Vesper is open source framework for web application development that enables content from disparate sources to be replicated and recombined in a consistent and composable manner.

DATA VIRTUALIZATION.

Vesper provides a data access layer that lets applications update and query a variety of datastores (including SQL, NOSQL, RDF, plain text) as JSON. It includes a JSON query language that is designed to be translated to the native datastore’s query language. Its’ JSON model is compatible with the Semantic Web/Linked Data model without requiring developers to have familiarity with that technology.

SPLIT, FORK AND RECOMBINE DATA.

Vesper can maintain change history and metadata contexts and optionally store it separate from the primary store. This enables data to be replicated and merged intelligently, similar to distributed revision control system like Git.

VERY RAPID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT.

Putting aside all the above, we just want develop web applications rapidly and agily and Vesper’s JSON-centric model helps us do that by greatly simplifying data management.

Learn more about Vesper here or get the code here.

Rhizome is the ancestor of the Vesper technology. First released in 2003, it was arguably the first semantic wiki. This project has been dormant for a long time but many of the ideas expressed in the papers below live on in the Vesper design.

Rhizome aimed to help bring about a new kind of commons — one of ideas. This commons wouldn't comprise just a web of interlinked pages of content, as is the current World Wide Web, but a web of relationships between the underlying ideas and distinctions that the content implies: a permanent, universally accessible interlinking of content based on imputed semantics such as concepts, definitions, or structured argumentation.

Papers

"Building a Semantic Wiki," IEEE Intelligent Systems, pp. 87-91, September/October, 2005
        
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"Bringing the “Wiki-Way” to the Semantic Web with Rhizome" SemWiki2006 - From Wiki to Semantics (2006), pp. 222-229

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"RxPath: a mapping of RDF to the XPath Data Model" Proceedings of Extreme Markup Languages, 2006

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Source Code

Github mirror

Sourceforge Project (ancient)

A strongly-typed dependency injection framework for isomorphic Javascript that enabled assembling web apps out of highly re-usable components without the boilerplate.