From this summer term onwards the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at Leipzig University provides structured information about academia such aslectures, tutors, rooms and timetables as Linked Open Data. The platform http://od.fmi.uni-leipzig.de, which is based on the OntoWiki framework, provides a vocabulary and an ontology. Apart from the possibility of the direct linking of resources in the semantic web, this platformn offers a SPARQL endpoint. The accessible information provides a basis for the integration into E-Learning platforms or personal knowledge management applications.

At this year’s book fair in Leipzig (18/03 – 21/03) two books resulting from current project work of the AKSW research group [1,2] are displayed within the scope of scientific publications from the University of Leipzig. One of the editors, Thomas Riechert, will be present on 19th March from 10 to 12 o’clock at booth G201/H200 (hall 3).

[1] Agiles Requirements Engineering für Softwareprojekte mit einer großen Anzahl verteilter Stakeholder. Sören Auer, Kim Lauenroth, Steffen Lohmann and Thomas Riechert (Eds.),
2009, Leipziger Informatik Verbund (LIV), http://softwiki.de/buch

[2] Catalogus Professorum Lipsiensis – Konzeption, technische Umsetzung und Anwendungen für Professorenkataloge im Semantic Web.
Ulf Morgenstern and Thomas Riechert (Eds.), 2010, Leipziger Informatik Verbund (LIV), http://catalogus-professorum.org/buch

This is an announcement of the technical report as well as three different implementations of Semantic Pingback.

Semantic Pingback tackles the quality, timeliness and coherence as well as direct end user benefits of the emerging Linked Data Web. Semantic Pingback extends the well-known Pingback method, which is a technological cornerstone of the blogosphere.

It is based on the advertising of an RPC service for propagating typed RDF links between Data Web resources. It is downwards compatible with conventional Pingback implementations, thus allowing to connect and interlink resources on the Social Web with resources on the Data Web.

We implemented the Semantic Pingback mechanism in three different scenarios:

• A Semantic Pingback server and client plugin for OntoWiki
• A Semantic Pingback server integrated in Triplify, thus supporting the interlinking with relational data on the Data Web.
• A standalone Semantic Pingback server was implemented in PHP, that can be utilized with arbitrary resources that do not provide a Pingback service themselves.

If you do not want to provide a Pingback service on your own, you can use the AKSW Semantic Pingback Service which notifies you via email.

AKSW is pleased to announce the first availability of our Adaptive SPARQL Query Cache, a light-weight SPARQL proxy for caching query results and selectively invalidating stored results upon updates. SPARQL-backed applications can be accelerated by simply routing all SPARQL and SPARUL queries through the proxy. In scenarios with recurring query patterns the caching increases responsiveness and overall performance as we validated with an adapted version of the BSBM benchmark. The caching and invalidation was implemented in Java and in PHP and is available together with additional documentation from:

http://aksw.org/Projects/QueryCache

We’ve announced LESS today – an end-to-end approach for the syndication and use of linked data based on the definition of visualization templates for linked data resources and SPARQL query results.

Such syndication templates are edited, published and shared by using LESS’ collaborative Web platform. Templates for common types of entities can then be combined with specific, linked data resources or SPARQL query results and integrated into a wide range of applications, such as personal homepages, blogs/wikis, mobile widgets etc.

LESS and further information and documentation can be found at:

http://less.aksw.org

Particular thanks go to Raphael Doering (Netresearch) who performed most of the development work and to Sebastian Dietzold (AKSW) for contributing in various ways.