Paul Krill
Editor at Large

TopQuadrant boosts semantic Web

news
Apr 7, 20092 mins

The graphical assembly toolkit and a language suite will make it easier for companies to build semantic Web apps that are more responsive to new business processes

Focusing on development of semantic Web applications, TopQuadrant introduced on Monday a graphical assembly toolkit and a language for what the company calls a new class of applications that dynamically evolve and adapt to business changes.

The company announced TopBraid Suite 3.0, featuring a graphical assembly toolkit for dynamically configuring semantic Web applications using pre-built components. The suite also supports SPIN (SPARQL Inferencing Notation), which is a semantic Web language developed by TopQuadrant with an object-oriented rule model to link data and domain models, and offers RDF (Resource Definition Framework) libraries for SPARQL users to define business rules for semantic Web applications.

[ Related: Semantic Web takes big step forward. ]

“Most business applications are too inflexible to keep pace with the businesses they support,” said Irene Polikoff, TopQuadrant CEO and co-founder, in a statement released by the company. “Applications built with semantic Web data models can be dynamically changed to support new business processes, but many companies do not have the expertise to build semantic Web applications. Our advances in TopBraid 3.0 remove the entry barriers organizations face when adopting new standards.”

Users, she said, can assemble semantic Web applications without needing extensive expertise in semantic Web technologies or programming.

TpoBraid Suite 3.0 includes TopBraid Ensemble, a Web application assembly toolkit for configuring rich Internet applications. Application components are leveraged to share new applications with others. A library of components is offered addressing functionality, such as grids, trees, search and edit forms, and maps and charts.

Also featured in the suite are: TopBraid Composer, for modeling and application development; Composer Maestro Edition, a version of Composer with capabilities like SPARQLMotion for editing visual data processing scripts; and TopBraid Live, a semantic Web application platform.

In addition to SPIN RDF vocabularies, TopQuadrant is releasing TopBraid SPIN API, an open source Java API distributed under AGPL (Affero General Public License) and commercial licenses. The API includes capabilities such as SPIN Inference Rules, to derive new RDF statements from existing statements, and SPIN Constructors, which are inference rules to initialize resources with default values.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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