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Blog entries by Nicolas Chauvat [12]
data.bnf.fr gets the Stanford Prize for Innovation in Research Librariesdata.bnf.fr and Gallica just got awarded the Stanford Prize for Innovation in Research Libraries 2013. The CubicWeb community is very pleased to see that data.bnf.fr, which is built with CubicWeb, is being recognized at the top international level as leading innovation its domain! Read the comments of the judges for more details. CubicWeb at Data Tuesday on Feb 26th 2013CubicWeb was showcased at Data Tuesday on Feb 26th 2013. The other presentations were interesting, especially shacache.org, the soon-to-be-launched OpenMeteoData and the very useful scikit.learn. CubicWeb rewarded at Dataconnexion 2013CubicWeb got rewarded yesterday at the award ceremony of the Dataconnexions 2013 contest. Dataconnexions is a contest organized by Etalab, the organization part of the French State that is in charge of data.gouv.fr, that catalogs the open data published by the french administration. Congratulations to all the developers and users of CubicWeb and welcome to the people who will join the CW community thanks to the media coverage we are now experiencing. Read the announce to the press and the slides. Logilab's roadmap for CubicWeb as of February 2013The Logilab team now holds a roadmap meeting every two months to plan its CubicWeb development effort. Here are the decisions that were taken on Feb 1st, 2013. Version 3.17This version should be published before the end of March and will finish all the things that are work in progress. It will include:
SquareuiOnce the cube legacyui extracted (in version 3.17), it will be possible to move forward swiftly with squareui. Due to its other duties, one can not expect the core CW team to develop squareui. People interested will be in charge and ideally the squareui cube could be released when cubicweb 3.17 will be published. Cleaning up the backlogThe lead CW developers will spend about 20% of their time cleaning up the ticket backlog at the forge (900 open tickets and 50 in progress !) The first step will be to reduce the number of tickets "in progress", then to organize the open tickets and merge the duplicates. Version 3.18This version is due at the end of may 2013. It will include:
Mid-term goalsThe mid-term goals are:
As already said on the mailing list, other developers and contributors are more than welcome to share their own goals in order to define a roadmap that best fits everyone's needs. Logilab's next roadmap meeting will be held at the beginning of April 2013. December 2012 CubicWeb Sprint ReportFor two days, on dec 13th/14th 2012, ten hackers gathered at Logilab to improve the user interface of CubicWeb. This hackathon was initiated by Crealibre. About a year ago, they started the Orbui project, a new user interface for CubicWeb based on the Bootstrap HTML/CSS framework. 
Several projects at Logilab and Crealibre proved that Orbui was heading in the right direction, but that it had to fight with the default user interface of Cubicweb. Orbui makes different design/ergonomic choices and needs different HTML/CSS structure and Javascript components. Sylvain published a roadmap back in may with a section titled "on the road to Bootstrap". After more than half a day of heated debate on the firts day, it was decided to follow the direction he pointed to. We started extracting from CubicWeb the default user interface and turning it into a set of cubes:
At the end of the sprint, one could add_cube('squareui') on an existing application and keep it usable... and get "some kind of responsiveness" for free, thus proving that we were on the right track. A lot of work is still ahead of us, but we have moved a few step forward towards the goal of making it easier to implement different UIs on top of CubicWeb 3.17. For the curious, here is what the skeleton of legacyui.views.maintemplate (aka cw.web.views.maintemplate) looks like: <body> (MainTemplate.template_body_header)
