Open Semantic Framework

Early components of OSF were provided under the names of structWSF and conStruct starting in June 2009.{{cite web |title=Structured data and web services framework for Drupal unveiled |website=Structured Dynamics |date=16 June 2009 |accessdate=30 September 2014 |url=http://structureddynamics.com/pr20090616.html}} The first version 1.x of OSF was announced in August 2010. The first automated OSF installer was released in March 2012.{{cite web |title=Open Semantic Framework installer released |author=Angela Guess |website=SemanticWeb.com |date=5 March 2012 |accessdate=30 September 2014 |url=http://semanticweb.com/open-semantic-framework-installer-released_b27167}} OSF was expanded with an ontology manager, structOntology in August 2012.{{cite web |title=Inside UMBEL: structOntology |author=Angela Guess |website=SemanticWeb.com |date=3 August 2012 |accessdate=30 September 2014 |url=http://semanticweb.com/inside-umbel-structontology_b31220}} The version 2.x developments of OSF occurred for enterprise sponsors in the period of early 2012 until the end of 2013. None of these interim 2.x versions were released to the public. Then, at the conclusion of this period, Structured Dynamics, the main developer of OSF, refactored these specific enterprise developments to leapfrog to a new version 3.0 of OSF, announced in early 2014.{{cite web |title=SD unveils enterprise-ready version of the Open Semantic Framework |author=Angela Guess |website=SemanticWeb.com |date=21 January 2014 |accessdate=30 September 2014 |url=http://semanticweb.com/sd-unveils-enterprise-ready-version-open-semantic-framework_b41494}} These public releases were last updated to OSF version 3.4.0 in August 2016.{{cite web|url=http://fgiasson.com/blog/index.php/2016/03/04/osf-3-4-released-now-easily-deployable-in-centos-6-and-7/|title=OSF 3.4 Released: now easily deployable in CentOS 6 and 7|date=4 March 2016|website=fgiasson.com|author=Frédérick Giasson|accessdate=4 March 2016}}

File:OSF stack simple.png

The Open Semantic Framework has a basic three-layer architecture. User interactions and content management are provided by an external content management system, which is currently Drupal (but does not depend on it). This layer accesses the pivotal [http://wiki.opensemanticframework.org/index.php/Category:OSF_Web_Services OSF Web Services]; there are now more than 20 providing OSF's distributed computing functionality. Full CRUD access and user permissions and security is provided to all digital objects in the stack. This middleware layer then provides a means to access the third layer, the engines and indexers that drive the entire stack. Both the top CMS layer and the engines layer are provided by existing off-the-shelf software. What makes OSF a complete stack are the connecting scripts and the intermediate Web services layer.

The premise of the OSF stack is based on the RDF data model. RDF provides the means for integrating existing structured data assets in any format, with semi-structured data like XML and HTML, and unstructured documents or text. The OSF framework is made operational via ontologies that capture the domain or knowledge space, matched with internal ontologies that guide OSF operations and data display. This design approach is known as ODapps, for ontology-driven applications.

OSF delegates all direct user interactions and standard content management to an external CMS. In the case of Drupal, this integration is tighter,{{cite web |url=https://www.drupal.org/project/osf |title=OSF for Drupal |date=21 October 2013 |accessdate=2014-09-30 }} and supports connectors and modules that can replace standard Drupal storage and databases with OSF triplestores.{{cite web |title=structFieldStorage: A new field storage system for Drupal |author=Frédérick Giasson |website=fgiasson.com |date=10 June 2013 |accessdate=30 September 2014 |url=http://fgiasson.com/blog/index.php/2013/06/10/structfieldstorage-a-new-field-storage-system-for-drupal-7/}}

This intermediate OSF Web Services layer may also be accessed directly via API or command line or utilities like cURL, suitable for interfacing with standard content management systems (CMSs), or via a dedicated suite of connectors and modules that leverage the open source Drupal CMS. These connectors and modules, also part of the standard OSF stack and called [https://www.drupal.org/project/osf OSF for Drupal], natively enable Drupal's existing thousands of modules and ecosystem of developers and capabilities to access OSF using familiar Drupal methods.

