Haystack, BioDash and the Semantic Web

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Haystack, BioDash and the Semantic Web

• David Gallardo

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Some background on RDF and the Semantic Web

• RDF uses XML syntax, but encodes semantics, using
  subject-verb-object triples, that encode facts.
• Information on the web now is just
  thatinformation, with no association or
  organization based on meaning.
• Searches, for example, miss synonyms and related
  terms, and catch similar but unrelated terms.
• The idea of the Semantic Web was invented by Tim
  Berners-Lee and is now a project of the W3C that
  intends to extend the existing web to support
  information with well-defined meaning

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A Haystack built on Eclipse

• Haystack--an Eclipse plug-in--is a universal
  information client
• A Personal Information Manager
• A Semantic Web browser
• A platform for building RDFResource Description
  Framework--applications
• Removes the arbitrary barriers to using
  information that are created by applications
• A project at the MIT Computer Science and
  Artificial Intelligence Lab
• All data behind the scenes is RDFResource
  Description Framework

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Very cool but

• Still under development
• Slow, clunky and hard to usecrashes my system
• No documentation
• See more at
• http//haystack.csail.mit.edu/index.html

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The BioDash demo

• An application built on top of Haystack
• Combines RDF data from different sources
• Drug targets and compounds
• Biological entities such as genes, proteins and
  pathways
• Discover new relationships!
• More info
• http//www.w3.org/2005/04/swls/BioDash/Demo/

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