Magpie - a framework for developing semantic web applications
This event took place on Monday 18 October 2004 at 12:30

Martin Dzbor KMi, The Open University

Magpie is a suite of tools both on client and server side that uses knowledge of a specific problem domain captured in a shared ontology, to semantically markup web documents on-the-fly. The user interacts with Magpie through a web browser plugin that visually annotates the concepts of interest in the web page the user visits. Concepts recognition depends on the selection of a particular ontology by the user. In addition to the ontology-driven annotation, Magpie allows users to invoke contextually specific semantic services for the annotated concepts and to subscribe to various trigger services that may use semantic knowledge acquired from the web page and ontology to notify user of interesting concepts or conclusions. Different concepts offer different sets of such services, and thus enabling the user to 'browse' the web semantically rather than through physically linked web pages.

The session will summarize what Magpie is about, who can benefit from tools like Magpie, and why it has been developed. There will be a basic functionality demonstration and a look at different perspectives of our research. I will demonstrate functionality of the Magpie framework using educational domain. This is a pilot application developed for the OU entry level course on climatology, jointly funded by climateprediction.net and AKT projects. It illustrates the role of supporting interpretation of web documents, as well as using semantic web infrastructure to develop richer applications.

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