Re: [JSON] the simple pivotal choice

Good morning Nathan,

> Glad you replied, as I'd very much like to work out where we agree and
> disagree.
I think we both agree that there must be something beyond

[
  {"s": "<http://webr3.org/nathan#>"},
  {"p": "foaf:name"},
  {"o": "Nathan"}
]

I think we both have slightly different opinions with regards to
mappings. You seem to say

{
  "name": "Nathan"
}

is enough, we simply provide mappings ("RDF goggles") to whom it may
concern that "name" actually is "foaf:name".

I seem to say that I'd rather prefer to see the prefixes somewhere in
the serialization, such as

{
  "foaf_name": "Nathan"
}

conserving the beloved dot-notation (so that you can write
obj.foaf_name rather than obj['foaf:name']). I could imagine a
well-known prefixes directory somewhere, according to, e.g., agreed-on
link relations in Atom.

All this might be too much of a simplification, but I guess this is
our main point of different opinions. What do you think?

> You could say, X web service (giving back json) happens to have a
> JSON-to-RDF map, and if you include Y javascript on your page, that script
> can put on it's RDF goggles to mash your opengraph triples together with the
> information from X service and augment your homepage with all these
> wonderful features and related infos which your readers will love.
With your arguments "pro" mappings, this makes perfect sense. I think
we might have to play this through with a couple of use cases. The use
case I had in mind (someone hardly capable of pasting the OpenGraph
triples) does not fit very well in here, as this person wants to just
contribute his tiny bit to the Semantic Web (get their triples out, be
ranked higher, appear nicely in Facebook when someone "Likes" him).
This guy would maybe need at most something like an
application/RDF-our-end-product+json form of
https://graph.facebook.com/cocacola in order to get, e.g., a depiction
for Coca Cola. Again, I'm simplifying.

> It's less about the person who's already using triples, and more about
> giving those who don't or can't or haven't used triples a way to let us see
> their data as RDF.
Exactly! This is why I keep pitching the sample of this really basic
use case above (not meant to be picking on Facebook, just using them
as a popular example).

"[...] let us see their data as RDF" is interesting. Did you have a
use case in mind? I was thinking of the person using RDFa. I don't see
this person publish application/RDF-our-end-product+json.

> As in, we can say to any JSON data provider: "don't you worry about the cost
> and complexity of doing all this semantic web stuff, we've made a simple map
> that bootstraps you in" and we can say to any developer, don't worry about
> changing your stack, just provide us a simple map and when we you'll be
> hooked in to the web of data.
Maybe it's more a slightly different vision then where our opinions
differ. You seem to say we can't change the whole world, but at least
provide mappings. I seem to say we can try at least, and see who's
with us. Maybe?

Best,
Tom

-- 
Thomas Steiner, Research Scientist, Google Inc.
http://blog.tomayac.com, http://twitter.com/tomayac

Received on Thursday, 10 March 2011 09:12:37 UTC