An Ontology Driven Approach to Improve the OpenSocial Standard
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Transcript of An Ontology Driven Approach to Improve the OpenSocial Standard
An Ontology Driven Approach to Improve the OpenSocial Standard
Eric Meeks (UCSF), Leslie Yuan (UCSF), Griffin Weber (Harvard), Maninder Kahlon (UCSF)
Clinical and Translational Science Institute, University of California, San Francisco
Harvard Catalyst, The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center
Problem
Introduction NIH Grant Match* and Recommended Reading* Gadgets using
researcher data obtained with different custom API’s
• Science 2.0 is happening, and Research Networking Tools such as
Profiles, VIVO, SciVal Experts and others have become
commonplace throughout our institutions.
• Our Research Networking Tools fulfill a need that can not be met by
commercial social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and
Google+ because we need institutional provenance for our data
content and first class support for our data model.
• Commercial social networking sites have become platforms. This
allows them to leverage numerous development communities and
more rapidly deliver innovative functionality.
• Our Research Networking Tools should also become platforms. We
believe that delivering more functionality more quickly to our
researchers will increase productivity and accelerate science.
DIRECT Match Gadget using researcher
data obtained with VIVO RDF via JSON
Browser
Babel
OpenSocial with RDF/XML converted to JSON via Simile Babel
Approach
Gadget Content Gadget Hosting Servers
http://anywhere/gadget.xml
RD
F/X
ML
HTML Content
OR*
JSON Domain Data
Domain Object Request
Acknowledgments
This project was supported by NIH/NCRR UCSF-CTSI Grant Number
UL1 RR024131 and Harvard Catalyst Grant Number 1 UL1 RR025758-
01. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not
necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.
We would like to thank Andy Bowline of Wake Forest, MIT Libraries and
MIT CSAIL as well as all other contributors to the SIMILE Project.
We also want to thank Andy Smith and the OpenSocial Foundation.
• Converting a web site to a web platform is not trivial. It can be done
independently by a large software development team, or it can be
done by leveraging existing open source solutions such as Apache
Shindig.
• The software resources available to our institutions are limited as
compared to a recognizable commercial site such as Facebook or
LinkedIn. Apache Shindig, which is based on the OpenSocial
standard, is the more attractive if not only viable solution.
• The OpenSocial standard does not have first class support for our
data model. Fortunately OpenSocial is extendable and this gives us
an opportunity to address our specific data model needs.
* Successfully tested with VIVO (ask for demo!) but not yet implemented.
Gadget
Specification
Backend Services
Request Proxy
* Built by Andy Bowline of the
Wake Forest School of Medicine.
• Manually extending OpenSocial with custom fields to match our data
model was always an option but an expensive one from a
development perspective and a flawed one because customization
breaks interoperability.
• Convergence towards RDF and the VIVO ontology across our
Research Networking Tools presented an opportunity. With a
standard ontology we now have a standard way to express our data,
but how can we integrate the VIVO ontology into OpenSocial?
• OpenSocial works well with JSON but not with any standard
serialized forms of RDF such as RDF/XML or Turtle. A standard
means of converting RDF to JSON was required.
Next Steps
• Integrate our solution into the RDF based version of Profiles and
make our code available to the open source community.
• Promote our solution to the OpenSocial Foundation. Other verticals
are suffering from the same domain based data model issues with
OpenSocial that we encountered in bioinformatics.
• Get you to help us build our community for Open Research
Networking Gadgets (ORNG) at http://opengadgets.org!
Solution
• An open source product called Babel which was developed by the
MIT Simile Project was discovered. Babel provides many data
translation services, including RDF/XML to JSON.
• A proof of concept system was created by integrating the production
UCSF Profiles code with pre-release VIVO compliant Profiles code,
and integrating Babel with Apache Shindig.
• The DIRECT Match Gadget was built to test the proof of concept
system. It worked! It has also been successfully unit tested with
RDF/XML from various external VIVO compliant sources.
The.
Ontology.
RDF/XML converted to JSON for Griffin Weber