Re: Call for success stories

On Tue, 4 Apr 2000, Sergey Melnik wrote:

> Folks,
> 
> people keep asking about how RDF is being used in the industry. I think
> we need a page/section listing some known success stories. There are
> definitely a few out there like epinions.com (Guha?), Adobe (Perry?),
> AGFA (Jos?), HP, DublinCore and Dmoz uses etc. This would give RDF some
> more visibility as a practicable technology. Must not be as fancy as
> http://www.corba.org/

Yes, to echo both Sergey and Janet Daly's 'Call for Implementation', I
know you folks are busy building some very interesting things with RDF
because I'm lucky enough to hear about your work off-list. It's time we
pulled some of this together both as feedback on the specs and as feelgood
testimonials to what this stuff can do. As an implementor, I'm aware both
that there are some issues with the RDF model and syntax that call for
future clarifications, and also that the basic RDF information model is
a useful and powerful layer on top of the XML core.

I've previously solicited "What we're doing with RDF" pages. We need to
gather implementation feedback on model, syntax and schema as part of the
RDFS CR process. While it is important to feed into future work on the
specs, let's also use this to gather the "What we're doing" overviews /
testimonials as well.

> Anybody else around secretly building industry-strength products on top
> of RDF? ;)
> 
> Dan, if this makes sense, could you coordinate it?

This makes a lot of sense, the only issue is distinguishing this from the
detailed feedback we're soliciting on the W3C specs.

Here's some things on my TODO list...

1. Get RDF 'Issues List' process in place (for RDFS CR, Model and Syntax
   bugfixes, futures)
2. Rework http://www.w3.org/RDF/ (content update + reorganise)
3. Update the FAQ at http://www.w3.org/RDF/FAQ
4. Work with W3C Comms team to get an RDF logo put together


A lot of very neat RDF apps are largely invisible to end users; a few
testimonials and logos could go a long way to help us better understand
the tradeoffs and benefits associated with deploying RDF systems.

So, process proposal:

Send (to the list) one or more URLs plus a brief description:

 - home page URL for your application's use of RDF
	 (ie. "what we're doing with RDF" overview)

 - document(s) providing feedback on the W3C RDF Specs (Model/Syntax,
 Schema) based on practical deployment experience, including any
 suggestions for future RDF specifications

 - any details of your implementation (particularly if opensource or
layered on top of opensource systems like MySQL), eg. APIs used, mappings into
 relational model, query languages, data typing strategy etc

These can feed into the RDF Issue tracking *and* the collection of
success story materials. At some point we should have a logo/icon for use
by applications that are 'powered by RDF' too.


The RDFS CR announcement provides details [1] on how to send
formal review comments on the Schema spec. In addition, I would like to
encourage anyone who is implementing the RDF specs to consider providing
an online page tracking 'issues we encountered during implemention'. This
kind of feedback is hugely useful both to other implmentors and when
considering future W3C Semantic Web activities.

So... send us your URLs!

Dan


[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2000Mar/0124.html

Received on Tuesday, 4 April 2000 18:04:14 UTC