RDF and JSR-170 - two possible approaches

As I mentioned, I've been thinking about RDF and JSR-170 for a while so here are some possible directions:

1. One approach would be to model the JSR-170 data graph in RDF. So the repository could not store any RDF - only RDF that could be constructed using the JSR-170 API - but you could create a view on the repository that was valid RDF. This view could then be searched with SPARQL. There are several use cases for this: one is you want to integrate the data source with other data sources that talk SPARQL. Another is JSR-170 is a language specific standard but today web service based standards. Using RDF/SPARQL/REST, it would be possible to make a nice standards compliant web service interface to JSR-170 that was language agnostic. Producing a prototype of this wouldn't be too difficult - it would just be a matter of doing some integration work between a JSR-170 implementation like Jackrabbit and a SPARQL web server like Joseki.
2. JSR-170 is attempting to fill a particular use case. However, to do this, it has to create many pieces of technology that are JSR-170 specific - for example the query language or the schema language. An alternative approach would be to try to consider how you would do the same thing using RDF technology. This approach wouldn't be compatible with JSR-170, it would be a replacement. It would be much more flexible than (1), as it would support any RDF metadata. Whereas JSR-170 is a Java API, this approach would specify a web service API.

Obviously the second option is more work, so (1) sounds like a good place to start. If people get used to SPARQL based end points for their repository, then it won't be too hard to wean them from (1) to (2).

Introduction - Mark Butler

Hi! Stu and Andy have been kind enough to let me hang out with them on the Jessica project.

My name is Mark Butler and currently I am a senior lecturer at University of the West of England in information architecture. I used to work at HP Labs Bristol where I worked on the digital media project specifically the content repository which was a web service based replacement for a JSR-170 repository. I also have quite a bit of background in the Semantic Web as I worked on the SIMILE project and was the lead developer on the first Longwell prototype. I am also lead developer on DELI, an open source API for using UAProf, an RDF based standard for mobile phones.

I've been thinking about the relationship between RDF and JSR-170 for some time so when I found out about Jessica I was keen to join in and contribute.