Gnowsis adapter framework: Treating structured data sources as virtual RDF graphs

Abstract

The integration of heterogenous data sources is a crucial step for the upcoming semantic web - if existing information is not integrated, where will the data come from that the semantic web builds on? In this paper we present the gnowsis adapter framework, an implementation of an RDF graph system that can be used to integrate structured data sources, together with a set of already implemented adapters that can be used in own applications or extended for new situations. We will give an overview of the architecture and implementation details together with a description of the common problems in this field and our solutions, leading to an outlook on the future developments we expect. Using our presented results, researchers can generate test data for experiments and practitioners can access their desktop data sources as RDF graph.1 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.