Semantic stuff (RDF, OWL) on mobile phones - is it possible?

Question

I'm thinking about using semantic (web) technologies like RDF and OWL in an application on mobile devices. Currently I'm targeting android, but I'd also be interested in the possibilities on the iPhone and on J2ME.

I would like to use a library instead of implementing everything from scratch.

I know that there are some libraries/frameworks like Jena, Redland, Protégé but they don't state on which platforms they are known to work.

Having a dynamic object model and parsing from and to XML are must-haves for me.

I'd also like to use reasoning, but I've been told it was rather computing-intensive, so that's only a nice-to-have.

For all platforms mentioned, the question can be interpreted as

• Is it possible in theory? (especially for J2ME I'm not sure)
• Are there libraries that are known to work on those platforms?
• Is the performance on a mobile platform good enough for real world usage?

Answer 1

Maybe look into IYOUIT. It is a

mobile application developed in Python, and running on Nokia Series 60 phones.

It uses OWL and reasoning. You can read the details in this paper.

Answer 2

You wrote you want J2ME, but other readers might be interested in C#.

Mono makes C# available on iPhone and Android. Once that is done, you can use ROWLEX to deal with RDF and OWL. You might consider reading this Stackoverflow question.

Answer 3

There's Jena port to Android platform here. http://code.google.com/p/androjena/

Answer 4

If this is a client-server type application and you have some control over the server, I would do the semantic web stuff server-side, and hand the relevant information to your view client on the mobile device.

Answer 5

A more general answer to your question title is Mosembro, a browser for Android that utilizes Microformats for semantic data. It doesn't do any non-trivial computations with the data, however.