The Talis Platform

A Linked DataEngine

Leigh DoddsPlatform Programme Manager

SemTech June 2010

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/uk/

Agenda

• Platform Overview• Managing RDF in the Platform• Data Extraction Features• Current & Recent Projects

Platform Overview

Multi-Tenant Data Storage Service

Software as a Service

Self-contained data stores with services that operate on their contents

Platform Stores

Store any binary content

Unstructured Data Storage

RDF triple store

Structured Data Storage

Stores are world-readable by defaultConfigurable access optionsHTTP Digest Authentication

Access Control

Trigger or schedule store management jobs

Reset, Snapshot, Restore, Reindex

(Future feature: Bulk Load)

Job Control

Generic services that operate on any kind of data

Aim for design consistency via service checklist

RESTful APIs

RDF, SPARQL, HTTP

Where there are no standards we create open specifications

Standards Compliance

Branded Linked Data Hosting

Domain hosting

Surfacing of platform services

The Meta Box

Managing structured metadata

Create, read, update, delete RDF resources

Web-accessible RDF triplestore

Public/Private application dataSeparate access control options

Future Feature: API for managing graphs

Partition data into sub-graphs

Support RDF/XML, Turtle, N-Triples

Store data with HTTP POST

Vocabulary and protocol for describing changes to RDF triple stores

Updates using Changesets

Maintain audit trail of changes to Metabox

Support for Versioned Updates

Combine several changesets into single requestApplied atomically

Batch Update Mechanism

Searching

SPARQL

Augmentation

Data Extraction Features

Full-text index over RDF literals in the MetaboxConfigurable indexing options

Every Store has a Search Index

Paging, Sorting, Relevance Ranking

Flexible query syntax (fielded and boolean searches)

Standard Search Engine features

/items?query=[query] &max=[10] &offset=[0] &sort=[comma-separated fieldnames] &xsl=[XSLT stylesheet] &content-type=[mimetype for XSLT results]

Includes Open Search extensions: paging, relevance ranking

Includes full description of each RDF resource

Search Results are RSS 1.0

Group search results by specific fields

Simple XML response format

Facetted Search

/services/facet ?query=[query] &fields=[comma-separated fieldnames] &top=[10] &format=[xml|html]

Automatic data annotation

Pipe an RSS 1.0 feed through a Store and enrich it with available data

Augmentation

RSS 1.0 RSS 1.0Augmenter

MetaBox

/services/augment ?data-uri=[url-of-RSS-feed]

&xsl=[XSLT stylesheet] &content-type=[mimetype for XSLT results]

Standards compliant SPARQL 1.0 serviceEarly access to draft SPARQL 1.1 features

SPARQL Query API

/services/sparql ?query=[query] &output=[syntax (xml, rdf, json)]

Current Projects

Quick tour of current & recent projects

Crawling and hosting Linked Data from bbc.co.uk

Public SPARQL Endpoint

BBC

Community annotation of Linked Data using Twitter

Based on BBC Linked Data

fanhu.bz

Linked Data from UK Government

Domain hosting Public SPARQL and Search APIs

data.gov.uk

Explore UK research project funding

http://bis.clients.talis.com

BIS Research Explorer

Linked Data UK Geography and Gazetteer

Domain hosting Public SPARQL and Search APIs

Ordnance Survey

Linked Data from EU Government and UK cultural heritage

UK & EU Research Projects

Free use of the Platform for Public Domain data

http://www.talis.com/cc

Talis Connected Commons

Help explore potential of Linked Data Developer workshops, training, data conversions

Your Organisation?

Summing Up

Summary, Additional Resources

The Talis Platform provides…

Cloud based data storage

Simple API for managing data

Flexible data extraction features

Linked Data publishing platform

Additional Resources

API Referencehttp://n2.talis.com/wiki/Platform_API

Mailing Listhttp://groups.google.com/group/n2-dev

Bloghttp://blogs.talis.com/n2/

Support Deskhttp://talisplatform.zendesk.com