Scalable and Secure Infrastructure for Managing and Sharing of Distributed Semantic Content (SciMantic)

The primary objective of SciMantic is to enable distributed semantic content to be efficiently managed and shared among co-operating organizations in a secure way.

Reference:	-
Source of funding:	The Swiss confederation’s innovation promotion agency CTI
Project Duration:	July 1, 2009 - June 30, 2011

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) specified by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) allows resources to be described in a standardized way and be related one to another semantically. In this project, a modular software infrastructure, termed Semantic Content Infrastructure (SCI), will be developed, which enables a secure sharing of semantic contents, distributed among co-operating organizations. For this purpose, shared data are defined using common ontologies, valid across organizational boundaries.

SciMantic pursues following main objectives:

1. Scalable and secure RDF-based Semantic Content Infrastructure
2. Optimal distribution of semantic content within an administrative domain
3. Efficient notification system for content updates
4. Efficient search of semantic content based on applied taxonomy and folksonomy
5. Wide deployment of SCI and SCI-based solutions

The SCI comprises independent nodes which together build an overlay network and provide a secure access to shared data through standard communication interfaces based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approaches. SciMantic will employ a Smart Content Binding (SCB) layer which interfaces with different triple store technologies to persistently store shared data in form of RDF graphs. SCB can therefore be seen as a graph access layer which is independent of triple store technology used. Furthermore, in order to achieve a scalable infrastructure for interactions among SCI nodes, a Web Service Framework, based on the Representational State Transfer (REST) principles, is applied.

SciMantic contributes to the development of a very important infrastructure in the near future for knowledge building and sharing. It combines SOA and P2P approaches to obtain a robust, scalable and flexible Content-Infrastructure. Thus, co-operating organizations will benefit from its simple and secure access to networked information resources.

• SciMantic Poster: "Managing and Sharing of Distributed Semantic Content" (PDF, 1 MB)presented on "IFI Research Day", September 23, 2009.

• D2.1: Functional Requirements and Analysis of Mechanisms for a Semantic Content Infrastructure (PDF, 639 KB)
• D2.2: Architecture of a Secure and Scalable Semantic Content Infrastructure (PDF, 1 MB)
• D3.1: Implementation and Evaluation of the SciMantic’s Semantic Content Infrastructure (PDF, 2 MB)

• Knowledge Management and Sharing in the Framework of Project SciMantic (PDF, 646 KB)

• University of Zurich
• trialox ag

• Prof. Dr. Burkhard Stiller
• Dr. Hasan

Inquiries may be directed to the local Swiss project management:

Prof. Dr. Burkhard Stiller

University of Zürich, IFI

Binzmühlestrasse 14

CH-8050 Zürich

Switzerland

Phone: +41 44 635 67 10

Fax: +41 44 635 68 09