[public-lod2] [Ann] First public release of the LOD2 Stack

[Sören Auer]

Dear all,

The LOD2 consortium [1] is happy to announce the first release of the
LOD2 stack available at: http://stack.lod2.eu

The LOD2 stack is an integrated distribution of aligned tools which
support the life-cycle of Linked Data from extraction, authoring over
enrichment, interlinking, fusing to visualization. The stack comprises
new and substantially extended tools from LOD2 members and 3rd parties.
The LOD2 stack is organized as a Debian package repository making the
tool stack easy to install on any Debian-based system (e.g. Ubuntu).

A quick look at the stack and its components is available via the online
demo at: http://demo.lod2.eu/lod2demo

For more thorough experimentation a virtual machine image (VMware or
VirtualBox) with pre-installed LOD2 Stack can be downloaded from:
http://stack.lod2.eu/VirtualMachines/

More details and the instructions on installing the LOD2 Stack locally
are available in the HOWTO Start document [2]. This first release of the
LOD2 stack contains the following components:

   * LOD2 demonstrator, the root package (TenForce/LOD2)
   * Virtuoso, RDF storage and data management platform (Openlink)
   * OntoWiki, semantic data wiki authoring tool (ULEI)
   * SigmaEE, multi-source exploration tool (DERI)
   * D2R, RDF wrapper for SQL databases (FUB)
   * Silk, interlinking engine (FUB)
   * ORE, ontology repair and enrichment toolkit (ULEI)

PoolParty (taxonomy manager by SWCG), Spotlight (annotating texts wrt.
DBpedia by FUB) and CKAN/thedatahub.org were integrated as online
services. A selection of datasets has been packaged and is available in
the LOD2 Stack repository.

The LOD2 stack is an open platform for Linked Data components. We are
happy to welcome new components. Detailed instructions how to integrate
your component into the LOD2 Stack as Debian package are available in
the HOWTO Contribute [3]. From now on we will regularly release improved
and extended versions of the LOD2 Stack. Major releases are expected for
Fall 2012 and 2013. For assistance or any questions related to the
LOD2-stack contact support-stack at lod2.eu

Special thanks for their substantial contributions to this release go to
Bert van Nuffelen, Sebastian Tramp, Robert Isele, Hugh Williams, and
Jens Lehmann.

On behalf of the LOD2 consortium,

Sören Auer

[1] http://lod2.eu
[2] http://lod2-stack.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/documents/HowToStart.pdf
[3] http://lod2-stack.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/documents/HowToContribute.pdf


--
Working on LOD2 - from Linked Data 2 Knowledge: http://lod2.eu
--------------------------------------------------------------
Sören Auer, AKSW/Computer Science Dept., University of Leipzig
http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~auer,  Skype: soerenauer