Courtesy Flickr/ John E. Robertson

Fortunata is a new tool that aims to help developers and graphic designers that aren’t well-versed in semantic web technologies create Internet applications that use and generate semantic data.

The idea behind the tool, which is the product of work by researchers from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid’s Ontology Engineering Group, based at the Facultad de Informática, in partnership with the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid’s Department of Informatics Engineering, is that compartmentalization of tasks eases processes.

So, it breaks development tasks into specific chunks – the web designer first creates semantic templates, capable of rendering semantic data (data presentation templates) or gathering data from the user (data capture templates) that will then be converted into semantic data. Then the developer, regardless of a lack of background in relevant programming languages or semantic web technologies, uses these templates to create the web applications. Think of it as fostering a modern-day assembly line for creating semantic web apps.

That sounds promising for boosting the development of interoperable applications that will help the web of data cycle forward. So, The Semantic Web Blog asked Oscar Corcho and Mariano Rico, of the UPM’s Ontology Engineering Group at the Facultad de Informática, to provide us with more details about their project.

Q: Why develop this tool? Was the thought that the complexity of the process is such that without making this as easy to do as possible, we won’t see traction for many such apps to be developed?
A: Well, the traction is clear, but the technical cost can dissuade common developers. The Semantic Web technologies add a new complexity layer to the increasing complexity of web application development.
For the last years, traditional web technologies have increased the development cost of the so-named Web 2.0 sites. This does not mean an increment in economical cost, but a new development paradigm based in technologies such as AJAX, JSON, and cooler graphical libraries.
Web developers have had to do a lot of work transforming sites, and now they are demanded to include more new technologies [that are] semantics-related.

The Linked Data initiative can achieve a Web 3.0, but the adoption barrier must be minimized for both developers and users.

Q: What types of apps do you see this tool being applied to to create — would an organization be more likely to use this to develop consumer-facing web apps, enterprise-focused intranet apps, both, other?
A: Some steps must be carried out in order to achieve a Web 3.0 flourish:

(1) Data. We need data, the more quality, the better. Now we have the tools to extract the semantics and store it in electronic formats. Organizations like BBC or The World Bank are providing [such] quality data [for example].

(2) Indexing data. Weaving was boring till the first indexers were born, and nowadays many people think as Google as the natural way to access the Internet. Initiatives like Sindice are required to provide quick access to the semantic information that is spread out over the Internet.

These two steps have been taken and now we are ready to see Web 3.0 (aka semantic web) applications. These applications were envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee and others 12 years ago, and they are directed both to the general user and companies:

Imagine a search engine capable of solving a query like this: “Books in which García Marquez’s Books are mentioned.”

Imagine a company executive querying for information available through different data bases in the intranet, merged with information from the public Semantic Web.

A new plethora of powerful applications will emerge from this.

Q: Can you further explain how this new infrastructure simplifies the development of semantic web applications by allocating specific tasks to different professional profiles and minimizing interdependencies? To that end, can you contrast how Fortunata does what it does for web designers and application developers, compared to the traditional process they’d have to go through to develop web apps that exploit the semantic web?

Sure. As said before, the skills required to develop a semantic web application — technically a “semantically-enabled web application” — range from client-side technologies (HTML, CSS, AJAX and so on) to server-side technologies (PHP, JSP, ASP, etc.). Most web developers agree that client-side technologies are becoming more specialized, converting web designers (artists) who are focused in aesthetics and usability into programmers.

The proposed architecture divides these tasks, allowing web designers to focus on the aesthetic part of a component named the semantic template — let us say the minimal unit of semantic web presentation. A Web 3.0 application then is an aggregation of these basic units, and this task is carried out by web developers that do not care about client-side technologies.

Q: So, where’s the ROI?
A: The benefits of publishing data in the formats of the semantic web are indirect (you can say long-term), but they can be direct as well, as is the case for a company integrating data easily from different branches, or the case for many companies that offer a web site for clients interested in buying their products, which could release the presentation task (web hosting) and focus on providing only data.
Nowadays, companies specializing in web development have to get access to a company’s databases to get the data, something quite sensible. Now the view point changes, and companies specialized in presentation will be fed with the company’s public data, enhancing their competency, which reflects as cheaper and more attractive sites.

Q: Can you tell us a little more about the purpose of the Google gadget that has been developed as part of this project?
A: This gadget is intended for end users — that is, people capable of managing a personal web page, specifically skilled in HTML basics. Google has many products for these users. The idea is to provide these users with tools for rendering semantic data, probably created by themselves as is the case for the now classic foaf-a-matic, or creating semantic data in an easy way.

This gadget takes advantage of the Google Gadgets architecture to allow these users inserting our gadget (which is called GG-VPOET) into any web page with a simple cut and paste of HTML code.

Q: Is Fortunata available to the general public or is this still primarily a research project?
A: It is a research work [resulting from Mariano Rico's phD thesis], but the source code is publically available. That is, you can use the Fortunata’s site (the one used by GG-VPOET) to create new semantic templates or reuse existing ones, but you can alternatively download the source code and build up you own Fortunata’s equivalent server.

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