<table id="header"> (HTMLPageHeader.main_header)
for header in self.headers:
<td id="header-{left,center,right}">
render selected components(ctxcomponents, header-{left,center,right})
</td>
</table>
<div id="stateheader"> HTMLPageHeader.call
<div class="stateMessage"> HTMLPageHeader.state_header
</div>
<div id="page"> MainTemplate.template_body_header
<table id="mainLayout"> MainTemplate.template_body_header
if boxes (selected components(ctxcomponents, left): MainTemplate.nav_column
<td id="navColumnLeft">
<div class="navboxes">
render boxes
</div>
</td>
<td id="contentColumn"> MainTemplate.template_body_header
render selected components(rqlinput)
render selected components(applmessages)
if navtop (selected components(ctxcomponents, navtop): HTMLContentHeader.call
<div id="contentheader">
render components
</div>
<div class='clear'/>
<div id="pageContent"> MainTemplate.call
if vtitle:
<div class="vtitle" />
if etypenavigation:
render etypenavigation
view pagination
<div id="contentmain">
render view
</div>
view pagination
</div>
if navbottom (selected components(ctxcomponents, navbottom): HTMLContentFooter.call
<div id="contentfooter">
render components
</div>
</td>
if boxes (selected components(ctxcomponents, right): MainTemplate.nav_column
<div id="navColumnRight">
<div class="navboxes">
render boxes
</div>
</table>
</div>
<div id="footer"> HTMLPageFooter.call
render actions selected (actions, 'footer')
</div>
</body>
and here is what the skeleton from squareui.views.maintemplate looks like: <body>
<div class="container-fluid">
<div id="header" class="row-fluid">
<!-- .header -->
</div>
<div class="row-fluid">
<div id="navColumnLeft" class="span3">
<!-- .leftcolumn -->
</div>
<div id="contentColumn" class="span6">
<!-- .contentcol -->
<div class="row-fluid">
<div id="contentheader" class="span12">
<!-- .contentheader -->
</div>
</div>
<div class="row-fluid">
<div id="contentmain" class="span12">
<!-- .contentmain -->
</div>
</div>
<div class="row-fluid">
<div id="contentfooter" class="span12">
<!-- .contentfooter -->
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="navColumnRight" class="span3">
<!-- .rightcolumn -->
</div>
</div>
<div id="footer" class="row-fluid">
<!-- .footer -->
</div>
</div>
</body>
Stay tuned for the updates on this (important) topic! Candidature au concours dataconnexions#2Au nom de la communauté des utilisateurs et développeurs de CubicWeb, je viens de déposer la candidature suivante au concours dataconnexions#2. 1. Questionnaire de description du ProjetIntitulé du projetCubicWeb - plate-forme libre de développement pour le web sémantique Catégorie de concours choisieChoisir parmi: Grand public / Professionnel / Utilité publique / Mobilité et territoires Utilité publique (?) Quel problème tentez-vous de résoudre ?Décrivez le (ou les) problème(s) que votre projet tente de résoudre, ainsi que son (leur) importance : taille du marché, fréquence d’utilisation potentielle, population concernée, bénéfices éventuels de service public, etc. (maximum 1000 signes). L'avènement du web sémantique et de l'Open Data nécessite de disposer d'outils adaptés pour développer des applications centrées sur les données. Ces outils doivent permettre d'importer des données facilement, de les mettre en relation lorsqu'elles proviennent de sources disjointes, de les republier et de faciliter leur interrogation et leur visualisation. Idéalement, ces outils doivent utiliser et respecter les standards ouverts d'internet afin de simplifier les communications et les échanges, mais aussi faciliter le développement pour les terminaux multiples (ordinateur, tablette, smartphone). Comment tentez-vous de le résoudre ?Décrivez