ConverterFromRdf

I've just added a page of this name [1] to the ESW Wiki, would appreciate
any pointers. While ConverterToRdf [2] lists tools that are of immediate
interest to people working with RDF, conversion the other way may prove
equally important to the web.

A usage example - a social networking service might offer data import from
vCard format documents. This could be generated from the data in a FOAF
profile via an online service. (Anyone doing that yet? It's available from
microformat formatted data, e.g. [3]).

Like ConvertersToRdf, there are various different mechanisms/strategies
available. I've listed the following so far:

* Direct serialisation (Raptor?)
* XSLT over RDF/XML
* SPARQL (one or TwoPhaseSparql)
* programmatic

The Semantic Web needn't rely on every system understanding RDF (in fact I'd
argue that only a tiny percentage of support is needed to get major gains in
net utility). But RDF/XML (and Turtle) serialisations and SPARQL endpoints
still demand quite a lot of the system at the other end of the wire. Online
extraction/conversion facilities could ease this burden. Without outputs
compatible with existing applications, there's a danger of Semantic Web
applications looking like black holes.

Cheers,
Danny.


[1] http://esw.w3.org/topic/ConverterFromRdf
[2] http://esw.w3.org/topic/ConverterToRdf
[3] http://suda.co.uk/projects/X2V/

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http://dannyayers.com