The OSF middleware framework is generally RESTful in design and is based on HTTP and Web protocols and W3C open standards. The initial OSF framework comes packaged with a baseline set of more than 20 Web services in CRUD, browse, search, tagging, ontology management, and export and import. All Web services are exposed via APIs and SPARQL endpoints. Each request to an individual Web service returns an HTTP status and optionally a document of resultsets. Each results document can be serialized in many ways, and may be expressed as either RDF, pure XML, JSON, or other formats.{{fact|date=September 2018}}

The engines layer represents the major workflow requirements and data management and indexing of the system. The premise of the Open Semantic Framework is based on the RDF data model. Using a common data model means that all Web services and actions against the data only need to be programmed via a single, canonical form. Simple converters convert external, native data formats to the RDF form at time of ingest; similar converters can translate the internal RDF form back into native forms for export (or use by external applications). This use of a canonical form leads to a simpler design at the core of the stack and a uniform basis to which tools or other work activities can be written.{{or|date=September 2018}}

The OSF engines are all open source and work to support this premise. The OSF engines layer governs the index and management of all OSF content. Documents are indexed by the Solr{{cite book |author1=David Smiley |author2=Eric Pugh |name-list-style=amp |date=20 November 2011 |title=Apache Solr 3 enterprise search server |publisher=Packt Publishing |edition=1st |page=418 |isbn=978-1-84951-606-8 |url=http://www.packtpub.com/apache-solr-3-enterprise-search-server/book}} engine for full-text search, while information about their structural characteristics and metadata are stored in an RDF triplestore database provided by OpenLink's Virtuoso software.{{cite web |url=http://www.openlinksw.com/press/VOSPressRelease.htm |title=Open source edition of OpenLink Virtuoso, unleashed! |date=11 April 2006 |author=OpenLink Software |accessdate=2010-02-03 }} The schema aspects of the information (the "ontologies") are separately managed and manipulated with their own W3C standard application, the [http://owlapi.sourceforge.net/ OWL API].{{cite news |title=The OWL API: A Java API for OWL ontologies |author1=Matthew Horridge |author2=Sean Bechhofer |name-list-style=amp |year=2011 |journal=Semantic Web |volume=2 |issue=1 |at=pp. 11-21 }} At ingest time, the system automatically routes and indexes the content into its appropriate stores. Another engine, GATE (General Architecture for Text Engineering),{{cite conference |title=GATE: A framework and graphical development environment for robust NLP tools and applications |author1=H. Cunningham |author2=D. Maynard |author3=K. Bontcheva |author4=V. Tablan |conference=Proceedings of the 40th Anniversary Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 2002 |year=2002 |url=http://gate.ac.uk/sale/acl02/acl-main.pdf}} provides semi-automatic assistance in tagging input information and other natural language processing (NLP) tasks.

OSF is sometimes referred to as a linked data application.{{cite conference |title=Semantic data driven interfaces for web applications |author1=Vagner Nascimento |author2=Daniel Schwabe |name-list-style=amp |conference=Web Engineering: 11th International Conference, ICWE 2011 |editor1=Sören Auer |editor2=Oscar Diaz |editor3=George A. Papadopoulos |date=7–10 December 2003 |publisher=Springer Berlin Heidelberg |location=Paphos, Cyprus | pages=121–136 |doi=10.1007/978-3-642-39200-9_5 |doi-access=free }} Alternative applications in this space include:

• [http://callimachusproject.org/ Callimachus]
• CubicWeb
• [http://stack.lod2.eu/blog/ LOD2 Stack]
• Apache Marmotta

The Open Semantic Framework also has alternatives in the semantic publishing and semantic computing arenas.

{{Portal|Free and open-source software}}

{{colbegin|colwidth=30em}}

• Data integration
• Data management
• Drupal
• Enterprise information integration
• Knowledge organization
• Linked data
• Middleware
• Ontology-based data integration
• Resource Description Framework
• Resource-oriented architecture
• Semantic computing
• Semantic integration
• Semantic publishing
• Semantic search
• Semantic service-oriented architecture
• Semantic technology
• Software framework
• Web Ontology Language

{{colend}}

• [http://opensemanticframework.org Official website]
• [https://www.drupal.org/ Drupal]
• [http://gate.ac.uk/ GATE]
• [https://github.com/structureddynamics/OSF-Web-Services Open Semantic Framework code repository] at GitHub
• [https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!forum/open-semantic-framework OSF interest group]
• [http://owlapi.sourceforge.net/ OWL API]
• [http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/ Virtuoso]

• Technical documentation library at the {{cite web |title=OSF Technical Documentation Wiki |website=OSF Wiki |accessdate=28 August 2015 |url=http://wiki.opensemanticframework.org/index.php/Main_Page}}
• Video training series at the {{cite web |title=OSF Academy |website=YouTube Open Semantic Framework Academy |accessdate=30 September 2014 |url=https://www.youtube.com/user/osfacademy}}

Category:Free content management systems

Category:Free software programmed in PHP

Category:Knowledge management

Category:Ontology (information science)

Category:Semantic Web

Category:Web frameworks