A Converter to RDF is a tool which converts application data from an application-specific format into RDF for use with RDF tools and integration with other data. Converters may be part of a one-time migration effort, or part of a running system which provides a semantic web view of a given application. See also: RDFImportersAndAdapters

Please add converters as you make them or hear of them.

Formats

in alphabetical order:

BibTex

BibTex is the format for bibliographic references in TeX.

Bittorrent

Debian & Fink dependencies

The package information in debian and similar systems, with its general usefullness and its graph-like nature, is a clear candidate for conversion to RDF.

See VitaVoni blog about this.

Email (RFC822 headers)

There are others in this vein which run over IMAP or mailbox files.@@

Excel

EXIF

See JPEG.

Flickr data

Flat files

Unix systems store data (such as /etc/passwd) in flat files with comma separation.

GPS

iCalendar

iCalendar is an IETF standard for calendar (event and to-do list) data. Icalendar files typically are stored with a .ics extension.

Java bytecode

Javadoc

Issue tracking: [http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/ Jira]

JPEG

The metadata within JPEG photo is encoded in the EXIF standard.

LDIF

This is format used for contact information in LDAP server system. It is for example exported by Thunderbird's address-book.

Makefile

The unix Makefile syntax expresses dependencies between files in a software build.

MARC

transforms MARC records from Z39.2 format into MODS and then from MODS to an RDF representation of MODS.

Meteographical

Multimedia

Following the DRY principle, a pointer to tools in the realm of multimedia (origin: MMSEM-XG):

OAI-PMH

Outlook

Microsoft Outlook contains contact and event data, and so on in a proprietary format.

Open Financial Exchange (OFX)

OFX is the format for downloaded bank statements and other financial information. There are various levels of OFX, the early ones being HTTP headers followed by SGML, the later ones being HTTP-like headers followed by XML.

Open CourseWare

Palm OS

plist

The Apple OS-X property list (.plist) filetype is an XML fromat for arbitrary structured data. Numeric keys are used as local IDs. OS X applications store many kinds uf data in these files, including configuration data, iPhoto almum and photo data, iTunes metadata, and so on.

To convert plists well, added information is necessary, such as a namespace for the properties.

plist2rdf.xsl is an XSLT script to convert a plist file into RDF/XML. It does not add namespaces to the exported data.

Quicken Interchange Format (QIF)

Quick and Dirty CSV to RDF Converter (QUIDICRC)

Random

Seriously.

Spreadsheet

SQL

SQL databases are rich stores of relational data ideal for exporting as RDF. Conference tracks and many papers cover this subject from different angles. See also: RdfAndSql

Many RDF Triple stores are implemented using SQL databases, but that is not covered here.

Subversion

Subversion is a code-management system.

Tab Separated Text

See flat files.

Talis SW Format Converter

UML

VCARD, Addressbook, …

VACRD is a standard for interchange of contact data, such as business cards and address books.

"Representing vCard Objects in RDF/XML" is a W3C note defining an ontology for VCARD. FOAF is widely used ontology covering some of the domain.

* code to convert your Apple Addressbook into FOAF file (Richard Newman)

* ab-foaf does the same.

* XML::FOAFKnows::FromvCard, Perl extension to create FOAF dumps from vCards. Does not attempt to create a full model, just foaf:knows. It also has some privacy features. In addition to the module, which conforms with the Formatter API specification, comes with a command-line tool.

Weather

XML

XMP

XMP is an Adobe-sponsored specification for putting RDF metadata in virtually any form of file, including binary formats. XMP metadata is RDF data in fact, but it has to be extracted from the file.

Frameworks

The following are general tools which provide conversion from many formats.

Aperture

Aperture supports crawling, making it not a converter but a framework to crawl updates of data (like rsync)

PiggyBank

Piggy-bank associates given scarping scripts with given web sites. (How?)

Triplr

There is also a general “Stuff in, triples out” system by Dave Beckett, not bound to one specific format only, handles GRDDL, RSS, Atom, etc.

OpenLink Software

OpenLink Software via the "Sponger" component of Virtuoso's SPARQL Processor and Proxy Web Service (used by default by OpenLink Data Explorer) provides RDFization for:

Notes

Historically, this list was made from a lists of RDFizers and SWAP converters. It has grown significantly from community input since then.

This should be in a data format like Semantic Media Wiki or in N3 -- TimBL

> Would there an advantage to have this kind of list in an RDF file specifically to make queries on it. Maybe if we add a format on how to declare it here, we could create a converter to RDF. -- KarlDubost

> The task force InfoGathering from SWEO works on such a vocabulary, if you want to rewrite this list using this vocab, look here: DataVocabulary or contact me -- LeoSauermann on 22.1.2007

CategorySwTools

ConverterToRdf (last edited 2008-08-27 00:56:39 by DaveBrondsema)