Queso – a Semantic Web/Web 2.0 server

A group of us at IBM have been hacking for the past month on a server implementation that combines the current thoughts behind both Semantic Web and Web 2.0. My group is involved with different WGs/XGs at the W3C, open source projects, IBM internal projects, etc so we felt that a good testbed for our research and play would be a server that supports the best of both worlds. We named the prototype: Queso, spanish for cheese, because we are currently naming everything after the Mexican burrito place across the street in Cambridge, MA. Queso is a J2EE-style application that implements the Atom Protocol specification currently in draft-09 atop an RDF server called Boca (the restaurant’s name is Boca Grande, a.k.a. Big Mouth) using Henry Story’s Atom OWL for the model and of course opening up a SPARQL endpoint to query the contents the store. All of that of course it is just the beginning, we will be creating more compelling demos that bridge the Semantic Web and Web 2.0 some of which will include RDFa techniques. There is a lot to blog about on the subject but first things first:

Human Accessible

Queso AJAX Atom Browser: http://abdera.watson.ibm.com:8080/browser/
Queso AJAX SPARQL UI: http://abdera.watson.ibm.com:8080/browser/sparql/

Machine Enabled

Queso Atom Server Endpoint: http://abdera.watson.ibm.com:8080/atom/
Queso SPARQL Endpoint: http://abdera.watson.ibm.com:8080/sparql/

Please note that I do not have specific instructions or sample client to access the machine enabled endpoints (more on this later from me and others in the group), but if you are an Atom hacker, all you need besides your knowledge of the protocol is Vi and curl. We will be posting more examples and demos how to access the server and for now email me or post any bugs or test cases you believe need to be addressed. Enjoy!

WARNING: This is very early stuff, in other words: BETA. Please use at your own risk and do not expect the server to be super-fast. Most of the UI probably only works on Firefox. We reserve the right to change the machine name and drop the database storing your posts, there is no guaranteed uptime on the machine either, etc.

UPDATE: Wing blogs about Queso’s RDFa capabilities and Ben has a Java project example.

About this entry

You’re currently reading “Queso – a Semantic Web/Web 2.0 server,” an entry on Elias Torres

Published:: 07.17.06 / 6pm

Category:: Atom, SemWeb

About

I’m married and father of three.

I’m a Christian and worship at CBC.

I co-founded Performable.

I’m a java, python, javascript hacker.

Here’s my FOAF file (and URI).

I’m an amateur photographer.

I work on the Web.

I participate in Open Source software development (Roller, Abdera, RDFLib, WordPress).

You may contact me (email or jabber/gtalk) at .

Tim Bray 07.17.06 / 7pm

So I said

curl http://abdera.watson.ibm.com:8080/atom/

and it said text/html

Huh? Accept text/html? Oh well, so I said

curl –data-binary @- -i ‘http://abdera.watson.ibm.com:8080/atom/elias’
Hello world
urn:uuid:419449D7-BFD1-4AAA-B72D-8D5DD8E639CD
2006-07-17T15:07:30-07:00
Tim Bray

Hey There OSCON
Web content munging from the command line before your very eyes!

and your server said

HTTP/1.1 500 Unknown+Server+Error
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2006 20:10:25 GMT
Server: Jetty/5.1.10 (Linux/2.6.13-15.10-default x86 java/1.5.0
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 1245

Error 500 Unknown Server Error

HTTP ERROR: 500Unknown Server Error
RequestURI=/atom/elias
Powered by Jetty://

Hah… your comment system eats markup, apparently. Replied over in atom-protocol

snellspace.com » Blog Archive » Carpe Queso 07.18.06 / 12am

[...] Elias Torres: “if you are an Atom hacker, all you need besides your knowledge of the protocol is Vi and curl.” [...]

Toru Marumoto 07.18.06 / 12am

hello

I see the server serves intro/service document with “application/atom+xml”.
I believe It supposed to be “application/atomserv+xml” according to the draft-09.