votre produit, service ou visualisation, dans sa forme actuelle et le cas échéant après les développements futurs éventuels que vous envisagez. Précisez le ou les jeux de données publiques que vous utilisez à cet effet (maximum 1000 signes). CubicWeb est une plate-forme libre de développement pour le web sémantique. CubicWeb permet aux développeurs de se concentrer sur les spécificités de leur application plutôt que d'avoir à réinventer les briques essentielles de l'import, la fusion, la publication, l'interrogation et la visualisation de données. CubicWeb est un logiciel libre développé ouvertement sur internet par une communauté réduite mais déjà internationale. CubicWeb est disponible sous licence LGPL, respecte les standards du W3C (RDF, SPARQL, HTML5, CSS3, Responsive Design) et sait gérer nativement plusieurs modèles de données faisant office de standards de fait (FOAF, SIOC, DOAP, etc). Quel est votre modèle d’affaire ?Décrivez le modèle d’affaire de votre projet, c’est-à-dire les conditions de sa pérennité et de son développement : plan d’affaires et projections commerciales dans le cas d’un projet entrepreneurial ; objectifs, donneurs clés, partie prenantes dans le cas d’un projet d’ordre civique (maximum 1000 signes). Plusieurs sociétés commerciales s'appuient aujourd'hui sur CubicWeb pour vendre des services informatiques. L'objectif de cette communauté est de croître pour bénéficier d'une audience plus large et d'une mutualisation plus importante des coûts de maintenance et de développement de la plate-forme CubicWeb. Parmi les utilisateurs de CubicWeb, on compte à ce jour la Bibliothèque nationale de France, EDF, GDF-Suez, le Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, le Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, l'Institut Radioprotection et Sûreté Nucléaire, l'INRIA, des laboratoires de recherche médicale et des entreprises du domaine informatique. Quel est l’état d’avancement de votre projet ?Décrivez les étapes que vous avez franchies, les ressources mobilisées, les indicateurs et métriques déjà établies, etc. (maximum 1000 signes). Le projet CubicWeb est issu d'un effort de R&D commencé en 2001 par la société Logilab, qui avait comme objectif de se doter d'un outil permettant le développement d'applications centrées sur les données et respectant les standards du web sémantique en cours d'élaboration au W3C. Depuis 2008, CubicWeb est un logiciel libre dont le développement est mené ouvertement sur internet. Qui vous accompagne sur ce projet ?Décrivez l’équipe qui vous accompagne dans votre projet (le cas échéant), vos compétences, expériences et réalisations, ainsi que les partenaires éventuels qui vous soutiennent (maximum 1000 signes). N/A. Comment DataConnexions peut-il vous aider ?Détaillez toutes les précisions additionnelles que vous souhaiteriez apporter au sujet de votre projet, et expliquez en quoi DataConnexions peut contribuer à pérenniser son développement (maximum 1000 signes). Plusieurs sociétés commerciales s'appuient aujourd'hui sur CubicWeb pour vendre des services informatiques. Les utilisations industrielles de CubicWeb sont variées et concernent des applications importantes, voire critiques. CubicWeb est un outil peu (re)connu et sa communauté est aujourd'hui réduite, malgré ses solides références et le récent engouement pour l'Open Data. DataConnexions pourrait être une tribune et une vitrine permettant à CubicWeb de trouver de nouveaux développeurs d'applications préférant bénéficier de l'expérience capitalisée dans cet outil libre plutôt que de rédécouvrir et déjouer un par un les pièges rencontrés au cours des dix ans qui ont été nécessaires à sa réalisation. L'objectif de cette candidature est donc de faire croître la communauté des utilisateurs et contributeurs de CubicWeb. 