Re: Explaining the benefits of http-range14 (was Re: [HTTP-range-14] Hyperthing: Semantic Web URI Validator (303, 301, 302, 307 and hash URIs) )

On 10/20/11 5:31 PM, Dave Reynolds wrote:
> What's more I really don't think the issues is about not understanding
> about the distinction (at least in the clear cut cases). Most people I
> talk to grok the distinction, the hard bit is understanding why 303
> redirects is a sensible way of making it and caring about it enough to
> put those in place.

What about separating the concept of "indirection" from its actual 
mechanics? Thus, conversations about benefits will then have the freedom 
to blossom.

Here's a short list of immediately obvious benefits re. Linked Data (at 
any scale):

1. access to data via data source names -- millions of developers world 
wide already do this with ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET, OLE DB etc.. the only 
issue is that they are confined to relational database access and all 
its shortcomings

2. integration of heterogeneous data sources -- the ability to 
coherently source and merge disparately shaped data culled from a myriad 
of data sources (e.g. blogs, wikis, calendars, social media spaces and 
networks, and anything else that's accessible by name or address 
reference on a network)

3. crawling and indexing across heterogeneous data sources -- where the 
end product is persistence to a graph model database or store that 
supports declarative query language access via SPARQL (or even better a 
combination of SPARQL and SQL)

4. etc...

Why is all of this important?
Data access, integration, and management has been a problem that's 
straddled every stage of computer industry evolution. Managers and 
end-users always think about data conceptually, but continue to be 
forced to deal with access, integration, and management in application 
logic oriented ways. In a nutshell, applications have been silo vectors 
forever, and in doing so they stunt the true potential of computing 
which (IMHO) is ultimately about our collective quests for improved 
productivity.

No matter what we do, there are only 24 hrs in a day. Most humans taper 
out at 5-6 hrs before physiological system faults kick in, hence our 
implicit dependency of computers for handling voluminous and repetitive 
tasks.

Are we there yet?
Much closer that most imagine. Our biggest hurdle (as a community of 
Linked Data oriented professionals) is a protracted struggle re. 
separating concepts from implementation details. We burn too much time 
fighting implementation details oriented battles at the expense of 
grasping core concepts.

-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen 
President&  CEO
OpenLink Software
Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca: kidehen