Sesame
storage and querying middleware for the Semantic Web
Sesame is a storage framework for RDF data, the proposed W3C standard modeling languages for the Semantic Web. The RDF format is used to describe all sorts of things (the meta-data); besides the content of documents and web pages, RDF can be used to describe real life things like persons and organisations. This data can, for instance, be used as basis for news readers, search applications, or indexing.
Sesame is a modular architecture for persistent storage and querying of RDF and RDF Schema. Sesame supports various querying languages and databases. Sesame also offers ontology management functionality such as change tracking and security.
RDF is actively used in a large number of projects and products, like Adobe's XMP, The FOAF project, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, and the Open Directory Project. Sesame is used in a growing number of these projects as an invisible database component, whenever RDF statements have to be stored and retrieved.
Some examples of application:
- Bibster: a Java-based system which assists researchers in managing, searching, and sharing bibliographic metadata (e.g. from BibTeX files) in a peer-to-peer network, using Sesame and SeRQL to store and query.
- Flink: social network browser based on FOAF and Sesame.
- Aduna AutoFocus: desktop search tool based on Sesame.
Latest information:
- The project's own website: http://www.openrdf.org
- 2006-02-13: Sesame will give a tutorial during ESWC2006. more > >
- 2004-11-17: The Social Network browser Flink, based on FOAF and Sesame, won the Semantic Web Challenge during ISWC2004.
- Sesame leaflet for ISWC2004 in Hiroshima Japan. .pdf (229 kB)
- Poster session at the SANE2004 conference Amsterdam. .pdf (81 kB)