Early source package modeling in RDF - Was: Re: Advocating the use of RDF for Debian's published metadata

["Olivier Berger" <obergix@debian.org>]

Hi.

FYI, I've been working on adding some RDF descriptions of source
packages to the PTS (committed in SVN, not yet in production).

The RDF models :
- a source packaging "project" for each source package
- the different revisions of the source known by the PTS
- for the one in unstable (as the PTS does), links to the upstream and
  debian versions and the source package files
- a description of the upstream project (would need more than the
  Homepage: link or name to match against)
- pointers to the Ubuntu packaging couterpart and revision known by the
  PTS.

You'll hopefully see a coloured version of an example for apache2 in [1].

More details on debian-qa, in Message-ID:
<878vd4b7gw.fsf@inf-8657.int-evry.fr> (thread at [0]).

Maybe we should really create this RDF metadata of Debian project on
alioth or somewhere else to coordinate ?

Who would be interested to participate ?

Best regards,

[0] https://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2012/08/msg00099.html
[1] http://www-public.it-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/weblog/2012/08/24/generating-rdf-description-of-debian-package-sources-with-adms-sw/

Olivier Berger <olivier.berger@it-sudparis.eu> writes:

> I think it would help here, to adopt standards for more interoperability
> of Debian's metadata with others'. 
> The "package metadata" could even be delivered on the Web of Data
> (Linked Open Data), right from the Debian servers, to allow any
> application to be created, that would consume such metadata.
>
> If RDF/XML (as seems to be proposed by SPDX, to be verified once the
> Linux Foundation site is back) is not suitable, then another format
> would be great as long as it relies on some explicit prefix+suffix
> combination, in order to allow for extensibility, for instance some JSON
> variant of RDF like Turtle [1].
>
> If a package can both be described with some generic purpose
> "ontology"/standard/schema (for instance the one you envisioned
> initially in DEP 11), and also, depending on context (embedded or
> science, for instance) with another set of metadata (spdx or whatever
> else), you'd be able to mix in the same file, metadata relating to
> different contexts.
>
> Still, I'm not sure RFC822-style is perfectly compliant with the habit
> of RDF to separate prefix and suffix with a column character ':'. Maybe
> '_' could act as such a separator (must say I haven't checked the RFC
> for allowed tokens in the grammar) ?
>
> Let's try with an example (btw, the DEP
> http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal *lacks* examples IMHO) :
>
> In turtle representation format for RDF, one would have a document that
> looks like this :
>         @prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>.
>         @prefix dep11: <http://www.debian.org/whatever/dep11#>.
>         @prefix debbugs: <http://www.debian.org/whatever/depxx#>.
>         @prefix spdx: <http://spdx.org/ontology#>.
>         
>         <http://packages.qa.debian.org/iceweasel> 
>           a dep11:DebianPackage;
>           dep11:application "Iceweasel";
>           dep11:package "iceweasel";
>           spdx:license "MPL-1.1"
>           debbugs:bugs <http://bugs.debian.org/iceweasel>.
>
> (Maybe I didn't understand very well the Application and Package
> meanings in your DEP11 proposal, btw.)
>
> Anyway, as you can see, here we could have several "domains" of metadata
> sources (ontologies / prefixes) to describe the same package combined in
> a single document.
>         
> In RFC822-style, this could be something like :
>
> DEP11_Application: Iceweasel
> DEP11_Package: iceweasel
> spdx_license: MPL-1.1
> debbugs_bugs: http://bugs.debian.org/iceweasel
>
> etc.
>
> But clearly, not reinventing the wheel should be a goal, and adopting
> existing standards for meta-data representation would be my choice, i.e.
> Semantic Web standards (namely RDF).
>
>
> Of course, translators from/to different syntaxes will be trivial to
> develop, but if, from the source, a proper standard is used, it can be
> readily delivered to the Web without any transformation needed. Such an
> approach (often called Linked Data), clearly favors interoperability
> (more at http://linkeddata.org/guides-and-tutorials if I failed to make
> my point).
>
>
> Again, in case you'd doubt it, RDF is just a model, which can be written
> in a number of different formats (not only XML), but the key here is the
> embedded identification of the reference of the ontologies/prefixes
> which render the documents self described and extensible, out of the
> box.
>
> Note that the same rationale stands for all metadata to be eventually
> published on the Web by Debian servers.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Best regards,
>
> [0] http://www.w3.org/RDF/
> [1] http://www.w3.org/TeamSubmission/turtle/
> -- 
> Olivier BERGER <olivier.berger@it-sudparis.eu>
> http://www-public.it-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/ - OpenPGP-Id: 2048R/5819D7E8
> Ingénieur Recherche - Dept INF
> Institut TELECOM, SudParis (http://www.it-sudparis.eu/), Evry (France)

-- 
Olivier BERGER 
http://www-public.it-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/ - OpenPGP-Id: 2048R/5819D7E8
Ingenieur Recherche - Dept INF
Institut Mines-Telecom, Telecom SudParis, Evry (France)