[foaf-dev] FOAF pathfinder code: anyone care to update it? (Ruby, Java)

[Dan Brickley]

just rediscovered this: 
http://rdfweb.org/2002/foaf/scutter/lib/pathfinder.rb

It's a mechanic transformation of Damian/Libby's old Java code, see 
http://rdfweb.org/foaf/corp/data/java/intro.html 
http://rdfweb.org/people/damian/2002/02/foafnation/

This is all about finding paths through FOAF data. It should be 
applicable to XFN equally well. "Find me the path from Dan to John" or 
"Find me the path from Enron to Semantic Web Vapourware Ltd.', ...

My old pathfinder.rb used the RubyRdf library as a query service; the 
dependency is pretty weak, but I'd love to see this modernised/renovated 
if anyone is interested. Jim Ley's foafnaut javascript/svg code also has 
pathfinding capabilities in it, if you view source. See 
http://www.jibbering.com/foaf/ and nearby. There are various forms of 
graph edge that we might pathfind over; my favourite is codepiction, 
where two people are in the same photo (damian's writeup covers this) 
and corporate relations (he covers that too). But simple foaf:knows or 
xfn:contact would be great as well...

Libby's codepiction pathfinder service is down currently, but was 
running fairly recently (albeit over old data), 
http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/discovery/2002/02/paths/allabout.jsp

Here's the core Squish query I used:

SELECT ?mbox1, ?mbox2, ?uri,
WHERE
(foaf::depiction ?x ?img)
(foaf::depiction ?z ?img)
(foaf::thumbnail ?img ?uri)
(foaf::mbox ?x ?mbox1)
(foaf::mbox ?z ?mbox2)
USING foaf for http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/


the transformation to SPARQLwould be just:


PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
SELECT ?mbox1 ?mbox2 ?uri
WHERE {
?x foaf:depiction ?img .
?z foaf:depiction ?img .
?img foaf:thumbnail ?uri .
?x foaf:mbox ?mbox1 .
?z foaf:mbox ?mbox2 .
}

... ie. pretty basic stuff. You could do more work to deal with other 
ways of identifying people, and normalising nodes (smushing) of course.

If you rip out and replace this piece of code,

q = SquishQuery.new.parseFromText query
DBI.connect ('DBI:Pg:rdfweb1','danbri','') do | dbh |
dbh.select_all( q.toSQLQuery ) do | row |
puts row.inspect
# print '.' # progressometer
p = ResultRow.new(row)
graph.addPath(p.mbox1, p.mbox2, p.uri)
end
end

with a SPARQL client (eg. 
http://svn.foaf-project.org/foaftown/2008/ruby-sparql-client/ ) you 
should be most of the way there.

I'm crossposting this to the FOAF foaf-dev list and the W3C list I set 
up for RDF/Ruby collaborations. The latter has been dissapointingly 
quiet for a while. C'mon people, I know you're out there!! ;) If you're 
a Ruby person and not on the list, 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-ruby ... see 
http://danbri.org/words/2008/02/08/270 for background and signup 
instuctions. I'll even repeat it here: to join send any email to 
public-rdf-ruby-request at w3.org with a subject line of “subscribe”. Ruby 
people, please talk to each other! You know you want to... :)

Back re pathfinder: I think this is really a great time to revisit this 
problem space. We now have Google building a global index of FOAF files 
(and using a real RDF parser), 
http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/docs/testparse.html ... and 
there's also a lot of Microformat XFN data out there too (which btw 
should make people here happy). And Amazon offer EC2 which allows us to 
have (in exchange for money, admittedly) access to a pile of cloned 
virtual Linux boxes to do our bidding. Rebuilding (and redesigning) the 
FOAF pathfinder demos seems an approachable and timely thing to explore. 
EC2 users can also easily setup OpenLink Virtuoso servers pretty much 
with a single click. Interesting times :)

Happy hacking...

cheers,

Dan

--
http://danbri.org/