CivicActions

The following provides a basic, op-ed case study on using RDF in a real-world search application for a small organization. Small organizations are resource constrained and investing in newer technology such as RDF poses special risks. The evolution of software, and the Semantic Web in particular, is a tension between a need to make something new and better, and a short-term need to make something practical and efficient.

The arguments presented are for both the engineer working with small organizations encumbered by reality, and the RDF purist encumbered by a vision. The "middle ground" is the goal - where practical software for small organizations can be built using RDF. This is vision being developed at CivicActions in through the NINA project[i] – an RDF based faceted search tool for Drupal. Since using RDF is not an easy or standard approach to building search applications, CivicActions supported by LINC's [ii]NINA project [iii], has been developing software that can allow organizations to leverage their existing Drupal content in new ways – via a new interface and RDF-based data storage mechanism.