Re: XML Schema vs DAML/RDF/RDFS

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sigfrid Lundberg, NetLab" <siglun@gungner.lub.lu.se>
To: "Libby Miller" <Libby.Miller@bristol.ac.uk>
Cc: "Dan Brickley" <danbri@w3.org>; "R.V.Guha" <guha@guha.com>;
"www-rdf-interest" <www-rdf-interest@w3.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 8:30 AM
Subject: Re: XML Schema vs DAML/RDF/RDFS


[...]
> My argument was not that RDF querying is too complex to be useful,
>
> I'm claiming that the human effort required to formulate a query (analysis
> of the semantic structure, i.e., the structure of the graph) to a triple
> database is about the same as the effort needed to analyse the syntax some
> ordinary XML to put bits in pieces into your application.
>
> To be more clear -- this is about budget and economy.
>
> Assume that there exist 100 metadata DTDs. Then, what is the marginal
> cost for normalizing a hitherto unknown metadata syntax (metadata syntax
> number 101) into your 'syntactic' metadata store?
>
> Then compare this with the opposite situation. Assume that we have 100 RDF
> schemas for metadata. Then what is the marginal cost for entering a new
> semantic structure (a new graph structure) into a 'semantic' (triple)
> metadata store and extend the triple matching/inferencing to support
> querying of graph type number 101.
>
>
> Sigge

RDF has a pretty limited vocabulary at the moment to describe valid
inferences. As that vocabulary increases through standardization and
adoption of such things as daml/oil/owl the benefit of uisng RDF should also
increase (as fewer inferences will have to be hard-coded in individual
applications).  That will presumably help in the situation you describe as
mapping one schema to another may be possible with fewer explicitly defined
inferences.

I'd personally like see more work on providing a simple, standard inference
language to rdf so that rdf schema authors can ship along valid inferences
with their schemas (that aren't restricted to the available vocabulary.)

- Geoff

Received on Thursday, 18 April 2002 09:55:56 UTC