Zepheira partner Uche Ogbuji will be presenting the Akara open source project to XML technology professionals at 2011 XML Prague.  The presentation “Akara – Spicy Bean Fritters and XML Data Services” will provide a technical overview of the project, which has been used in Zepheira work with the US Library of Congress, MIT, Sun Microsystems and much more.  To quote from the abstract:

Akara is a platform for developing data services, and especially XML data services, available on the Web, using REST architecture. It is open source software written in Python and C. An important concept in Akara is information pipelining, where discrete services can be combined and chained together, including services hosted remotely. There is strong support for pipeline stages for XML processing, as Akara includes a port of the well-known 4Suite and Amara XML processing components for Python. The version of Amara in Akara provides optimized XML processing using common XML standards as well as fresh ideas for expressing XML pattern processing, based on long experience in standards-based XML applications. Some of these features include XPath and XSLT, a lightweight, dynamic data binding mechanism, XML modeling and processing constraints by example (using Examplotron), Schematron assertions, XPath-driven streamable processing and overall low-level support for lazy iterator processing, and thus the map/reduce style. Akara does not enforce a built-in mechanism for persistence of XML, but is designed to complete a low-level persistence engine with overall characteristics of an XML DBMS.

Registration for XML Prague is sold out, but the conference is well known for the quality of its free online video access for those interested.  Details will be posted on the site as the date approaches.

Akara is a platform for developing data services, especially XML data services, and making them available on the Web, using REST architecture. It is open source software written in Python and C.  Akara is an umbrella project that includes Amara, a Python XML processing library based on the mature but now obsolete 4Suite XML library, enhanced for performance and modernized API.  Amara implements common XML standards while implementing many fresh ideas for expressing XML pattern processing. Some of these features include XPath and XSLT, a lightweight, dynamic data binding mechanism, XML modeling and processing constraints by example (using Examplotron), Schematron assertions, XPath-driven streamable processing and overall low-level support for lazy iterator processing, and thus the map/reduce style.

Please see the Akara project on GitHub, as well as the Amara project, which is separated for developer/packager convenience.  Find many other of Zepheira’s contributions to open source on the organization’s GitHub profile.

• XML as new lingua franca for the Web. Why did it never happen?
• HTML 5 and XHTML: breaking-up, coexistence or convergence?
• JSON and XML love-in: how to enable Web Apps and Web Widgets?
• XML Databases role in Web architecture.
• XML and the emerging Semantic Web.
• XML-based formats for electronic books.
• …and more.

The conference will take place March 26th & 27th, 2011 in Prague, Czech Republic.

Akara is an open-source (Apache License, Version 2.0) Web framework specialized for RESTful data services, especially involving XML and other semi-structured formats. You express data models and create transforms based on these data models, plugging required inputs and outputs (XML, JSON, CSV, Atom, etc.) together into pipelines which implement the desired services. You then make these services available on the Web using simple wrappers. The wrappers are based on REST concepts and among other things make it easy to discover and reuse the services, and to connect them to local and remote systems using Web triggers (AKA Web hooks). Akara simplifies extract-transform-load (ETL), data-driven integration of systems, and makes it easy to wrap Web sites and services, turning tag soup and painful APIs into clean, RESTful end-points

The version of Akara code available in tandem with this new website include enhancements produced in association with the Library of Congress Recollection project, particularly code quality, performance tweaks and deployment support.  Akara provides the data pipelining for loading data into Recollection and processing for data augmentation.

Akara source code is available from a public repository in Zepheira’s section of the github ‘social coding’ space.

Amara XML and data toolkit 2.0a4

Akara 2.0a1, a framework for RESTful data services

These releases focus on quality and performance.

Many organizations needing to exchange information and knowledge with each other question how they can support such connectivity from the front end (between users) to the back end (between systems). The terminology of employees concerned with policy is not the language of the typical visitor or partner on the Web…. How can semantic modeling provide solutions to such problems?

The conference is hosted by the SGML/XML Users Group, Holland, and will be held 20 November 2008 at Planetarium Amsterdam Zuidoost

Uche Ogbuji a Partner in Zepheira, has been invited to XML Prague 2007 to make presentations of XML’s connection to the Python Programming language, and to Microformats. The discussion of XML and Microformats includes consideration of basic Semantic technology. This focused conference in the Czech capital is organized by Institute for Theoretical Computer Science and Ginger Alliance.

“A regular conference on XML for developers, markup geeks, information managers, and students, focusing this year on Alternative Approaches to XML Processing. A full day of experts speaking has been extended with an additional day dedicated for participants to hold related BoF sessions and workshops.”—XML Prague home page