Projecthas retired. For details please refer to its Attic page

Welcome to Apache Stanbol!

Apache Stanbol provides a set of reusable components for semantic content management.



Apache Stanbol's intended use is to extend traditional content management systems with semantic services. Other feasible use cases include: direct usage from web applications (e.g. for tag extraction/suggestion; or text completion in search fields), 'smart' content workflows or email routing based on extracted entities, topics, etc.

In order to be used as a semantic engine via its services, all components offer their functionalities in terms of a RESTful web service API.

Apache Stanbol's main features are:

Content Enhancement

Services that add semantic information to “non-semantic” pieces of content.

Services that add semantic information to “non-semantic” pieces of content. Reasoning

Services that are able to retrieve additional semantic information about the content based on the semantic information retrieved via content enhancement.

Services that are able to retrieve additional semantic information about the content based on the semantic information retrieved via content enhancement. Knowledge Models

Services that are used to define and manipulate the data models (e.g. ontologies) that are used to store the semantic information.

Services that are used to define and manipulate the data models (e.g. ontologies) that are used to store the semantic information. Persistence

Services that store (or cache) semantic information, i.e. enhanced content, entities, facts, and make it searchable.

See the overview page for a more comprehensive list of features provided by Apache Stanbol. If you are a developer, you might also want to look at the components page for digging into the technical details.

Here is a short list of technologies and frameworks used by Apache Stanbol:

Functionalities are provided as RESTful services returning results as RDF (Resource Description Language) and JSON. Apache Stanbol also supports the use of JSON-LD.

returning results as RDF (Resource Description Language) and JSON. Apache Stanbol also supports the use of JSON-LD. Apache Stanbol can be run as a standalone application (packaged as a runable JAR) or as an web application (packaged as a WAR file) deployable in servlet containers such as Apache Tomcat.

(packaged as a runable JAR) or as an (packaged as a WAR file) deployable in servlet containers such as Apache Tomcat. Written in Java based on the OSGi as component framework.

Implemented using frameworks such as Apache Solr - for semantic search; Apache Tika - for plain text and metadata extraction; Apache OpenNLP - for natural language processing; Apache Clerezza and Apache Jena - as RDF and storage frameworks; Apache Felix as OSGi framework and Apache Sling for deployment.

The Apache Stanbol project was initiated by the European R&D project IKS - Interactive Knowledge Stack for small to medium CMS providers. Some people who are working on the project are part- funded by the IKS project, as well as by several European SME CMS providers, who are adopting Apache Stanbol.