Franz Inc. offers a whole bunch of semantic technologies, including:

Installing AllegroCL

The good news is that if you follow the installation instructions for AllegroCL, this will include also AllegroGraph and AllegroCache. Long story short, I was able to get started with this environment surprisingly quickly. The installation on OSX involves only two steps (after filling out a form): getting the GTK+ framework (a cross-platform graphical toolkit) and then downloading the Lisp image. Double-click, install, and et-voila’ you’re done with it.

Here’s how the Lisp IDE looks like:

The IDE includes also an integrated patches-loading tool, which you should run straightaway to get the latest versions of several libraries needed by AllegroCL (wonder whether it’s that easy to install all the standard Lisp packages too..):

Finally, in order to run AllegroGraph too it’s necessary to invoke an update command manually, which is easily done:

CG-USER(3): (SYSTEM.UPDATE:INSTALL-ALLEGROGRAPH)
Checking available AllegroGraph versions...
Making temporary directory (/tmp/tempa18825120705a/)
Retrieving agraph-3.3-acl8.2-macosx86.tgz into temporary directory
Extracting tar archive /tmp/tempa18825120705a/agraph-3.3-acl8.2-macosx86.tgz
Installing /Applications/AllegroCL/code/agraph.fasl
Installing /Applications/AllegroCL/agraph/

*********************

To use the newly downloaded AllegroGraph you can load it by
evaluating the following forms:

  (REQUIRE :AGRAPH)

Ancillary files are located in ``/Applications//AllegroCL/agraph/''.

Installing Gruff

I also downloaded Gruff and ran it. Again, on OSx the whole process was very very straightforward. I loaded up an ontology stored in an RDF/XML file and here’s the result:

Very very impressive – that’s my conclusion. Gruff offers plenty of features for viewing and also editing the rdf graph (check out the video tutorials on the homepage); with a little practice, I think it wouldn’t be that difficult to use it for creating rdf models by hand (eg as an alternative to tools like Protege). The main advantage in my view is that it’s highly interactive: being able to switch very quickly from a graph-view to a tabular one is extremely practical when inspecting or creating an rdf model.

Time to write some code

Haven’t been writing Lisp in a while, but since we’ve got till here it would be a shame not to get our hands dirty a little, right?

I had a quick look at the first book mentioned (“Practical Semantic Web and Linked Data Applications, Common Lisp Edition“), and tried to follow the examples presented. Here’s the result..

First, let’s load up AllegroGraph from AllegroCL and set up a Lisp reader macro (named ‘!’) that makes it easier to enter URIs and literals:

CG-USER(2): (REQUIRE :AGRAPH)
; Fast loading /Applications/AllegroCL/code/AGRAPH.fasl
;   Fast loading
;      /Applications/AllegroCL/code/acache-2.1.12.fasl
AllegroCache version 2.1.12
;     Fast loading /Applications/AllegroCL/code/SAX.001
;;; Installing sax patch, version 1.
;       Fast loading from bundle code/ef-e-anynl.fasl.
;         Fast loading from bundle code/ef-e-crlf.fasl.
;         Fast loading from bundle code/ef-e-cr.fasl.
;   Fast loading from bundle code/streamp.fasl.
;   Fast loading /Applications/AllegroCL/code/ACLRPC.fasl
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/pim001.001.
;   Fast loading /Applications/AllegroCL/code/PROLOG.001
;;; Installing prolog patch, version 1.
;   Fast loading /Applications/AllegroCL/code/DATETIME.001
;;; Installing datetime patch, version 1.
;   Fast loading /Applications/AllegroCL/code/streamc.002
;;; Installing streamc patch, version 2.
;     Fast loading from bundle code/efft-utf8-base.fasl.
;     Fast loading from bundle code/efft-void.fasl.
;     Fast loading from bundle code/efft-latin1-base.fasl.
;   Fast loading from bundle code/streamm.fasl.
;   Fast loading from bundle code/ef-e-crcrlf.fasl.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio001.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio002.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio003.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio004.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio005.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio006.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio007.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio008.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio009.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio010.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio011.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio012.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio013.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio014.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio015.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio016.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio017.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio018.001.
Loaded patch file /Applications/AllegroCL/update/agraph/3.3/pio019.001.
AllegroGraph Lisp Edition 3.3 [built on February 17, 2010 13:53:35 GMT-0800]
Copyright (c) 2005-2010 Franz Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
AllegroGraph contains patent-pending technology.
With patches: io001, io002, io003, io004, io005, io996, io007, io008, io009, io010, io011, io012, io013, io014, io015, io016, io017, io018, io019.
T
CG-USER(3): (in-package :db.agraph.user)
#<The DB.AGRAPH.USER package>
TRIPLE-STORE-USER(4): (enable-!-reader)
#<Function READ-TOKEN>
T
TRIPLE-STORE-USER(5): (enable-print-decoded t)
T
TRIPLE-STORE-USER(6): (triple-store:display-namespaces)
rdfs => http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#
err => http://www.w3.org/2005/xqt-errors#
fn => http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions#
rdf => http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
xs => http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#
xsd => http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#
owl => http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#
TRIPLE-STORE-USER(9): !rdfs:class
!rdfs:class

Next thing, we want to create a local triplestore, register a dummy namespace and add a couple of triples to it. Finally, we dump the whole triplestore in a file.

