triple|scape

One of the projects I’m working on is a Flex-based UI that connects to some web-services. These web services query an RDF store and return some really lame XML. The services are all built with Apache Axis, which is fine kit…but I hate web services. Hate Them. I’d rather slide down a rusty razor blade into a pool of alcohol than use them.

Yesterday I was productive enough to code up a SPARQL endpoint for my RDF store. Now, my SPARQL implementation is not complete and kinda naive, but it works. I’m lacking some of the less-used stuff like CONSTRUCT and UNION, but I’ve added some SPARUL stuff like INSERT DATA, DELETE DATA. In short, it’s enough for my purposes.

So since I’ve a got a more-or-less functional SPARQL, I decided I’d port my project to use SPARQL queries only and ditch the web services altogether. So long, WS-ohferfucksakes!

Did I mention I’m using Flex* for the front end? Right. So I needed to figure out if I could actually build a UI and that would send a query and get a result. After some tweaking of the endpoint (can’t seem to figure out how to override Accept: */* in mx:HTTPService), I got something up and running! It’s only able to parse application/sparql-results+xml right now. Tomorrow it’ll get to know application/rdf+xml so it can handle DESCRIBE without crapping all over itself.

Anyway, here’s some SPARQL-Flex porn showing a query against dbpedia…

* Yes, I know the Linked Data / Data Web folks HATE Flash/Flex (and javascript() apparently) since there are no URI’s to grab. But hey, just ’cause you want it doesn’t mean I have to give it to you.