Re: What Does Point Number 3 of TimBL's Linked Data Mean?

On 6/25/13 12:19 AM, David Booth wrote:
> Similarly, can you show me an existing alternative to RDF, that allows 
> applications to automatically meaningfully combine independently 
> authored data, without out-of-band knowledge of that data? Perhaps 
> alternatives to URIs and RDF exist in theory, but I have not seen them 
> in practice. 

I am slightly hopeful that your comment above could finally put our 
debate to rest. In that statement you actually highlight what the real 
utility of RDF actually is i.e., RDF allows applications to 
*meaningfully* integrate disparate data without out-of-band knowledge of 
that data. That's it!

RDF makes this possible because its entity relationship semantics are 
*explicit* rather that *implicit* (the out-of-band vector). These 
semantics are machine- and human-comprehensible e.g., rdfs:subClassOf, 
rdfs:supPropertyOf, owl:sameAs, rdf:type, owl:inverseFunctionalProperty, 
owl:inverseOf, owl:SymmetricProperty etc.

That said, none of those data representation and integration virtues are 
prerequisites for producing Linked Data that's 100% compatible with any 
of TimBL's Linked Data memes.

In recent times I written a number of posts demonstrating what RDF based 
Linked Data brings to the table i.e., how basic inference and reasoning 
illustrate the unique enhancements that RDF brings to Linked Data based 
data representation and access [1][2].

I prefer to make the case for RDF based on its tangible and demonstrable 
virtues. I am confident enough about RDF to never want to get draconian 
about its use. I will never look to "because its a W3C standard" or 
"TimBL said so.." as the foundation for my defense of RDF. When all is 
said an done, many threads later, this remains my fundamental point.


Links:

1. http://bit.ly/WmKlJ0 -- demonstrating reasoning via SPARQL and SPARQL 
1.1 Property Paths
2. http://bit.ly/Wk19i4 -- DBpedia Linked Data cleansing via OWL reasoning
3. http://bit.ly/OEBP7N -- the collection from G+ (includes the ones 
above and others).

-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
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