Symfony and Semantic Web

After completing the theory of my master thesis, I was looking for a quick solution to implement it. Since I had some good experiences with Symfony framework, I finally decided to utilize it for implementing my master project.

SemCEM

 My project consists of three technologies: Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web 2.0 and Semantic Web. It aims to find a common point between these technologies to make creation of enterprise mashups semi-automatically. Web 2.0 has a wealth of data but poor semantics and difficult integration. On the other hand, While Semantic Web solves the integration problem issue but suffers from a dearth of users. Combining these two technologies will result in a rich Web of data that is usable by both humans and machines. In my research I found out that RESTful web services are the key to this solution. REST-based architecture puts a smiley on SOA, thereby makes it more practical to be used by non-professional users. I proposed an annotation mechanism for RESTful services. The next step was implementing a mashup editor that supports my proposed model. In this step I used Symfony 1.2 that has a good support of REST architecture in conjunction with pOWL. pOWL is a Web Based Platform for Collaborative Semantic Web Development. It consists of 6 stacked tiers:

• pOWL store – SQL compatible relational database backend
•  RDFAPI, RDFSAPI, OWLAPI – layered APIs for handling RDF, RDF-Schema (RDFS) and OWL
• pOWL API – containing classes and functions to build web applications on top of those APIs
• User interface – a set of PHP pages combining widgets provided by pOWL API for accessing (browsing, viewing, editing) model data in a pOWL store

Although I encountered some problems using PUT and DELETE methods of HTTP, but the final result was great. I could finish my project at three weeks thanks to good and useful Symfony plug-ins. The most time-consuming part was integrating pOWL into Symfony that was done approximately well. I called my mashup editor “SemCEM“. I have not released it yet, but I have some plans in near future to publish a demo version on semcem.com. ………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Diary:

+ Unfortunately thanks to assistant chair of our faculty plus some uninvited issues, my defense session for master degree was postpones to September!

+ My paper entitled “ Using an Enterprise Mashup Infrastructure for Just-in-Time Management of Situational Projects ” was accepted in IEEE International Conference on e-Business Engineering (ICEBE 2009). I am planning to have a trip to China to present it if possible.

 + In August I will have a trip to Amsterdam to make some important decisions for my future!

+ Besides many disappointing side effects of Iran Elections, I had this chance to be familiar with Parsatech Group, an active group with great ideas in IT.

Semantic Web Services:Killer App of SW?!

Alex Iskold has written an article about the Killer App of Semantic Web.He has analyzed several existing and potential applications of semantic technologies and looked for the killer app.With proliferation of semantic technologies,people are excited to sense real power of this new technology,but still there is no such a powerfull and usefull killer app to provide this sense for users.I think Semantic Web Services(SWS) can be a killer app and initiator for propagation of semantic web technologies. 

There are several researches in the area of SWS for “Making semantic web real“:

• WSMO
• OWL-S
• SWSF
• WSDL-S

 

It seems that between current technologies that support semantic web services, WSMO has a bright future and good features.WSMO has many good editors such as WSMO Studio  and Web Service Modeling Toolkit (WSMT) to annotate web services and working with Ontologies,Mediators and other concepts of WSMO.Futhermore, There exist two WSMO-compliant implementations which follow the conceptual model of WSMO: The Web Service Execution Environment (WSMX) and The Internet Reasoning Service IRS-III.

I don’t know when we can use capabilities of semantic web services in real world but it isn’t so far and it can be killer app for SW.

Golden Fall Days…

“The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.” John N. Mitchell

+ When eveything seems boring  what do you do? what can you do to change your state?! I think in these situations, listening to a good music can be one alternative solution! Specially in Golden Fall Days, depression level  of human beings and usage of Lithium goes high !This is the romantic season of memoirs…

+ Today,i found Zoho products.(Zoho  is an Office Productivity Suite from AdventNet Inc. )At the first time,When I entered to this website,I felt that it’s a new google-oriented website! User Interface model of Zoho is very similar to google’s UI,simple,flat and fast. Despite of this similarity, I think an important thing in Zoho products is Integration of   individual office apps .Users can easily swap between diffrent products  and by combining the results,more ‘mashed up’ functionality become available.It’s great!

+ These days,I’m working on Semantic Web Services  and using it in Supply Change Management Processes.For example in procurement process, Instead of employees constantly searching for suppliers and buyers, the web service infrastructure does it automatically within the defined constraints.For this purpose,we need support in mechanizing service recognition, service configuration and combination , service comparison and automated negotiation.I have many works to do!

Simple is beautiful…

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.” -Albert Einstein

+ These days I’m working on an automation project for an organization,It was a good oppotunity to experience symfony framework in a real world project. I think it’s a well-formed framework with many good features,It was just a problem for me on symfony: many configurations lead my life to an endless journey to eternity! At this week ,After many efforts, Zend Framework 1.0.0 production released! It’ was a good news  for php community,It’s said that Zend Framework  is now the best class library available for PHP 5 web application development.

+ Today I found a new good PHP editor . PHPEd comes with Unicode compatibility, this is one of the major featured I was looking in PHP editors for years. You can switch to your desired encoding anytime from tools menu->IDE Settings

+ Yesterday,it was a workshop about Ontology Construction in  Shahid Beheshti University.A group of NLP Lab has started it’s work on Farsi Wordnet: a top level ontology, based on general Wordnet for persian language. I hope these activities with a good support and administration fill the blank place of persian language on the world of knowledge descovery systems!

+ Asian Cup 2007 is starting.Unfortunately,The officaial website of this competitions is programmed by ASP and I think it’s too weak in comparison of other similar websites ,both in design and programming! But,an interesting point of this website is supporting for Farsi language after years of silence!