LinkedBrainz

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Revision as of 23:06, 28 July 2010 by Kurtjx (talk | contribs)
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The LinkedBrainz project is intended to help MusicBrainz publish its database as Linked Data. Linked Data is simply a method for publishing structured data on the web based on semantic web technologies. LinkedBrainz will provide

  1. a mapping of NGS and ARs to RDF
  2. integration with MusicBrainz server code to provide dereferenceable URIs
  3. a SPARQL endpoint for querying MusicBrainz data

Mapping

Entity concepts in MusicBrainz will be mapped to concepts in the Music Ontology and other appropriate ontologies.

There's been some activity related to this lately on the Music Ontology Specification list.

Old RDF Mappings

At least 4 RDF mappings of the MusicBrainz database exist

  1. the original RDF service used by MusicBrainz back in the day
  2. the Zitgist mappings
  3. the DBTune mappings
  4. the new Talis dataincubator mappings (work in progress)

None of these tackle NGS but should serve as a good starting point.

Dereferenceable URIs

There are essentially two approaches to providing dereferenceable URIs of the form http://musicbrainz.org/<type>/<mbid>

RDFa

RDFa is a syntax for embedding RDF into HTML documents. The RDF modeling of a particular MusicBrainz entity could be embedded along side the normal HTML. Web browsers and RDF consumers would use the exact same content.

pros

  • only small changes to the code base required
  • most parsers read RDFa these days

cons

  • HTML page sizes would get bigger (not sure how much bigger) which might slow everything down


Content Negotiation

With the content negotiation approach, during each request, the HTTP Accept header is examined. If it contains something like "Accept:application/rdf+xml" an RDF/XML document is returned. Otherwise a normal HTML page is returned.

pros

  • the "classic" linked data approach
  • most widely supported by RDF consumers
  • no HTML bloating

cons

  • must modify code base and muck around with the request cycle a bit



SPARQL Endpoint

Bureaucratic Details

employees

kurtjx is employed on a consulting basis for 6 months+

funding

Funding for LinkedBrainz comes from JISC.