HAYSTACK

Haystack is an extensible Semantic Web Browser advanced by the Haystack research team at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The project targets to discover how the Semantic Web data model (RDF) can be functional by users to better organize, traverse, and regain information, both private and mutual. The Haystack Semantic Web Browser was readily accessible for download in 2004 to demonstrate how the Semantic Web can advance not only machine agents' ability to mechanize errands for users but also the end-user information management experience. Haystack was also planned to be extensible; based on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform, Haystack countenances developers to add new functionality in the form of Eclipse plug-ins. In addition to this, in line with the Semantic Web model, end-users can improve their experience protracted by producing and choosing user-interface components called semantic lenses.

Haystack is grounded on the impression that simply providing access to information is inadequate; it prerequisites to be aggregated in expressive (semantic) ways; therefore, applications must benefit users sieve and hand-pick information that is pertinent to the precise needs at hand, or framework. Significance depends on aspects such as the kind of information being searched, the context of the job the user is accomplishing, and many more. A semantic lens is a machine-readable portrayal (as RDF) of how to excerpt pertinent information for a explicit set of conditions. Like optical lenses, which convey specific features of an image into focus, semantic lenses allow a Semantic Web Browser to extant a set of facades around an article to the user in a smart fashion. And just as an enthusiastic photographer retains various lenses for apprehending diverse kinds of images, a Semantic Web Browser can be equipped with several semantic lenses to support users to discover numerous forms of data.

For instance, ponder about searching up a gene in a browser. Collectively, the Internet, a local intranet, and genomic information records, etc. permit admittance to information extending from the gene’s genomic location, sequence, splice variants, polymorphisms, and related homologues to slants of connected research papers, annotations, known patterns of expression, and relation to diseases. While giving users a single instrument for getting at all of this information from one place might be useful, purely driving every piece of knowledge about a gene on one screen would be prodigious. In its place, definite subsets are required depending on whether the user is trying to discover sequence motifs or is researching the diverse roles the protein product plays within molecular pathways. However, for the second case, “pathway model”, "co-expression", and "disease link" semantic lenses might substantiate useful-- the former case might necessitate the "metabolic" and "signalling" semantic lenses to be exposed. In this way, semantic lenses act as building wedges for information demonstrations that can be mended collectively to convey the right subgroup of knowledge to the scientist for whatever task the scientist is doing at the moment.