Alright, "semantify" may not be an actual word, but you can probably guess at its meaning: "add a semantic layer to." In this case, we're looking at a small plugin called Triplify that reveals the semantic structures of web applications by converting their database content into semantic formats.
To grasp what this all means, we'll translate into plain English:
A large part of the content on the web is generated by web applications that are driven by databases on the back-end. For example, look at the top 15 most popular web apps hosted at Sourceforge:
Sourceforge Projects, Image via Triplify.org
However, the structure and semantics in these relational databases behind apps, such as those above, are not accessible by search engines. What Triplfiy does is use the structured nature of the databases behind these and other, similar apps to generate semantic data.
The Triplify plugin generates database views by performing a small number of queries against the web app's database. These views are then converted into a semantic format - either RDF, JSON, or Linked Data representations. Once in this format, data can then be shared and accessed on the Semantic Web.
Triplify Overview, Image via Triplify.org
To install the plugin, you download and extract the folder containing the script into your web app. Then download a Triplify configuration matching your Web application or create a new one. There's an example file to get started with, or you can use one of the files already available, like this one for WordPress or this one for Joomla.
Finally, integrate the plugin into your web application. (More info here).
Once the web app has been "triplified," search engines can better evaluate the content, and semantic search engines, like Sindice, SWSE, or Swoogle can do the same.
But even better, once Triplify is installed, your web app becomes easily mashable with other web data sources via a tool like Yahoo! Pipes, for example.
Because those behind Triplify feel strongly about expediting the deployment of the Semantic Web, they're posing a challenge to the web developer community: develop the most innovative and promising semantifications and win fabulous prizes!
The first prize is a MacBook Air, second prize is an Asus EeePC, and third prize is an iPod Touch.
To get a better idea of what they will be looking for, check out the Challenge page of the Triplify site.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Semantify Your Web Apps with Triplify.
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Looks like a good way to expose your data in a semantic format... but the problem of vocabularies still remains. Unless different web apps use a shared vocabulary, the potential for mashups is diminished. And there's no silver bullet for shared vocabularies -- it requires getting a lot of people to agree on something.
Posted by: Abhik | April 21, 2008 1:13 PMThere are quite many vocabularies already developed (e.g. DC, SIOC, FOAF, MOAT etc.). Interestingly, when creating Triplify configurations we found out that there are already vocabulary elements for almost all data you want to expose. And the good thing about RDF based vocabularies is that you can easily mix-and-mash them, e.g. using Dublin Core and SIOC properties at the same time. When search engines start to evaluate certain properties users will soon adopt these (as it has been the case earlier with the HTML meta tags).
Posted by: Sören | April 21, 2008 1:48 PMYou make it sound easy, but it isn't. I wrote about this topic a week ago, and semantifying your blog is not that simple.
The problems?
1. The default code triplify uses is not necessarily acceptable by your blog (at least mine; I had to modify it).
2. Registering your blog at triplify is also a slight pain in the ass. I made several attempts and my rdf source still remains at the fantastic size of 0kb.
Maybe my blog is already semantified and I just haven't noticed it. But isn't that also a problem? Users want to see the results of their efforts (say it statistics or file size of an rdf source) and triplify doesn't verify you that all you did was right.
Posted by: robojiannis | April 22, 2008 12:21 AMdude.. how do you know.. my CMS the shop:Product is same as google:Product? unless you solve that.. semantifying.. triplyfying etc ll not work.. sorry.. its just hard.. lets accept it and move along.. and also how deep are these taxonomies/hierarchies..(forget about restrictions..cardinalities) to get any form of benefits from semantics? seriously.
Posted by: COP | April 22, 2008 4:59 PM@robojiannis:
1. You are right, Triplify doesn't work out of a box for every blog/cms/shop/board system because Triplify simply doesn't know anything about theirs db scheme. Shure you have to config it. But the Triplify website offers the possibility to share configurations.
1a. You could send the configuration for the db scheme of your weblog system (or the scheme blog system release if that differs between version) to the Triplify staff via email or mailing list. You will help a lot of other users ...
1b. You could advocate in the dev community of your prefered web application for Triplify (or other "mapping" plugins) because that guys should know their db schemes :)
2. please use the mailing list or bug tracker for issues like that
To verify the working state of Triplify just request the URL via browser and check it, maybe you should try phperror on/off to locate problems (you can duscuss those topics in the mailing list)
Thank you for checking Triplify out.
@COP:
Triplify cannot know how to map your tables and properties, only you know it. It is also your decision how exact to map your data, for deep taxonomies you may use SKOS modell, other way may to use your taxonomy labels as tags via MOAT or other Tag Ontology. Your benefits: interoperable data, easy to mash and integrate with other data, linked data
Posted by: Haschek | April 23, 2008 5:32 AM