Re: Hydra Design Goals: How important is RDF?

2015-10-01 12:11 GMT+02:00 Tomasz Pluskiewicz <tomasz@t-code.pl>:

> October 1 2015 11:50 AM, "Ruben Verborgh" <ruben.verborgh@ugent.be> wrote:
>
>> RDF is a means, not a goal.
>> RDF enables self-descriptiveness, which is a goal.
>
> I really like this statement. Great summary of your reply.

I agree. It's exactly what I think and feel as well. I just don't
think it's made explicit enough. Having design goals are important
when creating a specification, so that when there are doubts about
which direction to go, the design goals can guide you to make the
right decision. If everyone agrees on a set of design goals, it's much
easier to end discussions and reaching consensus by just pointing to
them.

> Sure, Hydra should be accessible to people without intimate
> knowledge of the Semantic Web but at the same time we
> should emphasize the fact that RDF is the underlying
> technology that makes self-descriptiveness possible.

Absolutely. I see no conflict here.

> A lot of people coming to Hydra are new to RDF but that
> doesn't mean that they have to stay that way.

No, but I think it's important to optimize the specification and
serialization for people who will "accidentally" stumble across Hydra
in random HTTP API's so they can read it, make sense of it and
actually like it, without having any knowledge of RDF whatsoever. What
better way to "sell" the concept of RDF than accidentally discovering
that what makes Hydra and JSON-LD work is an invisible, conceptual
meta-model called Resource Description Framework?

-- 
Asbjørn Ulsberg           -=|=-        asbjorn@ulsberg.no
«He's a loathsome offensive brute, yet I can't look away»

Received on Friday, 2 October 2015 11:41:44 UTC