[juc] Max Völkel – RDFReactor

RDFReactor generates Java objects from RDF schemas. This makes RDF much easier to use for the 90% of Java developers who are not RDF experts.

It’s hard to see the actual domain objects between all the triples. RDFReactor is like some glasses that let you view the triples through familiar Java objects.

For example, you could create a bunch of classes (Person, Group) from the FOAF schema and use them like this:

Person p1 = (Person) model.createInstance(Person.class, "http://www.example.com/ns/2005/#person1");
p1.setName("Joe");

Person p2 = (Person) model.createInstance(Person.class, "http://www.example.com/ns/2005/#person2");
p2.setName("Jim");

p1.addKnows(p2);

And as a result, a bunch of RDF statements end up in the model.

RDFReactor uses RDF2Go, an API that abstracts from different triple stores like Jena, Sesame, YARS, NG4J.

Very useful, and seems to Just Work.

(Now if you have something like this for every programming language (there’s ActiveRDF for Ruby, for example), then you could exchange objects between programming languages with RDF as an intermediate language.)