Re: Terminology when talking about Linked Data

On Feb 17, 2010, at 6:37 AM, Dan Brickley wrote:

> ... . RDF was originally
> standardised as a metadata system, a mechanism for finding stuff ...
> whether that stuff was photos, videos, HTML pages, excel spreadsheets,
> SQL databases, 3d models. ...

Really? That was not the impression I got when I first got involved  
with it. In fact, I asked explicitly for clarification, at the first  
F2F in Sebastopol: is RDF intended to be metadata for Web 'objects',  
or is it supposed to be a notation for describing **things in  
general**? And the resounding chorus from the WG was the latter, most  
definitely not the former. (Which is also what Guha told me right  
after the very first RDF speclet was first released.) And that is why  
I designed the semantics based on a logical model theory rather than a  
computational annotation system. If RDF was supposed to be primarily a  
mechanism for finding stuff, then we designed it wrong.

Pat

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Received on Wednesday, 17 February 2010 17:16:26 UTC