Charles Adkins 07.18.06 / 12am

This is a very exciting initiative!.
That human readable browser is VERY nice looking — an outstanding first impression visually speaking.

let’s see how this thing handles…

big cheesy mouth.
well it looks a whole lot better than it sounds,
(but i’ve never eaten at the place across the street so how would i know

Elias Torres 07.18.06 / 1am

Toru,

I have fixed a bug that was setting the wrong content-type for instrospection document. Thanks.

Tim,

I have fixed both of your bugs. Thanks for posting them.

Toru Marumoto 07.18.06 / 6am

yap, content-type for instrospection has been fixed.
Here is the next one.

The collection feed returned from the server does not have an id.

Atom Feed Document (as in rfc4287) must have one id, right?

<a:feed xmlns:a=”http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom”>
<a:generator uri=”urn:lsid:abdera.watson.ibm.com:server:queso:1.2.0″ version=”1.2.0″>Queso-Atom-Server</a:generator>
<a:link href=”http://abdera.watson.ibm.com:8080/atom/jhghg” rel=”first”/>
<a:link href=”http://abdera.watson.ibm.com:8080/atom/jhghg” rel=”last”/>
<a:entry>
<a:content type=”text/javascript”>This is a new collection</a:content>
<a:title type=”text”>This is a new collection</a:title>
<a:id>urn:lsid:abdera.watson.ibm.com:entries:1312869318</a:id>
<a:link href=”http://abdera.watson.ibm.com:8080/atom/entry/edit/urn:lsid:abdera.watson.ibm.com:entries:1312869318″ rel=”edit”/>
<a:link href=”http://abdera.watson.ibm.com:8080/atom/entry/urn:lsid:abdera.watson.ibm.com:entries:1312869318″ rel=”alternate”/>
<a:link href=”http://abdera.watson.ibm.com:8080/atom/entry/edit/urn:lsid:abdera.watson.ibm.com:entries:1312869318″ type=”application/atom+xml” rel=”self”/>
<a:updated>2006-08-26T05:35:23.048Z</a:updated>
<a:published>2006-08-26T05:35:22.555Z</a:published>
</a:entry>
</a:feed>

Toru Marumoto 07.18.06 / 7am

oops, this time Atom Entry document is returned with “application/atomserv+xml” instead of “application/atom+xml”

GETting member uri
http://abdera.watson.ibm.com:8080/atom/entry/edit/urn:lsid:abdera.watson.ibm.com:entries:953653743

returns
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
…
Content-Type: application/atomserv+xml; charset=utf-8
<a:entry xmlns:a=”http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom”>

Elias Torres 07.18.06 / 7am

Toru,

I’ve fixed both the invalid content-type on both introspection/collection feeds as well as the missing atom:id in collection feeds.

Keep them coming!

Thanks.

OK, I’m not sure about this one but I just post anyway.

All attributes need to be under the namespace like this?
a:feed/a:entry/a:link@a:href
instead of
a:feed/a:entry/a:link@href

By the way, it’s perfectly OK to use prefix like “a:”, but why?
Why not just set a default namespace xmlns=”" in DocumentElement? I’m just curious.

This is an artifact of Abdera @ Apache. I’ll send this over to James Snell to look. I think your suggestion makes sense.

Sam Ruby: Queso 07.18.06 / 10am

[...] Elias Torres: Queso is a J2EE-style application that implements the Atom Protocol specification currently in draft-09 atop an RDF server called Boca (the restaurant’s name is Boca Grande, a.k.a. Big Mouth) using Henry Story’s Atom OWL for the model and of course opening up a SPARQL endpoint to query the contents the store. All of that of course it is just the beginning, we will be creating more compelling demos that bridge the Semantic Web and Web 2.0 some of which will include RDFa techniques. [...]

~wingerz » Blog Archive » Atom/XHTML/RDFa in Queso 07.18.06 / 10am

[...] Elias posted about Queso, our summer project that mixes the Web2.0 (REST-ful URLs, JSON, some nice Ajax-y UI libraries) and Semantic Web (data stored as RDF, queryable via SPARQL) worlds. [...]

