendiken: was it you that was saying there would be a drupal talk today to watch out for?
18:04:13
kwijibo: sorry for late response. yep, that talk was Dries's keynote at Drupalcon Boston 2008 just now. no recording available yet but you can get a glimpse from http://jaiku.com/channel/drupal if you're on Jaiku
18:04:32
thanks bendiken
18:05:12
kwijibo: some more stuff at http://boston2008.datagraph.org/ including the link to the demo video that I and some other folks put together for his keynote, demoing some RDF, SPARQL, and Exhibit stuff on Drupal 6.x.
18:05:59
to all: in short, the big news is that Drupal 7.x (the next major release, about 10-12 months distant yet) will integrate RDF and SPARQL as key technologies.
18:06:45
essentially, it will (in the end) probably be something of a rewrite of Drupal from the ground up.
18:08:49
wow
18:09:00
using ARC? or how?
18:09:31
it's still at the handwaving stage, i.e. Dries has only set the direction, not made any choices regarding libraries etc.
18:09:57
but essentially the key parts of the RDF API for Drupal 6.x will get introduced into the core in some way.
18:11:10
that may or may not imply a dependency on ARC. probably not (Drupal has not historically been dependent on other libraries, and code footprint matters). we'll see, but from preliminary talks with Dries I suspect that RDF/JSON and RDF/PHP would be supported in core directly, and other RDF formats would be supported via contrib modules using ARC.
18:11:25
that is, more or less, what the RDF API for D6 already does.
18:11:56
that's amazingly good
18:12:07
yes, indeed - quite a nice direction :)
18:13:03
I liked the look of the RDF api btw - eg, the simplicity and phpness of rdf_unserialise
18:13:09
I think Dries has just added a decade more to Drupal's lifespan with this addition - it's impressive that he is brave enough to reinvent the platform at this fundamental level.
18:13:53
thanks - the API is still very rough, but I've tried hard to make it as Drupalesque as possible so as to help with community adoption.
18:14:00
do you think there would be some backend separation? or would it be a custom drupal rdf storage?
18:14:03
patches and improvement suggestions are really most welcome.
18:14:34
ie - would I be able to hook it up to the triple store of my choice?
18:15:40
probably there will be a very clean storage backend separation, building on what the RDF API currently has. I imagine D7 will offer RDBMS-backed (MySQL, SQLite at least) repositories in core and an API with which contrib modules can add backends like a Sesame connector etc.
18:15:56
cool
18:16:17
yes, I think you will - you can already do that with RDF API. I have a Sesame connector in the works, and the SPARQL module will allow any SPARQL endpoint to be added as a repository, too.
18:17:34
that's really good
18:18:17
three cheers for the web of data
18:18:39
yes - Drupal is dead, long live Drupal :)
18:19:05
let's see how much Drupal 7.x will help bootstrap the Semantic Web. there are hundreds of thousands of Drupal sites out there...
18:20:45
bendiken: what are the key reasons for changing to rdf?
18:25:20
I haven't seen the recording of the keynote yet (though I have the slides), so probably he explains his rationale better there - but I think he inevitably ended up with RDF as a result of really investigating how to do data interoperability, and having reinvented the triple, was enlightened ;) ...after all the best way to understand something is to reinvent it. I imagine he'll do a blog post soon with some more details.
18:29:30
:)
20:00:07
for anyone interested in what exactly Dries said at the Drupalcon keynote, there's pretty coverage on http://twitter.com/benfinklea - but you'll have to scroll several pages, try starting at http://twitter.com/benfinklea?page=6 or http://twitter.com/benfinklea?page=7