Source: Semantic Web world for you

The three XOs received for the project

The project One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has provided millions of kids world wide with a low-cost connected laptop helping them to enhance their knowledge and develop learning skills. Learning a foreign language, getting an introduction to reading/writting or preserving/revive an endangered/extinct language are among the possible usages of these XOs. Such activities could take a significant benefit from a storage layer optimised for multi-lingual and loosely structured data.

One of the building block of the Semantic Web, the “Triple Store”, is such a data storage service.  A triple store is like a database engine optimised to store and provide access to triples, atomic statements binding together a subject a predicate and an object. For instance, <Amsterdam,isLocatedIn,Netherlands>. And these two triples would define two different names for two different languages: <Amsterdam,isLocatedIn,”Netherlands”@nl>,  <Amsterdam,isLocatedIn,”Pays-Bas”@fr>.

SemanticXO is a new project from the contributor program aimed at adding a triple store and a front-end API on the XOs’ operating system. This triple store will extend the functionalities of Sugar with the possibility for all activities to store loosely structured/multilingual data and easily connect information across activities. In plus, the SPARQL protocol will allow for an easy access to the data stored on any device.

A first goal is to setup RedStore on the XOs allocated to this project. RedStore is a lightweight triple store that should be able to run on low hardware and still provide nice performances. Stay tuned for the result! ;-)