James Snell 07.18.06 / 11am

Toru, no, the attributes do not have to prefixed. See here for an example: http://plasmasturm.org/attic/atom-tests/nondefaultnamespace.atom

I’m considering a change to Abdera that would use the default namespace when serializing Atom, but for different reasons.

Toru Marumoto 07.18.06 / 1pm

James,

Thank you for looking into this.

About the namespace for the attributes, I just remember the fact that a default namespace does not *directly* apply to attributes.
And the namespace of an unprefixed attribute is considered to be in the same namespace as it’s parent element.

I was just wondering which DOM API I should use:
Node.attributes.getNamedItem(‘type’);
or
Node.attributes.getQualifiedItem(‘type’,'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom’);
Now I got it.

Oh wait, “it does not have to be prefixed” means it might be prefiexed…and explicitly in Atom namesapace… oh boy.

James Governor 07.18.06 / 4pm

what is “j2ee-like”. isnt there a danger that reads as a bad? and more pertinently what do you actually mean?

would like to talk more about this

Elias Torres 07.18.06 / 6pm

Hi JamesG,

I didn’t say j2ee-like, I said j2ee-style. In other words it’s a Java servlet running in a J2EE container. No danger there, I hope.

Queso 07.19.06 / 7am

[...] Danny Ayers 2006-07-19 10:09Elias Torres has announced Queso, a Web 2.0/Semantic Web server. An Atom Store and a whole lot more. I don’t have time to say anymore right now, only that this is must see material. [...]

~wingerz » Blog Archive » A Queso Example 07.19.06 / 11pm

[...] I received an email from a friend who wanted to learn more about work. He is not that familiar with the Semantic Web, and I tweaked my response to him because it does a decent job of explaining what Queso does. Pre-reading: Queso introduction, RDFa in Queso. [...]

Laurens Holst 07.20.06 / 5pm

“And the namespace of an unprefixed attribute is considered to be in the same namespace as it’s parent element.”

Well, no. They’re in no namespace at all. Quote from http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-names11/:

“Default namespace declarations do not apply directly to attribute names; the interpretation of unprefixed attributes is determined by the element on which they appear.”

So that’s not the same at all. Basically, attributes without prefix are meaningless without their element, while attributes with prefixes are usually global (and handled separately) or at least more general-purpose.

~Grauw

semanticpool :: thoughts :: Queso. Atom store. 07.21.06 / 1am

[...] Elias Torres, Wing Yung and Ben Szekely have created an ATOM-Server called Queso with a little interface using AJAX: Queso is a J2EE-style application that implements the Atom Protocol specification currently in draft-09 atop an RDF server called Boca (the restaurant’s name is Boca Grande, a.k.a. Big Mouth) using Henry Story’s Atom OWL for the model and of course opening up a SPARQL endpoint to query the contents the store. [...]

RDFa » Blog Archive » Would you like Queso with that? 07.21.06 / 10am

[...] That’s why we’re very excited to see a bunch of really smart folks at IBM jumping into the fray with Queso, a web2.0/semweb server that, among other things, parses RDFa. Cheers to Elias, Wing, and Ben (Szekely) for some great implementation feedback, which you can read, as always, on our open mailing list. [...]

Toru Marumoto 07.22.06 / 5am

Lauren,
Thanks. I was about to rewrite the code. you saved my butt.

Practical SemWeb Outreach 07.22.06 / 8am

[...] Speaking of Elias, it would be remiss of me not to mention he’s done it again. The SparqlCalendarDemo he and Lee Feigenbaum put together was a great demonstration of Ajax+SemWeb. Now he, with Wing and Ben (great write-ups!) are covering Atom Protocol+SemWeb in Queso (with James Snell around somewhere with Apache Abdera). [...]

Brandon Smith » A Web 2.0 Server…Elias' new project 07.30.06 / 9pm

[...] Elias Torres » Blog Archive » Queso – a Semantic Web/Web 2.0 server [...]

