Semantic Workbench, Get It In Gear
I received a helpful push from Paul Evans this evening. He reminded me that the Semantic Workbench SourceForge project (semanticwb.sourceforge.net) is just sitting idle, waiting to be kicked-off. We talked about the vision around the project, which needs to be clearly and concisely articulated as a mission. At that point we’ll have a direction to take.
This conversation coincided with my attendance at two semantic-web presentations at Oracle OpenWorld, which I am able to attend since it is co-located with JavaOne. I’ll write more about my experiences at this year’s JavaOne conference soon.
These semantic -web presentations validated the value of semantic technologies and the need to make them more visible to the IT community. For my part, this means I need to do more writing and presenting about semantic technologies while creating a renewed vigor around the Semantic Workbench project.
As Paul and I spoke and I tried to define my vision around the project, I realized that I was being too wordy for a mission statement. The fundamentals of my depiction were also different from the current project overview on SourceForge. The overview does not describe the truly useful application that I would like to see come out of the project.
Recognizing this disconnect reinforced the need to come up with a more useful and actionable mission. In the hopes that the project can be of value, I present this mission statement:
The Semantic Workbench strives to provide a complete Java-based GUI and tool set for exploring, testing, and validating common semantic web-based operations.
The near-term goals are:
- Finalize the mission, near-term goals and project governance (development process at this point)
- Choose a basic set of technologies to serve as the infrastructure of the program
- Determine the initial set of features the workbench will contain
- Create mock-ups of the interface
- Design the first version
The initial expectations for the development process are:
- The project will be iterative and lightweight in nature
- User stories will suffice for functional requirements
- Non-functional requirements will evolve over time and will be broken into at least two categories: non-functional requirements for development; and non-functional requirements for the workbench features
In terms of operating the project, we’ll leverage the SourceForge infrastructure to assist in collaboration. The Feature Requests tracker is a good place to create the user stories since it will allow them to be prioritized and tracked. The forum will work well for storing the non-functional requirements.
I plan to enter a set of features into the feature tracker within the next couple of weeks. These are intended to jump-start the thinking around the initial design. Governance will come later, assuming the team size grows. The non-functional requirements will come out of conversations regarding the initial design and implementation.
I urge people with an interest in the semantic web who either would benefit from such a tool or would like to participate in creating it, to join this project and their voices to the creative mix.
Tags: linkedin, open source, semantic web, semantics