
# Introduction

Swish - which stands for Semantic Web Inference Scripting in Haskell -
was written by Graham Klyne as a framework, written in the purely
functional programming language Haskell, for performing deductions in
RDF data using a variety of techniques. Swish wass conceived as a
toolkit for experimenting with RDF inference, and for implementing
stand-alone RDF file processors (usable in similar style to CWM, but
with a view to being extensible in declarative style through added
Haskell function and data value declarations). One of the aims was to
explore Haskell as "a scripting language for the Semantic Web"
(http://www.ninebynine.org/RDFNotes/Swish/Intro.html).

It was updated from version 0.2.1 by Vasili I Galchin so that it would
build with recent version of GHC
(http://hackage.haskell.org/package/swish-0.2.1).

Since then it has been updated to take advantage of recent
developments in the Haskell ecosystem, add support for the NTriples
and Turtle serialisation formats, and a number of convenience
functions. Development is done at
https://bitbucket.org/doug_burke/swish/.

# Aim

Current development is based on my own needs, which are more about
using this as a RDF library for I/O with limited querying rather than
for inferencing or use as a flexible graph-processing library
(e.g. for extensions to non-RDF models).

# Copyright

(c) 2003, 2004 G. Klyne
(c) 2009 Vasili I Galchin
(c) 2011, 2012, 2013 Doug Burke

All rights reserved.

# License

GPL V2

# Haskell and the Semantic Web 

Other Haskell packages for RDF support include

 * rdf4h http://hackage.haskell.org/package/rdf4h
 * hsparql http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hsparql
 * hasparql-client http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hasparql-client

# Installation

Install a recent version of the Haskell platform (http://hackage.haskell.org/platform/)
and then try

    % cabal update
    % cabal install swish

This will install a command-line tool `Swish` along with the modules
in the `Swish` namespace; documentation can be found at
http://hackage.haskell.org/package/swish .
