Use Cases

Hey,

The general (or maybe only) use case is that we want to integrate our RDB
data with other RDF. I think we all agree on that and given the conversation
on Tuesday, this was a major consensus. However, behind that general use
case, there are sub use cases which will explain why we want to integrate
our RDB with RDF. These sub use cases include the following:

   - Source: RDB (obviously)
   - Destination: a data source in RDF.
      - RDF that comes from structured source (RDB, XLS, CSV, etc)
      - Existing RDF that is on the Web
      - RDF that comes from unstructured sources (HTML, PDF, etc)

Why do I make a distinction for the destination? Because I think that in
order to tell a nice use case story, we need to care where the RDF comes
from. And these are the scenarios (stories or use cases):

   1. I want to integrate my RDB with another structured source (RDB, XLS,
   CSV, etc), so I'll convert my RDB to RDF and assume my other structured
   source can also be in RDF.
   2. I want to integrate my RDB with existing RDF on the web (linked data),
   so I'll convert my RDB to RDF and then I'm able to link and integrate
   3. I want to integrate my RDB with unstructured data (HTML, PDF, etc), so
   I'll convert my RDB to RDF and assume my other unstructured source can also
   be in RDF.
   4. I'm not interested in integrating my RDB with other sources
   (structured, rdf, unstructured). However, I do want to expose my RDB as RDF
   because I want semantic web search engines that crawl RDF data to index me
   and I want to become a Linked Data hub and let other people link to me.

Essentially points 1-3 are about integrating RDB with RDF. Point 4 is about
just exposing it.

This is what Dan and I were trying to explain in [1]. Is this too
controversial? If so, why? If not, then what I propose and would like to do
is have a use case that can tell a story for each of the 4 points. This
could give us full coverage. Going over the Use Cases in [2], I see the
following

   - Integrating enterprise relational database for tax control clearly
   demonstrates point 1.
   - The RNA use case demonstrates point 2
   - The wordpress use case shows point 4 and we could create another use
   case from it in order to show point 3.

I'm not sure where the other use cases would fit.

So yes... the general use case is integrating RDB with RDF. But there are
subcases in that general use case and we need to present usecases where
readers feel that they fit in specifically... not just a general RDB2RDF.

What do y'all think?


[1]
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/rdb2rdf/wiki/Use_Cases_and_Requirements#R2ML_Application_Use_Case_Requirements
[2] http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/rdb2rdf/use-cases/#uc


Juan Sequeda
+1-575-SEQ-UEDA
www.juansequeda.com