We just release a new version of our Web application plugin Triplify, which exposes structured data from relational databases as Linked Date, RDF, and JSON. This release contains a number of bugfixes and impovements. Most notable the compatibility with PHP4 was improved and the possibility to add meta-data to your RDF added.

These are the changes in V0.3 (08-04-2008):
* added owl:imports statement importing the vocabulary
* added rdfs:comment about generator
* configuration variable “register” added
* Syntax for indicating objectProperties added:
SELECT id,user_id ’sioc:has_creator->user’
* Configuration variable $triplify[’cachedir’] added
* proper UTF8 encoding of literals added (thanks to Rolf Strathewerd)
* Configuration variable $triplify[’license’] added
* Configuration variable $triplify[’LinkedDataDepth’] added
* Configuration variable $triplify[’metadata’] added
* Configuration variable $triplify[’CallbackFunctions’] added

We did not participate as a mentor this year in Google’s Summer of Code program. However, there seem to be some Triplify related projects appearing. The PHP Content Management System Joomla! for example aims at integrating Triplify within a GSoC project:

http://docs.joomla.org/Code_04000

Also the Drupal community is actively discussing to integrated Semantic Web and Linked Data interfaces such as Triplify. Probably also a number of other PHP related projects would be excited to see a Triplify integration. If you as a student are interested in participating and earning $5000 during the summer, just suggest a corresponding project to one of the GSoC mentors. But hurry, the application deadline ends March 31st.
BTW: You will also be eligible to participate in the Triplification Challenge we are currently preparing with the chance to win an MacBook Air, an EeePC or an IPod Touch.

After a first preview release a couple of weeks ago we worked hard to prepare a first public release of Triplify. We fixed a number of bugs and added several additional features, some example configurations for popular Web applications were created and the Web site was completely overhauled: Michael Haschke created the new Triplify logo as well as the design and most other visuals on the site. For those who missed the first Triplify announcement:

Triplify enables the effortless “semantification” of Web applications. Triplify is a small plugin for Web applications, which reveals the semantic structures encoded in relational databases by making database content available as RDF, JSON or Linked Data.

Triplify is very light weight: It consists just of few files with less than 500 lines of code. For a typical Web application a configuration for Triplify can be created in less than one hour and if this Web application is deployed multiple times (as most open-source Web applications are) the configuration can be reused without modifications.

Triplify makes Web applications easier mashable and lays the foundation for next generation, semantics based Web searches.

More infos, the software release, some example configurations for OpenConf, Open Journal Systems, WackoWiki, WordPress and Drupal are available from: http://triplify.org

Solely for the reader community of the AKSW blog we have a technology preview, which we hope will increase the amount of semantics on the Web and maybe even provide the missing spark for a large scale deployment of semantic technologies on the Web. Triplify is a minimalistic technique to “semantify” Web applications by exposing information from their relational database backends as RDF, JSON and Linked Data. The required effort to do so is minimal - just some SQL queries selecting the information to be made available have to added to the Triplify configuration. Triplify cares about everything else.

The Triplify implementation and further information is available from the still preliminary web site at: http://triplify.org