2. Vidéo de présentationLien permettant de télécharger une vidéo décrivant le Projet et ses fonctionnalités, d’une durée maximale de 3 minutes Ce n’est pas la qualité de la vidéo qui est jugée, mais le projet lui-même. La vidéo doit permettre de rendre compte des fonctionnalités du projet. Les candidats sont encouragés à réaliser une capture d’écran ou un « screencast » (par exemple avec des outils tels que CamStudio, Jing ou Screenr). Démonstration de l'utilisation de CubicWeb pour importer et visualiser la liste des gares françaises téléchargée depuis data.gouv.fr. Sélection des gares par le filtre à facettes et affichage sur fond de carte openstreetmap, puis export en RDF, JSON et CSV. CubicWeb est une plate-forme libre de développement pour le web sémantique, qui permet aux développeurs de se concentrer sur les spécificités de leur application plutôt que d'avoir à réinventer les briques essentielles de l'import, la fusion, la publication, l'interrogation et la visualisation de données. Lien vers vidéo sur youtube. Miroir de la vidéo sur vimeo.com. 3. Accès en ligne au projetLien permettant d’accéder au Projet, ou au code informatique compilé et interprétable du Projet Par exemple : URL permettant de consulter, ou, le cas échéant, de télécharger l’application, accompagnée, si nécessaire, d’instructions à cet effet. L’application devra être facile à installer et aisément démontrable sur sa plateforme de destination. 4. Supports de communicationDescription Non ConfidentielleDécrivez le Projet dans des termes compatibles avec une diffusion au grand public : non confidentiels, compréhensibles par le plus grand nombre, et mettant en avant l’intérêt du projet (maximum 1000 signes). cf "comment tentez-vous de le résoudre" Elément visuel de descriptionLien vers un élément visuel décrivant et mettant en valeur le projet et ses fonctionnalités (capture d’écran, page d’accueil, schéma de description). CubicWeb sprint in Paris - 2012/12/13-14TopicsTo be decided. Some possible topics are :
other ideas are welcome, please bring them up on cubicweb@lists.cubicweb.org LocationThis sprint will take place in decembre 2012 from thursday the 13th to friday the 14th. You are more than welcome to come along, help out and contribute. An introduction is planned for newcomers. Network resources will be available for those bringing laptops. Address : 104 Boulevard Auguste-Blanqui, Paris. Ring "Logilab" (googlemap) Metro : Glacière Contact : http://www.logilab.fr/contact Dates : 13/12/2012 to 14/12/2012 Participants
CubicWeb sprint in Paris - 2012/02/07-10TopicsTo be decided. Some possible topics are :
other ideas are welcome, please bring them up on cubicweb@lists.cubicweb.org LocationThis sprint will take place from in february 2012 from tuesday the 7th to friday the 10th. You are more than welcome to come along, help out and contribute. An introduction is planned for newcomers. Network resources will be available for those bringing laptops. Address : 104 Boulevard Auguste-Blanqui, Paris. Ring "Logilab" (googlemap) Metro : Glacière Contact : http://www.logilab.fr/contact Dates : 07/02/2012 to 10/02/2012 CubicWeb gets press coverage at SemanticWeb.comFollowing the presentation of CubicWeb at OSCON 2010 in July, the editor of SemanticWeb.com wrote an article describing the CubicWeb framwork. Read the article and ask your questions on the mailing list! CubicWeb documentation sprint in feb. 2010
On February 2nd, 2010 Logilab will host in its head offices a one-day sprint dedicated to the improvement of the CubicWeb documentation. Get in touch with Logilab if you want to participate in person or via the net: contact at logilab dot fr. Photo by Adam Hyde from the FLOSS blog Browsing the Semantic Web
Now that the Web of Data has become a reality, innovative applications are springing up everywhere. Here is a selection of web apps that help you browse the semantic web.
