Network configuration with RDF

bullet1 Summary

bullet2 Metadata for network configuration

This illustration of a network configuration application is based entirely on common RDF software tools [1] [2].  Many such tools are still at the prototype stage, but are already demonstrating their utility.  A number of production quality tools, proprietary and open source, are in development (e.g. Jena from HPLabs [3]).

Some conclusions from this work are:

  • For this application, the focus has been on defining requirements, inference and transformation rules as RDF metadata.  No new software was written. Even at this early stage in its life, RDF can offer some real benefits.
  • As well as using existing software tools, this application also uses some already established vocabulary [4] [5], allowing existing information designs to be leveraged, and facilitating exchange of metadata between applications.
  • The iCalendar RDF vocabulary used [5] shows RDF used to integrate pre-existing standards work.
  • The generation of network device configuration data suggests that RDF can be used to integrate disparate legacy systems.  In time, newer systems might use RDF metadata directly, but until then there is still some practical benefit to using RDF.
  • A little inference can go a long way.
    • But this access control application could use better inference capabilities than those provided by Cwm.  Such tools do exist, and more are in development [6].  The W3C are working on a web ontology language [7] that will provide a standardized basis for some considerably more powerful reasoning than the simple rules used for the illustration described here.  I am looking into using the Haskell programming language [8] as a scripting tool for RDF inferences.

[1] http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/doc/cwm

[2] RDF for "Little Languages", Query, Transformation and Report Generation: http://www.ninebynine.org/RDFNotes/RDFForLittleLanguages.htm

[3] Jena semantic web toolkit: http://www.hpl.hp.com/semweb/jena-top.html

[4] Friend-of-a-friend vocabulary (foaf): http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/

[5] "Hybrid" iCalendar schema: http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/discovery/2001/06/schemas/ical-full/hybrid.rdf  
(see also:   http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/dev_workshop_report_2/Overview.html ).

[6] Dave Beckett's Resource Description Framework (RDF) Resource Guide: http://www.ilrt.bristol.ac.uk/discovery/rdf/resources/

[7] Web-Ontology (WebOnt) Working Group: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/

[8] Haskell, a general purpose, purely functional programming language: http://www.haskell.org/