TRIPLE-STORE-USER(10): (triple-store:create-triple-store "~/tmp/rdfstore_1")
#<DB.AGRAPH::TRIPLE-DB /Users/mac/tmp/rdfstore_1, open @ #x21dfc80a>
TRIPLE-STORE-USER(11): (register-namespace "kb" "http://michelepasin.org/rdfs#")
"http://michelepasin.org/rdfs#"
TRIPLE-STORE-USER(12): (triple-store:display-namespaces)
rdfs => http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#
err => http://www.w3.org/2005/xqt-errors#
fn => http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions#
rdf => http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
xs => http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#
xsd => http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#
owl => http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#
kb => http://michelepasin.org/rdfs#
TRIPLE-STORE-USER(13): (defvar *doc1* (resource "http://www.michelepasin.org/research/"))
*DOC1*
TRIPLE-STORE-USER(14): *doc1*
!<http://www.michelepasin.org/research/>
TRIPLE-STORE-USER(15): (triple-store:add-triple *doc1* !rdf:type !kb:article)
1
TRIPLE-STORE-USER(16): (triple-store:add-triple *doc1* !rdf:comment !"what a wonderful book")
2
TRIPLE-STORE-USER(17): (triple-store:get-triples-list)
(< type article> < comment what a wonderful book>)
NIL
TRIPLE-STORE-USER(18): (print-triples (triple-store:get-triples-list))
<http://www.michelepasin.org/research/> <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> <http://michelepasin.org/rdfs#article> .
<http://www.michelepasin.org/research/> <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#comment> "what a wonderful book" .
TRIPLE-STORE-USER(19): (with-open-file (output "~/tmp/testoutput" :direction :output :if-does-not-exist :create)
(print-triples (triple-store:get-triples-list) :stream output :format :ntriple))

If we open the contents of the newly created “~/tmp/testoutput” file, here’s what we would find:

<http://www.michelepasin.org/research/>
    <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> 
        <http://michelepasin.org/rdfs#article> .
<http://www.michelepasin.org/research/>
    <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#comment> 
        "what a wonderful book" .

Finally, let’s use SPARQL to launch a (quite dumb) query that retrieves all triples from the triplestore :

TRIPLE-STORE-USER(53): (sparql:run-sparql 
 " PREFIX kb: <http://www.michelepasin.org/research#> 
   SELECT ?article_uri ?pred ?obj WHERE {
   ?article_uri ?pred ?obj . 
   }"
 )
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- Generated by AllegroGraph 3.3 -->
<sparql xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/sparql-results#">
  <head>
    <variable name="article_uri"/>
    <variable name="pred"/>
    <variable name="obj"/>
  </head>
  <results>
    <result>
      <binding name="article_uri">
        <uri>http://www.michelepasin.org/research/</uri>
      </binding>
      <binding name="pred">
        <uri>http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type</uri>
      </binding>
      <binding name="obj">
        <uri>http://michelepasin.org/rdfs#article</uri>
      </binding>
    </result>
    <result>
      <binding name="article_uri">
        <uri>http://www.michelepasin.org/research/</uri>
      </binding>
      <binding name="pred">
        <uri>http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#comment</uri>
      </binding>
      <binding name="obj">
        <literal>what a wonderful book</literal>
      </binding>
    </result>
  </results>
</sparql>
T
:SELECT
(|?article_uri| |?pred| |?obj|)
TRIPLE-STORE-USER(54):

That’s all for now; this is enough to get started with Allegro-CL and the semantic web programming libraries it contains.

Mind that I’ve only scratched the surface here, there’s lots and lots more that can be done with this environment. If you want to explore these topics further make sure you have a look at Watson’s book, ’cause that’s a great (and free) resource, really!

The following steps will allow the installation of IDLE.app (and other MacPython 2.5 extras, such as Build Applet.app) on a Leopard machine without any redundant elements and without any conflicts with the pre-installed Python environment…. continues on http://wiki.python.org/moin/MacPython/Leopard

The instructions are very clear, you install it, dbl click the TextMate bundle file and you’re already half way through. Just remember that you always need to generate a a PYSMELLTAGS file from your project, and put it at the root level so that TextMate finds it:


cd /root/of/project
pysmell .


For example, I wanted to add the django package to my ‘tags’ library:

[mac]@ego:/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/django>pysmell . -o ~/PYSMELLTAGS.djangolib

And generate tags for the standard Python lib:

[mac]@ego:/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5>pysmell *.py -o ~/PYSMELLTAGS.stndlib

Then I just moved these files to the root of my python project.. and it magically works!

>>>

At first sight, the main drawbacks seem to be:

1) the ‘tags’ file you generate needs to be put into the project directory, not really handy if you have multiple projects.. (or if you say – update a library)

2) it may be slow (of course, depending on the size of the TAGS file you generate)

However – it’s great stuff, can’t wait to test it further!!!!

You’ll find lots of interesting reviews of KomodoEdit, for example here and here, even if for learning purposes i believe it’s always best to download it and try to break it yourself!!!

By the way – I found out that if you want the snippet auto-completion to work (a nice introductory video is here) you gotta make sure all the snippets you create stay in the same folder/hierarchy the IDE gives you by default. That is to say – in the figure below the ‘django’ snippet at the top-level won’t be recognized when you press ‘model1’ + tab (or whatever you auto-completion key is set to). Instead, if you moved that snippet into the ‘abbreviations/python’ folder everything will work fine………..
.. is this a bug or what? maybe i’ll post it to the komodo forum…