[VoCamp Discuss] Vocabify

[Tom Heath]

Hi Keith,

This is really cool! Great idea, and even better that it's also implemented :)

I took the liberty of adding a small summary at [1] and in the
Outcomes sections of the pages about VoCampOxford2008 and
VoCampGalway2008 (under the label "Vocabify vocabulary bootstrapper" -
does that pass the Ronseal test?)

People on this list might also be interested in Keith's other recent
creation, which has just gone live as a production service from Talis:

* Morph, the Semantic Web Formats Converter: http://morph.talis.com/

You want an Exhibit based on your FOAF file? You got it. Plus heaps more.

Tom.

[1] http://vocamp.org/wiki/Publishing_Tools#Vocabify


2009/3/25 Keith Alexander <k.j.w.alexander at gmail.com>:
> Hi list,
>
> I was fortunate enough to attend vocamps oxford and galway, and one thing
> that seemed to come up quite a few times during both vocamps was the desire
> to communicate, machine-readably, how a vocabulary's terms could be combined
> with terms from other vocabularies in modeling data.
>
> Somehow connected with this, was the observation that, in creating
> vocabularies, it often seems easier and more fruitful to start, not by
> defining classes and properties, but by creating some instance data, and
> declaring a namespace that you can invent new terms in as you go along.
> Often, I leave writing the actual term definitions to the end of the
> process, and sometimes neglect it altogether if it doesn't seem so
> important. From what I can tell, this seems quite a common practice.
>
> So the other night, I had the idea to write Vocabify [1]. Vocabify takes
> these inputs:
>
> * Some sample instance data (in turtle), using terms in a vocabulary that
> hasn't actually been written yet.
> * the namespace URI of that vocabulary
> * your preferred prefix for that namespace URI (optional)
>
> Vocabify then looks at how these terms are used, and creates a schema
> defining them. The terms defined are linked to the instance data resources
> they are used in, using the openvocab:exampleResource[2]. This lets someone
> browsing the schema definition follow the exampleResource link to see how
> the term is intended to be used. I think it would probably be wise to use
> blank nodes when you create the instance data (if you don't want them to be
> dereferencable or linked to from outside your schema).
>
> So what you get is a turtle representation of a schema generated from your
> instance data. You can then edit it to your satisfaction and publish it at
> its namespace URI.
>
> (The code is at
> http://n2.talis.com/svn/playground/kwijibo/PHP/vocabify/trunk/ and open
> source: GPL 3.)
>
> Hope others find it useful,
>
> Keith
>
> ps: I've found open.vocab.org pretty useful a few times now for those times
> when you want to quickly define a new term, without having to create a new
> vocabulary, or publish it yourself.
>
> [1] http://kwijibo.talis.com/vocabify/
> [2] http://open.vocab.org/terms/exampleResource
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-- 
Dr Tom Heath
Researcher
Platform Division
Talis Information Ltd
T: 0870 400 5000
W: http://www.talis.com/