Kingsley is talking about Data Spaces since a long time. But what is a Data Space? Nothing is better than an example to understand something, so I will try to explain you with a single data space that has been created yesterday, the Music Data Space:
This is the Music Data Space. This Data Space contains information about musical things. These things are described mainly by using the Music Ontology, but also by using other ontologies like FOAF. Finally, things (musical things) belonging to this space are accessible, on the Web, via dereferencable URIs.
So, the Music Data Space is a place where all musical things are defined on the Semantic Web, and accessible via the Web.
That is it, and it is what we created last Monday.
Now, some of you could wonder: why on earth Amazon.com belongs to the Music Data Space?
Amazon.com also belongs to the Music Data Space too!
Amazon.com live in the Music Data space too via their API. In fact, a simple experience with the OpenLink RDF Browser clearly demonstrates that Amazon.com’s data belongs to the Music Data Space too.
Now you will visualize RDF information about an album called “Chore of Enchantment”. Take a look at this line:
Click on the link to Amazon. A window should popup. Select the Get Data Set (dereference) option.
At this point, some magic will happens. In fact, the new information that is displayed in the RDF Browser is coming directly from Amazon.com’s web server.
This is why I assume that Amazon.com belong to the Music Data Space too.
In fact, the Virtuoso Sponger will connect to Amazon.com via their API to get some information about that album. It will convert the data into RDF and will display it to the user via the RDF browser’s interface.
One step further: the JPG file also belongs to the Music Data Space!
Yes! Information about the JPG file, hosted on Amazon.com’s web servers, also belong to the Music Data Space and there is the proof:
Click on the Image (JPG) representing the cover of this album. A window should popup. Select the Get Data Set (dereference) option.
Check the triples that have been created from this image. The Virtuoso Sponger downloaded the JPG file, it analyzed its header, RDFized everything and sent the information back to the RDF Browser so that the user can see the information available for that image.
Where is the end? I have no idea… probably at the same place where the imagination ends too.
This is that simple. All data sources (relational databases, remote data accessible via APIs, native rdf data, etc.) are unified together via the Music Data Space. And this Music Data Space is accessible, via URI dereferencing, at http://zitgist.com/music/
Other Data Spaces available
The Music Data Space is the starting point and many other type of data spaces should emerge soon.