Semantic Web Programming

Chapter 14. Semantic Web Patterns and Best Practices

"What's the point of wearing your favorite rocket ship underpants if nobody ever asks to see "em?"

—Calvin (Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson)

The quote may seem silly and off-topic, but the principles, architectures, and best practices by which a system are built often go unseen and unappreciated by those who use it. Developers tend to be the only ones who truly appreciate the importance of good design, reusable components, and standardized architectural patterns. So far, this book has covered the technologies and tools and protocols and standards and everything else that goes into programming with the Semantic Web. While a lot of time and attention is appropriately paid to the building blocks of systems and applications, most of the programming examples that have been presented are narrowly scoped and developed for demonstration purposes only. We included the FriendTracker reference application in this book to provide an example of integrating the technologies of the Semantic Web into a full-blown system, but it is only one such system. What is needed is a higher-level view of the major components and designs of real-world Semantic Web applications.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a high-level perspective of Semantic Web programming by exploring a series of application architecture patterns. This chapter does not deal with software patterns per se; rather, it deals with common architectural idioms and system blueprints ...