Boca Grande 07.31.06 / 3am

[...] Sunday, July 30, 2006 Boca Grande I just noticed Elias Torres’ blog post about Queso, a prototype Semantic Web/Web 2.0 server. It sounds interesting but the reasoning behind the name Queso made me laugh:We named the prototype: Queso, spanish for cheese, because we are currently naming everything after the Mexican burrito place across the street in Cambridge, MAElias is talking about Boca Grande on First Street. As I’ve mentioned before, quite a few projects at Lotus were “fueled” by Boca Grande burritos. But this is the first time I’ve heard it used as a code name generator. Hmm, now I want a pod… postCount(‘115335522643233622′); | postCountTB(‘115335522643233622′); | digg | del.icio.us | reddit [...]

TechnicaLee Speaking: Life sciences on the web with SPARQL 08.17.06 / 1am

[...] I’ve been meaning to write up my experiences from WWW2006 in Edinburgh since getting back at the end of May, but the arrival of heaps of summer interns and the projects that accompany them (including Queso, a semantic-web-powered web-application framework) seems to have defeated that desire. [...]

~wingerz » Blog Archive » End of the summer 08.18.06 / 9am

[...] On Wednesday our interns, Ben, and I drove down to Southbury, CT to demo Queso, our summer project. The final part of our demo showed a Queso-backed TiddlyWiki containing an entry with some RDFa encoding a calendar event. It displayed nicely as rendered HTML, but it was also query-able via SPARQL, so we dumped it (along with some other events) onto a Google Map as well as a Timeline. Mashup heaven! [...]

Blog » Elias Torres Blog Archive Queso - a Semantic Web/Web 2.0 server blog and ping 08.24.06 / 3am

[...] Elias Torres � Blog Archive � Queso – a Semantic Web/Web 2.0 server (info). http://torrez.us/archives/2006/07/17/471/. Posted by ehetzner and 1 other to atom publishing protocol atom semantic web on Mon Jul 24 2006 at 06:11 UTC.Read more…Tags: [...]

Elias Torres » Blog Archive » Nova Spivack 08.31.06 / 10pm

[...] Most people completely disregard Semantic Web because it’s not tangible but I think the contrary, there’s plenty of it that’s already tangible, people are just not trying enough. I have been working really hard at changing that unfortunate impression and I feel I have made some real progress. It has been a few times now that I have heard from other than my close colleagues and friends that I am walking the talk when it comes to Semantic Web and it feels good because I hate talking heads. How I long for Queso running on a distributed server architecture that scaled to large number of nodes. Unfortunately, it’s really hard to get all of the proper minds that share a vision together to work on this area without having to worry about funding, meetings, idiots, VCs, VPs, etc. Everyone is worried about today and won’t see past 5pm. Sometimes I wished IBM had more people willing to try something new and different, instead of fantasizing about Web 2.0 or worse, reducing all problems to tagging. I have spent countless hours on the phone trying to show our work and the promises that come along with it and people often have made up their mind way before I even had a chance to show them an application or the potential benefits that could be reaped immediately if they were bold enough to try. It’s always something, like, it’s a production environment or that’s scheduled for deployment in five months, or why don’t you use XML, or simply the not-invented-here syndrome. And to make things worse, I have taken another position at IBM a little bit distant from the Semantic Web gang (Lee, Ben, Wing, Rob, etc) with the hope of having more support to help influence the company’s direction, hopefully, one that is closer to the Semantic Web. But I won’t keep my hope up, instead I’ll try to focus on yesterday’s deliverables and see how I can impact the bottom line today instead of tomorrow. [...]

