4suite, Amara, Akara, Akamu: XML&RDF manipulation tools

Intro

4suite, Amara, Akara, Akamu is a set of XML&RDF manipulation tools
http://wiki.xml3k.org/, http://wiki.xml3k.org/Akara

• by U. and C. Ogbuji of Fourthought, Zepheira (Founding Partner), Case Western Reserve University
  http://uche.ogbuji.net
  http://wearekin.org
  http://www.linkedin.com/in/ucheogbuji
  http://twitter.com/uogbuji
• They are in C/Python so we cannot use them direclty. But they hold valuable lessons for us:
  • based on a metamodel from which they generate OWL schema, XForms, XSLT transforms XML->RDF
  • XML->RDF are "faithful" transforms in that they extract all RDF content, and are invoked automatically to update RDF when the XML changes.
  • It's possible to also have RDF->XML (bidirectional transformations)
    http://code.google.com/p/akamu/wiki/DiglotFileSystemProtocol#Bidirectional_transformations
• active forum, seems active development
  https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/akara/fn2QQx2PQmw

Applications

• used in SemanticDB, a XML&RDF manipulation framework used for cardiac/vascular clinical research by Cleveland Clinic
  http://www.academia.edu/905181/SemanticDB_A_Semantic_Web_Infrastructure_for_Clinical_Research_and_Quality_Reporting
• used in Recollection, a data refinement/augmentation tool sponsored by Library of Congress and implemented by Zepheira. May be better than Google Refine
  http://potlach.org/2010/recollection/da-list.swf
  http://archive.xmlprague.cz/2011/presentations/uche-ogbuji-akara.pdf
  and corresponding chapter in the XML Prague 2011 Proceedings