OpenLink Data Spaces — another platform for unhosted solutions

OpenLink Data Spaces (ODS) [1] is another item for the list of open source platforms aimed at unhosted (de-centralized) “points of web presence”, also known as data spaces.

Note, WebDAV is integral to ODS, which is basically a platform developed using OpenLink Virtuoso [2][3]. Thus, you are able to perform tasks such as:

1. Use WebID ACLs to protect resources and collections.
2. Associate collections (folders) with Virtuoso back-end Quad Store so they act as a simple import mechanism.
3. Associate the folders above with Sponger Cartridges, which means Linked Data transformation of non-RDF resources precedes final persistence in the Quad Store.
4. Associate virtual resources with DAV collections, e.g., results of SPARQL queries.

Here’s how I put the above into use re. G+.

1. Go to Google Takeout to get a dump archive (ZIP).
2. Mount Virtuoso or ODS Briefcase DAV folder to my desktop, phone, or tablet.
3. Extract the ZIP archive.
4. Drag the entire expanded directory tree to my mounted folder.
5. I have Linked Data in my target Virtuoso instance at this point; thus all the data is accessible by a plethora of Linked Data or basic HTML browsers.

I have made a public demo since I want step 3 to be optional — i.e., I should just drag and drop a ZIP or GZIP archive to the special DAV folder, leaving Virtuoso to handle the rest of the effort to import to the Quad Store 🙂

Links:

1. ODS Portal
2. Virtuoso Open Source Edition Portal
3. Virtuoso Home Page