~wingerz » Mashups and Mash-ins 09.21.06 / 1am

[...] It gets even more interesting when you throw Queso into the mix as a backend storage system. Queso can store any sort of structure you’d like (without you having to pre-define the structure beforehand). This makes it easy to store user-specific information. In our demo we used Queso to store employee home addresses (for calculating map directions) and del.icio.us usernames (for fetching non-intranet bookmarks). These were two simple, but illustrative, examples. [...]

bnode - semantic weblog 10.29.06 / 6pm

[...] Aussagen wie "lassen an der Sinnhaftigkeit zweifeln" sind rein politische Äußerungen und lassen an der Sinnhaftigkeit ihrer selbst zweifeln

Projekte wie Queso (ein RDF-basierter Atom-Store), eigene Erfahrungen bei der Kombination von Microsofts LiveClipboard mit SPARQL, RDF-basierte Web-CMS und auch die Kombination von Microformats+eRDF+SPARQL machen meines Erachtens eine Menge Sinn und zeigen einiges an Potential. Leider hat Cai Ziegler von diesen aktuelleren Entwicklungen nichts mitbekommen, aber wie gesagt ist ihm da kein Vorwurf zu machen, das Marketing müssen wir SemWebber dezent verbessern. [...]

These go to eleven - In Boston, for now 11.04.06 / 6pm

[...] Thursday. Met up with Ben Adida at MIT, ostensibly to talk about the Talis Community Licence and if/how it meshes with what Creative / Science Commons movements are doing. Ben was pretty enthusiatic about the TCL (’though I’m not a lawyer’) and it was great to get postitive feedback about this because we think it could be a really useful tool for us as we try to open up access the data we know is out there. Ben’s also one of the main guys behind RDFa, and we spent a really productive hour or so chatting about eRDF and RDFa, joined for a while by Ralph Swick. Its looking to me as though the two approaches are really beginning to converge, which has got to be a good thing. Another thing that came out of the discussion, and which I think has the potential to be huge was a small alteration to the RFDa spec which would seem to remove the XML dependency, making it viable to embed RDF in plain old HTML. w00t! After lunch we a headed few blocks over to IBM to meet up with Elias Torres and the Semantic Web team. Elias, Wing, Lee, Robert, Ben and Reuben showed us some really cool stuff but I’m not sure to what degree its public yet (apart from Queso of course), so I don’t want to say to much. Suffice to say that there’s going to be some very interesting things coming out of that group in the not to distant future. More than anything, I was really impressed with the whole ethic of the team, its amazing what you can do with a bunch of smart and really focused people and it was nice to put faces to some familiar names from #swig. [...]

Internet Alchemy » Hmmm SOA 11.07.06 / 4pm

[...] Each activity is actually an Atom feed styled to HTML. Posting the content is just adding to the feed. No mention of APP but presumably this would be the main protocol. Wonder if this is using Queso? That would make it RDF under the hood

[...]

Agylen » The best part of Open Source is giving back 11.17.06 / 1pm

[...] Nice feelings aside, you should also consider Queso, Leo. I would have posted this as a comment on your blog, but there’s no comment system there, so here it is. [...]

TechnicaLee Speaking: Semantic Web Technologies in the Enterprise 11.28.06 / 1pm

[...] Over the past two years, my good friend and coworker Elias Torres has been blogging at an alarming rate about a myriad of technology topics either directly or indirectly related to the Semantic Web: SPARQL, Atom, Javascript, JSON, and blogging, to name a few. Under his encouragement, I began blogging some of my experiences with SPARQL, and two of our other comrades, Ben Szekely and Wing Yung, have also started blogging about semantic technologies. And in September, Elias, Wing and Ben blogged a bit about Queso, our project which combines Semantic Web and Web 2.0 techniques to provide an Atom-powered framework for rapid development and deployment of RDF-backed mash-ups, mash-ins, and other web applications. [...]

TechnicaLee Speaking: Open-sourcing the Semantic Layered Research Platform: A Roadmap 11.29.06 / 7pm

[...] Queso. Queso is a semantic web-application framework. It stores content (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.), user data, and application data within Boca, and provides mechanisms for deploying modular applications and services that (modulo access control) can remix and reuse service endpoints and semantic data. Ben, Elias, and Wing have already written more about Queso. [...]

Nodalities 04.14.08 / 7pm

[...] and protocols. (Interop between Atom, RDF and any other systems which respect WebArch is generally doable because of that common [...]

Nodalities » Blog Archive » Google App Engine and the Joy of WebArch 04.17.08 / 12pm

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