[MOBY-dev] getting RDF from BioMoby

[Mark Wilkinson]

Hi Martin,

This part of the system (I wouldn't call it part of the API yet :-) ) is 
not at all stable, but once people start using it I will be forced to 
make some hard decisions and make it stable, so... let's keep working 
through these issues :-)

The code is pretty tightly connected to the main public registry, though 
it could be made more generic if necessary.  At the moment it gets its 
Objects, Namespaces, and Services definitions from a very simple and 
fast CGI that outputs tab-delimited text from direct database calls.   
This would have to be changed to be useful to other registries.  
ServiceInstances come from a call to MOBY::Client::Central, so that is 
less of a problem (you can set the URL of your desired registry in the 
constructor for that object).  I could re-write it to use 
MOBY::Client::Central for all of these calls, but it significantly slows 
it down...  As I say, if it is important to make this script more 
generic I can do so quite easily.

The URL you are looking for is:  http://biomoby.org/RESOURCES/MOBY-S/FULL

I haven't written the subroutine that generates the RDF for predicates yet.

Interesting that the server is unhappy if you don't add extra path 
info... it should "die" in that case and send back an error...???

Thanks for your warm thoughts - it's a bit chilly here in the mountains 
:-)  Gorgeous, but chilly...

M


Martin Senger wrote:

>Mark,
>   Finally, I started to update my graphical tool for displaying moby
>objects. I am going to use now the RDF tree that I can get from the
>biomoby registry. Because I plan to add this new features (getting RDF
>resources) to the main jMoby library - so anyone can get it, I have few
>qustions before I dive into it:
>
>   1) I found these URLs:
>http://biomoby.org/RESOURCES/MOBY-S/Objects
>http://biomoby.org/RESOURCES/MOBY-S/Services
>http://biomoby.org/RESOURCES/MOBY-S/Namespaces
>http://biomoby.org/RESOURCES/MOBY-S/ServiceInstances
>
>   But I need URLs that can distinguish between various moby registries. I
>noticed that the URLs above were actually redirected to URLs:
>
>http://mobycentral.cbr.nrc.ca/cgi-bin/RESOURCES/MOBY-S/Objects
>http://mobycentral.cbr.nrc.ca/cgi-bin/RESOURCES/MOBY-S/Services
>http://mobycentral.cbr.nrc.ca/cgi-bin/RESOURCES/MOBY-S/Namespaces
>http://mobycentral.cbr.nrc.ca/cgi-bin/RESOURCES/MOBY-S/ServiceInstances
>
>   These URLs look better for my purpose - because they seem to include an
>address of one particular registry. But I am not sure if these
>redirections are done in the same way for everybody who has his/her own
>registry installed. So the real question is:
>
>   What part of these URLs is the same for everybody (because it is
>hard-coded somewhere in your code), and what part should I allow to
>customize? E.g. would it be correct to say that access to any registry can
>be expressed as:
>   http://<your-registry>/RESOURCES/MOBY-S/Objects
>   ...
>where <your-registry> by default is http://biomoby.org/ (or
>http://mobycentral.cbr.nrc.ca/cgi-bin)?
>
>   2) I remember that you also mentioned a URL that gives back everything
>in one go (something with 'all' somewhere). Does it exist?
>
>   3) The Perl code mentions also 'Predicates' but when I try it cannot
>find it. Is this anything interesting for me? (Btw, if I use a wrong URL,
>the one without thye last part, such as
>http://mobycentral.cbr.nrc.ca/cgi-bin/RESOURCES/MOBY-S/, it makes your
>server unhappy :-) .)
>
>   4) And finally, how stable is this, 'undocumented', part of registry's
>API? Can I rely on it and include it in the Java libraries? If it is
>stable, it would be nice to have it published on the biomoby pages.
>
>   Thanks (and again I wish you nice stay in the Rockies),
>   Martin
>
>  
>