semantic content management: consuming and producing rdf in drupal

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Semantic content management

Consuming & producing RDF

in Drupal

Thom Bunting, Web Manager

12 July 2010, IWMW Sheffield


www.ukoln.ac.uk

Semantic CMS objectives• By automatically including Resource Description

Framework information (RDF / RDFa), content management systems can:

Improve search engine visibility of content Reduce need for manual crafting of code Strengthen RDF / RDFa consistency Extend semantic data consumption & production Integrate websites into ‘giant global graph’

http://www.slideshare.net/scorlosquet/how-to-build-linked-data-sites-with-drupal-7-and-rdfa


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Semantic Drupal: origins

• DrupalCon Boston 2008 keynote confirms importance of RDF in Drupalhttp://openspring.net/sites/openspring.net/files/corl-etal-2009iswc.pdf

• Dries Buytaert ‘video from the future’ shows way forward via RDFhttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8487255297768440860#

• 2 years active planning & developmenthttp://www.openspring.net/zfeed


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Semantic Drupal: in context

• Google: Rich Snippetshttp://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

• Yahoo: SearchMonkeyhttp://developer.yahoo.com/searchmonkey/smguide/faq.html

• Facebook: OpenGraphhttp://www.openspring.net/blog/2010/05/26/the-open-graph-protocol-and-drupal

• BestBuy ‘poster child’http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_best_buy_is_using_the_semantic_web.php


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Semantic Drupal: consuming

• Drupal supports retrieval of RDF from remote sites

• Drupal facilitates synchronisation of ‘master’ data (FOAF files, DBpedia, etc)

• Drupal to enable periodic refreshing / lazy loading of RDF data

• Many use cases and examples possiblehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4WgTRIRoa0


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Semantic Drupal: producing

• Drupal can automatically produce RDF / RDFa resources from version 6, Drupal database fields can be mapped to produce machine-readable semantic content

• Drupal websites can become productive citizens in world of Linked Datahttp://sf2010.drupal.org/conference/sessions/story-rdf-drupal7-and-what-it-means-web-large


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Semantic Drupal: motivations

• Improved search engine resultsYahoo reports 15% increase in click-through rates, BestBuy gains 30% traffic increase once RDFa included in web pages

• Improved research & insightConnections between distributed data sets produce new insights (for example, linking people with locations, organisations, groups, etc)

• Improved web management processesMapping of CMS database fields supports automated inclusion of RDFa tags into web pages (reducing need for hand-crafting RDF code) and periodic updates of site-wide triple stores


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Semantic Drupal: current options

• Drupal 6, a mature CMSprototype RDF modules add semantic functionality (these ‘contributed’ modules have been developed by those working to include RDF in Drupal 7 ‘core’)

• Drupal 7, currently in alpha 6RDF functionality supported ‘out of the box’ (Drupal 7 full release expected soon)


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Semantic Drupal: v.6 details

• Drupal 6 ‘contributed’ modules provide key RDF functionality

• Evoc Reference module: defines a field type for referencing RDF class or property from a node (web page)

• RDF and RDF CCK modules: define mappings between fields and RDF elements, export nodes as RDF

• External RDF Vocabulary Importer module: imports external vocabularies to be mapped with Drupal data objects

• SPARQL API module: enables the use of SPARQL queries (local / remote graphs)

• SPARQL endpoint module: exposes local RDF data in SPARQL endpoint


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Semantic Drupal: v.6 benefits

• Version 6 is first Drupal to support RDF• Automatic production of RDF pages

(discoverable via ‘rel’ tag links in HTML headers)

• Periodic generation of triple stores triples derive from all RDF files generated on the website, so these can be queried in Drupal website’s SPARQL endpoint (ARC2 library) – or elsewhere


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Semantic Drupal: v.6 challenges

• Drupal 6 RDF ‘contributed modules’ are prototypes

• Drupal 6 lacks core RDF functionality, depends entirely upon ‘add-ons’


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Semantic Drupal: v.7 details

• Drupal 7 ‘core’ RDF module produces extensive, well structured RDFa

• RDF API enables other modules to consume and produce RDFa with relatively little extra effort

• Expectation is that full range of prototype RDF modules can be improved and ported to Drupal 7, once released


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Semantic Drupal: v.7 benefits

• Drupal 7 automatically produces RDFa in all site pages (output as XHTML+RDFa 1.0)

• Drupal 7 flexibly supports namespaces (website managers can add specialist namespaces if desired, in addition to ‘out of the box’ support for dc, foaf, sioc, etc)


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Semantic Drupal: v.7 challenges

• Drupal 7 currently in alpha

• Full range of v.7 RDF ‘contributed’ modules not likely to be available from day one of Drupal 7 release

• Planning for incremental module releases


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Semantic Drupal: v.7 guidance

• Drupal 7 RDF overviewshttp://semantic-drupal.com/

• Video tutorials on Drupal 7 setuphttp://semantic-drupal.com/setup

• DrupalCon 2010 explanations of Drupal 7 RDF technology in contexthttp://sf2010.drupal.org/conference/sessions/story-rdf-drupal7-and-what-it-means-web-large


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In practice: Drupal 6 & 7 examples

http://iwmw-rdf.ukoln.info


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Semantic Drupal: discussion

• External RDF/XML vs. embedded RDFa

• Key RDF tags / ontologies

• Interoperability of RDF resources


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Contact information

Dr. Thom Bunting

UKOLN

University of Bath

Bath BA2 7AY

United Kingdom

Email: [email protected]


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Further information about UKOLN

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semantic content management: consuming and producing rdf in drupal

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