OSF for Drupal Layer

Though any mature content management system (CMS) could act as the presentation front-end to the Open Semantic Framework, Drupal is the standard option packaged with OSF. Drupal has a rich ecosystem of developers and support, plus thousands of modules that extend its functionality and an architecture well-suited to the requirements of OSF. The OSF for Drupal layer leverages existing, well-known Drupal modules and Drupal itself in ways familiar to the broader Drupal community. Integration at this layer assigns CMS and user interface responsibilities to Drupal in ways an accomplished Drupal developer can implement.

OSF's integration with Drupal occurs via the standard plug-in modules of Drupal and "Drupal connectors". OSF Drupal modules are conventional Drupal modules written specifically to act as a management interface to the OSF. There is a corresponding OSF for Drupal module for every OSF Web Service noted in the main architectural diagram.

Drupal connectors are specific to OSF; they are Drupal libraries written specifically for OSF that extend current, popular Drupal modules. These code libraries enable these Drupal modules to interact directly with OSF, sometimes with extended visible functionality, but always in concert with the current module design. The idea is to leverage pivotal and common Drupal modules as familiar interfaces to OSF. The three Drupal modules connected so far are Views, Entities, and the Search API.

OSF for Drupal also comes with a series of "semantic components". These widgets present results from specific queries to one or more OSF Web Service instances. These results sets are generated by the widget and issued to the underlying OSF based on user interactions. Current display widgets include: filter; structured record displays; tabular templates (similar to infoboxes); maps; bar, pie or linear charts; relationship (concept) browser; story and text annotator and viewer; and a series of mapping or geo-locational widgets. These widgets enable semantic information from OSF to be presented via a variety of data visualization or data presentation methods such as charts, tables, records, image galleries, or maps.

Besides market share and familiarity, the Drupal CMS layer gives OSF the ready ability to change themes and layouts (”skins"), and to extend site functionality.