Aperture Overview

Administrators: Christiaan Fluit & Leo Sauermann

Source Code: Interfaces and standard implementations of Aperture

The source will contain all relevant information about semantic data extraction, everything that is needed to get starting with a fulltext and metadata extraction framework. Our intent is that developers can download a single distribution file with a fully working environment, that also includes adapter and extractor implementations. Developers can use this package to fill their lucene-based applications or other data stores.

The features of the framework will be:

• easy to use: easy to learn, easy to code, easy to deploy in industrial projects
• Extract fulltext from many common file formats and information systems like IMAP email servers
• Extract metadata like author, date, subject and more from the data sources
• open the data objects for viewing
• Fully configurable framework, storing and editing config files is done through a SWING gui.
• Pluggable architecture: can be easily extended, can be easily integrated to other projects.
• Architecture based on industry standard OSGI
• Compatible with RDF, but not solely based on it

Components in the framework are:

• DataSource Interface
• TextExtractor Interface
• DataSource implementation for Filesystem
• DataSource implementation for IMAP mail servers
• TextExtractor implementation for everything we know: PDF, Word, Fulltext, excel
• OSGI bindings and connector code
• Configuration gui
• Sample appication showing how to use it, with gui (=either Autofocus or Sesame or Gnowsis)
• Metadata format description (RDFS schema) and example file for the metadata

Right from the beginning we will support the following file types:

• Plain text
• HTML
• XML
• PDF (Portable Document Format)
• RTF (Rich Text Format)
• Microsoft Word 97+
• Microsoft Excel 97+
• Microsoft Powerpoint 97+
• Microsoft Works
• OpenOffice 1.0+: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw
• StarOffice 6.0+: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw
• WordPerfect 5.x
• Emails
• IMAP Servers