Nov 4 2009: Getting active, or maybe reactivating.

This page is just a collection of links so far. The link above for the 'Miscellaneous' subject is to my own modest effort with Semantic Mediawiki.  It's nascent but coming along.

The entire Semantic Web subject area will be getting a makeover soon.

Weaving Meaning: An Overview of the Semantic Web

Good W3 Powerpoint presentation by Eric Miller.

Time for a change from shared hosting ...

... a VPS or what ?

• Web Host Smackdown: 6 Hosting Plans Reviewed

April 29 2009: Added PCLOS 2009 section
May 22 2009: Added PCLOS 2009.1 GNOME version.

PCLOS 2009

PCLinuxOS has been a favorite Linux distribution in recent years. The PCLOS 2009.1 ( with updates from the repository ) lives up to and beyond expectations for a minimally complex and very stable KDE 3 desktop environment. Kudos to founder Texstar and the growing circle of core PCLOS developers for their hard work producing the ultimate "Disto Hopper Stopper".

Stray Linux links of interest ...

Feb 27 2009: updates
May 22 2009: update on Kubuntu 9.04 with KDE 4.2

In addition to the plethora of great Linux applications running on Windows via GTK, QT and Java, there is now a fairly stable version of KDE4 for Windows. It's still not entirely stable and requires some effort to get going, but at this rate my old Windows 2000 system may make it to the year 3000 !!!

Jan 26 2009. derived from PHP Wikis and Knowledge Wikis.

Often referred to as "knowledge wikis", they are capable of providing some level of knowledge representation and management functions as well as the usual features available in traditional wikis. They may be the closest existing solution to some of the requirements for a Semantic Web ( however it gets defined ).

Revised Nov 1 2008: Draft of OWL2 specs.

The recent drafts of the OWL2 specification describe some important changes from OWL1. In a nutshell,

The structural specification of OWL 2 provides the foundation for the implementation of OWL 2 tools such as APIs and reasoners. ... This document also defines the functional-style syntax, which closely follows the structural specification and allows OWL 2 ontologies to be written in a compact form.

Revised Oct 27 2008:

Maybe I should use a pseudonym for this posting ....

March 1 2009: added Postgres Rules, and a few edits.
Revised Oct 20 2008: This is a new "hybrid rule engine" category for the development site, more nut-and-bolts-oriented than most rule engine discussions.

A Rule Engine By Any Other Name?

What should one call rule engines without true inferencing capabilities. How can they be called rule engines if the don't do rule inferencing ? Maybe the best term is "un-rule engines", as if we were talking about the "un-Cola" of soft drink marketing fame.

This is a new topic ... it is more abstract than most content on this site and may be moved to the Home site.

Updated: Dec 5 2008, more links, RuleLab.Net

Note that there is some overlap in the use of the term "rule engine" with pattern matching, text transformation, rendering and other filtering or search engines that have some level of rule capabilities.

RuleLab.Net is closed source, closed license and closed almost everything else, but it has good documentation of its facilities. Also on the plus side of the ledger, it has a hosted solution and is not terribly expensive as these things go.

A nascent category for "associative" engines, neural networks and various statistical and connectionist approaches to inferencing.

Updated Sept 19 2008: added Ruby/EventMachine links
Updated Sept 19 2008: more links for Ruleby

Not a major category among the many rule engines implemented in Java and other languages. In this case, I've pushed the definition of 'engine' to the limits so I can include some of the more solid and interesting implementations.

Updated Sept 24 2008: added features and SWCL link