Drupal and the Semantic Web

Bill Shaouyshaouy@us.ibm.com

An Introduction

Drupal is:

•A Content Management System

… but also

•A Web Development Framework

Content Management Capabilities

•Default and custom content types•Rich user access capabilities•Taxonomy•Workflow

User-Generated Content Management

•Blogs•Forums•Collaborative authoring environments•Newsletters•Podcasting•Picture galleries (and other media types)•File uploads and downloads

Drupal Is Also a Web Framework

•User login and registration•User profiles•Internationalization•Menu functionality•Pathing/url alias•Search•Statistics

Drupal Is Open Source

•Free!•Over 3000 contributed add-on modules•A large, thriving community of users and developers

Two Important Third-Party Modules

•Custom Content Kit (CCK)

•Views

Custom Content Kit (CCK)

Allows you to create custom content types, using any combination of:

•Text areas

•Numbers

•Images

•File attachments

•Media

•More!

Views

Allows you to display any kind of list of content.

•Can filter by content type, author, date, and more

•Can display any subset of fields of the content type displayed

•You can pass arguments to a View

•In geek speak: a GUI-powered SELECT statement

Of the 3000+ Other Modules…

Has anyone contributed semantic web modules?

Is the Drupal community embracing the semantic web?

Yes to both. In a big way.

“The Web can reach its full potential only if it becomes a

place where data can be shared and processed by automated tools

as well as by people.”

-Tim Berners-LeeInventor of the World Wide Web

“(This) is too great an opportunity for us to pass up on. By adding semantic technology to Drupal core, I think we can make a notable contribution to the future of the web.”

-- Dries Buytaertcreator of Drupal

RDF vs. Microformats

The Drupal community is gravitating toward RDF

Module: RDFEnables the use of RDF metadata.

Module: RDF CCKAllows you to map RDF to CCK fields

RDF External Vocabulary ImporterAllows you to import external RDF vocabularies into

your site

Module: Open Calais

•Integrates the Thomson Reuters' Calais web service into Drupal. •Automatically creates rich semantic metadata for Drupal content. •Uses natural language processing, machine learning and other methods.

Open Calais Information•http://www.lullabot.com/articles/introduction-calais

•http://dc2009.drupalcon.org/session/using-intelligent-web-services-semantic-drupal-sites

Other Semantic Web Modules

•Feed API RDF Processor•Calais Marmoset•Neologism

RDF in Drupal 7

•Drupal 7 in alpha now. •For Drupal 7, community is trying to get some RDF functionality into core •sciencecollaboration.org contributing to the effort, among others

RDF in Drupal 7

Goals for RDF in D7: •API for mapping triples to vocabularies•RDF markup for core content types•Provide a hook to allow overrides

Resources

•Drupal group – groups.drupal.org/semantic-web•Drupalcon Paris: The State of RDF in Drupal – http://www.archive.org/details/ThestateofRDFinDrupal7

Thank You!