An alternative to LinqToRDF, a library to bring Linq to RDF data?

Question

LinqToRDF (http://code.google.com/p/linqtordf/) is a well known library to bring Linq to RDF data. But it is not active for nearly two years.

So I am looking for an alternative. My basic requirement is providing basic Linq function with general RDF data sources. Commercial library is welcome also.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Ying

Answer 1

You could try my library dotNetRDF which is designed so that many things can be accessed in a Linq style i.e. there is significant and pervasive use of IEnumerable<T> as a return type throughout the library.

But it doesn't have a completely Linq style API like LinqToRdf provided by which I mean it doesn't have the kind of methods which LinqToRdf had which allow you to write something like the following and have the library translate it to SPARQL or some other appropriate query language under the hood:

MusicDataContext ctx = new MusicDataContext(@"http://localhost/linqtordf/SparqlQuery.aspx");
var q = (from t in ctx.Tracks
         where t.Year == "2006" &&
               t.GenreName == "History 5 | Fall 2006 | UC Berkeley"
         orderby t.FileLocation
         select new {t.Title, t.FileLocation}).Skip(10).Take(5);

My library is much more low level, either you'd have to write the equivalent SPARQL query yourself or write a block of code which extracts the various Triples used to identify something and makes the relevant comparisons you want.

Eventually my intention is to port LinqToRdf to using dotNetRDF as it's underlying library for accessing RDF but this is fairly low on the priority list at the moment as I'm working on a major release of the core library which adds a lot of new functionality related to SPARQL 1.1

In terms of commercial options take a look at Intellidimension's Semantics Framework which is a commercial library though there is a free express version available - I haven't used the library so have no idea how Linq friendly it is. Main downside to the free version is a very strict redistribution policy.