Re: Hydra Design Goals: How important is RDF?

On 2 October 2015 at 13:34, Asbjørn Ulsberg <asbjorn@ulsberg.no> wrote:

> 2015-10-01 11:11 GMT+02:00 Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>:
>
> >> As with JSON-LD, I feel the RDF part of Hydra is both
> >> under-communicated and more of a nice-to-have than the core value of
> >> the technologies. I think this is a good thing. While RDF and the
> >> Semantic Web is awesome in its prospects, I highly doubt most people
> >> getting their hands dirty with JSON-LD or Hydra will have a Semantic
> >> Web perspective or problems related to RDF to solve.
> >
> > Why do you think this?
>
> Because RDF is an abstract and complex concept and technology with
> annotation and syntax that requires (a lot of) training to understand
> and decipher. That training will seem worthless when what you want to
> do is consume some JSON from a random HTTP API.
>

RDF has a reputation of being complex.  But do you actually think it is
complex.  e.g. compared to OO programming, or C+pointers, or angular JS ...
or name any number of technologies.  Is complexity really the issue.  Or is
it fashion?  If RDF became the next big thing everyone wanted to learn, do
you think there would be a barrier, technically?


>
> >> Related and relevant: "JSON-LD and Why I Hate the Semantic Web"
> >> http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/
> >
> > Yet another RDF hit piece.  Do you agree with it?  Any of the points in
> > particular?
>
> I don't read it as a hit piece. I read it as a very important design
> goal when creating JSON-LD. If you put RDF front and center of any
> technology and ignore every other "unimportant" detail like
> serialization format, syntax and how it is possible to use and even
> make any sense of without intimate knowledge of RDF, you essentially
> make the technology useless for ordinary developers.
>

I dont think serialization is unimportant.  I doubt anyone said that.
Turtle is probably more readable than JSON LD, again we have the fashion
problem, of course XML was the fashion of its day.  Where I see JSON as
useful is that it integrates with JS without needing a parser.  I think
people make the argument of loose coupling that RDF can have any number of
serializations, rather than, it's not important.


>
> > By the way the author of that post is using RDF now.
>
> Yes, I know. But that is both besides the point and incidental.
>
> > Prediction is a dangerous game.  The web has shown time and again that
> our
> > assumptions for the future dont always match reality.  What's better is
> to
> > say both Hydra and JSON LD are useful tools.  There's other useful tools
> > such as turtle and rml ( http://rml.io/ ).  As the space becomes
> (hopefully)
> > more mature, we can observe what tooling becomes popular.  We're still in
> > the first 1% of the journey.
>
> I absolutely agree. Which is why I think we should make Hydra as
> accessible to non-RDF-conniseurs as possible and not wave any
> arguments related to simple matters like the serialization format as
> "unimportant since they can be changed with JSON-LD and are
> meaningless in RDF anyway".
>

But is there much point in doing hydra without having a universal data
model to map to?  Whats the value add, compared with just documenting APIs
in the old fashioned way?


>
> > RDF is a nice to have, because it has several interesting architectural
> > properties (explained in design issues and other places).
>
> I completely agree! I find RDF extremely fascinating and powerful and
> really hope everything built on top of it in the years to come to
> change the shape of the web as we know it. I just think that RDF/XML
> failed exactly because of "unimportant matters like serialization
> format" and don't want the same to happen with Hydra. I think JSON-LD
> has made the right choices in terms of readability and accessibility
> for people unfamiliar with RDF, much due to the original design goal
> which was described in Manu's blog post.
>

So are you suggesting the mandatory serialization of the RDF used is JSON
LD, or to underplay RDF altogether?  If JSON LD is mandatory, should other
serializations be excluded.  Or something different.


>
> > RDF could be swapped out for a similar technology, but as far as I know
> > none exists, so let's just embrace it for now, until one exists.
>
> I'm not saying we should swap out RDF. I'm just saying; let's not let
> the RDF aspects of Hydra overshadow all design decisions, causing the
> end result to be unintelligible for people who don't know or
> understand RDF.
>

Im curious how this would work, some kind of RDF lite, or something
invented from scratch.  I wonder if you wouldnt end up reinventing the
wheel.  This could be an interesting proposal tho.


>
> >> So: How important is RDF and the Semantic Web as a design goal for
> >> Hydra? Should it be made more explicit?
> >
> > I think it's a critical component, at this point in time.  But would be
> open
> > to suggestion.
>
> Good. I agree it's a critical component and that much of what JSON-LD
> and Hydra does would be very hard without RDF. But should "RDF Front
> And Center" be a design goal for Hydra, or should we have a more
> pragmatic, layman-friendly approach and say "RDF is important, but
> should not overshadow all other concerns even though from an RDF point
> of view, they are irrelevant"?
>

Sounds like a branding argument.  If so, you could be right, branding is
quite hard tho.  Seems quite early to make guesses.


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