IkeWiki 0.9.1 review
DownloadIkeWiki is a new kind of Wiki (a so-called "Semantic Wiki") developed by Salzburg Research that allows users to annotate pages and li
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IkeWiki is a new kind of Wiki (a so-called "Semantic Wiki") developed by Salzburg Research that allows users to annotate pages and links between pages with semantic annotations.
Such annotations are useful because they give machines a certain amount of "understanding" of the content that goes beyond merely displaying the page. This information can then e.g. be used for context-specific presentation of pages, advanced querying, consistency verification or drawing conclusions.
Currently, IkeWiki can make use of some of the knowledge represented in RDFS and OWL schemas to display enhanced navigation tools. Furthermore, we implemented a sample "biology ontology" that automatically displays a taxonomy box for biological objects.
IkeWiki project looks and behaves like Wikipedia/MediaWiki in many aspects, it is a complete rewrite, and the system design significantly differs from other Wikis. IkeWiki makes full use of Semantic Web technologies like RDF(S) and OWL using the Jena RDF store.
The "Ike" in IkeWiki is the Hawaiian word for "knowledge". That is because the purpose of IkeWiki is to be an easy to use, collaborative tool that guides knowledge engineers in the process from unstructured informal texts over semi-formal knowledge in thesauri and taxonomies, to knowledge represented in a formal language or ontology.
Our aim is that domain experts who are not proficient in the rather complicated tools and languages (like Proteg? and OWL) used on the Semantic Web are nonetheless able to formalise their domain knowledge and make it accessible by other Semantic Web applications.
A typical workflow could be to start with a set of Wiki pages from Wikipedia and modify them according to one's needs and requirements. Then, a knowledge engineer could gradually associate types with the pages and the links between pages, thus increasingly formalising the knowledge represented in the Wiki. Finally, he could download the Wiki contents as RDF or OWL ontology for further use in other applications.
Browser compatibility is currently not the primary focus of IkeWiki, as it is not intended to be used in production environments yet. Our development platform is Mozilla Firefox 1.5, which is currently the most complete and standards compliant browser available. Compatibility to other browsers will likely be worked on in future releases.
Mozilla Firefox: 1.5 recommended, 1.0.x will work but certain parts will not display correctly (embedded SVG)
Opera: 8.5 works to some extent, but needs improvement for JavaScript (reported by Max, tested by Sebastian)
Internet Explorer: has problems with XHTML and CSS, not tested further
Requirements:
Apache Tomcat 5.5.12 (or greater)
JDK 1.5.0 (or greater)
PostgreSQL 7.4 (or greater - 8.1 recommended)
What's New in This Release:
Interface updates:
it is now possible to edit most metadata on the main page, including removing of page/link types, superclasses, ...
implemented an AJAX "please wait" popup that shows that the system is actually doing something and the user has to wait
Backend updates:
changed RDFStore to always lock with Lock.WRITE, because reading might trigger the reasoner and lead to updates
removed transaction code from RDFStore; it was not working properly anyway and made things unnecessarily complicated
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