More and more services will appear in the coming months that make use of these new resources. Just for tagging, you may look at CommonTag, Zemanta and OpenCalais and imagine new ways to automate and facilitate the process of publishing information on the web. Comparing CubicWeb with Drupal plus CCK extension
Drupal is a CMS written in PHP that is getting more and more visibility in the Semantic Web crowd. Several researchers from DERI have been using it as a test bed for their research projects and developed extensions to showcase their ideas. It is for example used to build the Semantic Web Dog Food site that archives the semantic web conferences and publishes them as Linked Open Data. The URL for this year's ISWC is http://data.semanticweb.org/conference/iswc/2009 This led me to read more about Drupal than I had had the incentive before. I have not had time to give it a try, but I skimmed the documentation and will try to compare it with CubicWeb from a software architecture point of view. Drupal defines a Node as an information item. The CCK (aka Content Construction Kit) can be used to define new types of Nodes thru a web interface. Nodes and the bits and pieces used to display them as HTML are not packed together in components. The Features extension is planning on getting this bits packaged. If you are a Drupal user/developer and think I am not being fair to Drupal, please comment below. On the other hand, CubicWeb has implemented very early the concept of reusable component. What is called a Node in Drupal is an Entity in CubicWeb. By design, CubicWeb does not have a web interface to define entities. The data model is part of the code. To efficiently maintain applications in production, changes to the data model must be tracked with changes to the code. Data model changes imply migration procedures. In CubicWeb, all of this is versionned and made part of the components. Where Drupal needs to grow extensions like CCK and Features, CubicWeb has more advanced possibilities by design, for example the ability to develop featurefull applications by assembling components. This was a very short comparison. I'm looking forward to getting a chance of discussing it with knowledgeable Drupal hackers. CubicWeb at BayPiggies/OSCON in July
I am pleased to announce that CubicWeb will be presented during a BayPIGgies meeting that will exceptionally take place in the OSCON conference building as the closing event of the Bird of Feathers on July 23rd at 8pm. Joins us to get to know more about CubicWeb. Read the report. INSEE, XML and RDF
I discovered that the French Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) has published part of its data as XML and RDF: We will try to put that data to good use. CubicWeb for DBPedia and OpenLibrary at PyConFr'09
I presented CubicWeb at the French Python Conference held in Paris last week-end. Check out the slides and the video. See also my recent post Fetching book descriptions and covers on logilab.org. The code used during the demo uses the brand new RangeFacet, DateRangeFacet and HasRelationFacet brought by CubicWeb 3.3 and is available in the cubes dbpedia and book. We will put the demos online in a couple weeks once we get a new server with more horsepower. Help would be welcome to set them up as Amazon EC2 or Eucalyptus instances. Presenting results with different viewsThis article is part of the endless "you are never the only one experimenting with what sounds like a good idea". Just compare the following links: The MIT Simile project produced the Exhibit mega-js-widget:
Google ran an experiment with alternate views for search results:
CubicWeb has built-in support for applying views to a selection of objects:
Migration in Python Web Frameworks ORMsToday, I felt like doing a quick tour of the migration features provided by the ORMs used by the Python web frameworks. I started with Django. South looks better than Django-evolution which looks much better than dmigrations which is very low level. I also had a look at SQLAlchemy.migrate, but again, that's too low level for me since I am looking to define migrations with the same vocabulary that is used for the data model, independently of the underlying database schema. 
The features listed in the South documentation have all been in CubicWeb for some time, except dependencies and autodetection. In my opinion, the dependency feature is not needed when you already have a list of scripts ordered by number, which is the case in South and in CubicWeb. The autodetection feature is more interesting, but it is tricky to get right. CubicWeb migration mechanism has had some kind of autodetection for a long time, but it is limited to the part that is easy to get right, yet quite common and useful:
For other common tasks like adding or removing entities and attributes, high-level directives are provided like add_entity_type or remove_attribute. Up to now, not pushing autodetection of changes in the data model has been a deliberate choice, for diff'ing two models is complex and creating a migration path is even more difficult. Moreover, letting the ORM automatically overwrite local changes in the database schema can be harmful in some cases. In CubicWeb, the idea is that the developer knows better than the framework, so let him decide what's best and provide him with a concise vocabulary to write the migration scripts. photo by Tim in Sydney under creative commons. Collections des musées de Haute-NormandieLogilab announced that its most recent application went on-line on December 19th, 2008. It publishes the artwork collections of 41 museums of the Normandy region. It features a very simple user interface with facets for selecting items and tabs for choosing how to display the selected items. It uses the timeline widget from the Simile project as well as Google Maps to place the selected items in time and space. Visit Collections des Musées de Haute-Normandie. 
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