OSF for Drupal

Introduction

The Open Semantic Framework (OSF) for Drupal is a middleware layer that allows structured data (RDF) and associated vocabularies (ontologies) to "drive" tailored tools and data displays within Drupal. The basic OSF for Drupal modules provide two types of capabilities. First, there are a series of connector modules such as OSF Entities, OSF SearchAPI, OSF Field Storage and OSF Views to integrate an OSF instance into Drupal's core APIs. Second, there is a series of module tools used to administer all of these capabilities.

By using OSF for Drupal, you may create, read, update and delete any kind of content in a OSF instance. You may also search, browse, import and export structured datasets from an OSF instance.

OSF for Drupal connects to the underlying structured (RDF) data via the separately available open-source OSF Web Services. OSF Web Services is a mostly RESTful Web services layer that allows standalone or multiple Drupal installations to share and collaborate structured data with one another via user access rights and privileges to registered datasets. Collaboration networks may be established directly to distributed OSF Web Services servers, also allowing non-Drupal installations to participate in the network.

OSF for Drupal can also act as a linked data platform. With Drupal's other emerging RDF capabilities, content generated by Drupal can be ingested by the OSF Web Services and managed via the OSF for Drupal tools, including the publication and exposure on the Web of linked data with query and Web service endpoints.

OSF for Drupal has dependencies on OSF Web Services, which means an operational OSF for Drupal website only requires access to a fully operational OSF instance.

Installing OSF for Drupal

You can install OSF for Drupal on any server, either standalone or as part of a network. Via permission rights that you may assign to your own resources or that partners may grant to their resources, you may access any Web-connected OSF instance. You do not need the full OSF stack to be installed on the server where you will be installing OSF for Drupal. Because OSF is a distributed system, as long as you have access to an operational OSF instance (and its associated OSF Web Services), you may install OSF for Drupal on any Drupal instance. But if you want to install your own OSF stack, you can watch this screencast to see how it can be done using the OSF Installer script.

To install OSF for Drupal, we recommend that you use the OSF Installer script. It is the automated means to fully install and configure a OSF for Drupal instance on your server. Alternatively, check the commented OSF Installer code to install and configure the system manually.

You can watch this screencast to see how to use the OSF Installer to install OSF for Drupal on your server.

You can deploy an instance using this command-line command:

  ./osf-installer --install-osf-drupal

OSF for Drupal User Manual

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