[VoCamp Discuss] Vocabify

[Knud Hinnerk Möller]

Yay, that's great! Something I always wanted to have but never got  
around to implementing. I'll try it out over the weekend and see if I  
can come up with some useful feedback.

Cheers,
Knud

On 25.03.2009, at 15:54, Keith Alexander wrote:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
> discuss mailing list
> discuss at lists.vocamp.org
> http://lists.vocamp.org/listinfo.cgi/discuss-vocamp.org

-------------------------------------------------
Knud Möller, MA
+353 - 91 - 495086
Smile Group: http://smile.deri.ie
Digital Enterprise Research Institute
   National University of Ireland, Galway
Institiúid Taighde na Fiontraíochta Digití
   Ollscoil na hÉireann, Gaillimh