Re: Google Base

On 11/27/05, Xavier Noria <fxn@hashref.com> wrote:
>
> On Nov 27, 2005, at 9:58, Jeremy Wong üSãüÁ¿ wrote:
>
> > Google Base BETA [1] is available on the Internet. I just wonder
> > whether it is a triple store. If it is so, it'll be the largest
> > application of the semantic web.
>
> In my opinion it would be an application of the semantic web if:
>
>     * Data aggregation was SW-based, instead of, say,
>       screen scrapping-based.

Google Base does have RSS 1.0 input, which is an RDF vocabulary (their
format is broken right now but they've suggested they're going to try
and fix it). Their input allows user-defined properties, which takes
this beyond RSS and closer to RDF proper. It's a little unconventional
in that the new terms appear in a Google namespace, and the input
syntax is constrained, but in essence it means they will be using RDF
pretty much as designed.

> or at least:
>
>     * The built triple store, if there's one, was accessible
>       using SW-standards rather than a search web form.

Yes, some machine-friendly route to the data would make a world of difference.

Implementation-wise, it seems like they've got something fairly RDF
triplestore-like behind the scenes, although apparently lacking things
like type inheritance etc that comes in RDFS. A month or two ago a
presentation appeared on the Web from one of the Google people (can't
find link, sorry) which described a database setup that was fairly
loosely-structured - I seem to remember every item had a datestamp.
Maybe that's what they're using. .

> Otherwise formally they may be using a triple store, but in my view
> there would be no added value as far as SW is concerned compared to a
> regular server-side relational schema.

Ok, so their system isn't altogether Semantic Web-friendly, in that it
doen't (yet?) provide data out, but they've got it right as far as
using Semantic Web technologies to add value to an existing system.

Cheers,
Danny.

(somem,    of that pasted from:
http://dannyayers.com/archives/2005/11/23/google-base-and-rdf-take-two/ )

--

http://dannyayers.com

Received on Sunday, 27 November 2005 10:40:21 UTC