We’ve released the version 0.6 of our distributed knowledge engineering tool OntoWiki. We re-engineered most part of it to support a more flexible architecture with themes and plugins. OntoWiki is based now on the Zend Framework and requires PHP 5.2 (because of the new __toString() behavior).

This is the first stand-alone version of OntoWiki. It still includes Powl but we decided to release both tools separately to provide a more user-friendly installation and setup process.

Changes in this release includes a themeable interface, a guided installation, basic access control at model scope and some bugfixes in the class tree, the map tab and the auto suggestion feature.

Today our diploma student Christian Weiske finished the last bits of his RAP based database-driven SPARQL engine which implements most parts of the W3C recommendation now. Compared to the current memory-based SPARQL engine in RAP, SparqlEngineDb generates SQL queries to load off the hard work to the database engine. This speeds up SPARQL queries greatly, allowing operation on millions of RDF statements with ease, and without worrying about PHP memory consumption.

A new version of RAP including the new engine will be released shortly. In the meantime, Powl and OntoWiki internals will be switched to use SPARQL queries making it possible to use different data backends.

Via Binary Relations Blog: If you are in the general vicinity of Copenhagen on the evening of the 24th of April (yep, that’s tomorrow), and remotely interested in RDF, SPARQL or DBpedia, stop by ITU, where we’ll be hacking away from 20:00.

If you read Danish, see the original announcement by Claus Dahl in the kitchen: DBPedia hack-aften?

Next week starts the Knowledge Construction Challenge from the CKC2007, a Workshop on Social and Collaborative Construction of Structured Knowledge which is arranged in conjunction with the 16th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2007) in Banff, Canada.

The goal of the CKC challenge is to use the current state of the art for the tools as a jumping off point to collect and discuss requirements for such tools; features that users need; features that they like or dislike.

OntoWiki is one of the participating tools and we invite you to participate in the challenge.

The dbpedia project started by AKSW (together with Chris Bizer from FU Berlin and OpenLink Software) is getting increasingly popular. No wonder, since the over 10 Mio. RDF triples extracted from the English Wikipedia allow the astonishing answering of previously hard-to-answer questions. Who for example knows what connects Leipzig with Innsbruck?

Interesting articles about dbpedia:
Did You Blink? The Structured Web Just Arrived - Michael K. Bergman (AI³)
Different Approaches to the Semantic Web - Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media)
Integrating Wikipedia and SW - Ivan Herman (W3C)
Querying Wikipedia like a Database - Mike Linksvayer (Creative Commons)
Interview with Sören Auer (Semantic Web School)