OpenVocab project for the Semantic Web
Recently I have found an information about the OpenVocab project and I was interested in its introduction of current and planned features. What's it about? The Semantic Web is mainly based on machine-readable data and data interchange. Data must be encoded using a schema (RDFS) or bettern an ontology (OWL). There are various „standards“ like FOAF, DOAP, Dublin Core… But in some cases you require to create own concepts (classes) or attributes. In that case you can either create their description in one of RDF notations (usually RDF/XML), think about URIref patterns and publish, or you can use OpenVocab service.
In short, OpenVocab is a kind of collaborative hosting and authoring tool for creating ontology terms. You can create, share and contribute data in the open system. Data are identified using unified address pattern and concepts are published as Linked Data in various formats – RDF, XHTML, JSON, Turtle. Linked Data means that each URIref (URL address) identifying a term returns HTTP 303 See Other header and redirects to other representation of the concept according to the agent preferences (usually RDF for machines and XHTML for web browsers).
Technically data are stored in the RDF repository Talis Platform and are available via SPARQL. Source codes and project documentation are available at the Google Code. OpenVocab follows the prior vocab.org project, which offered a space and stable domain for various ontologies, but it pushes the idea further. I am very interested if the author will migrate ontologies published at vocab.org into the new system.
