RE: Explaining why we use RDF instead of just XML

I am relatively new to RDF but Im not sure I understand the comparison.
Isnt RDF all about the graph. The subject, predicate and object and what
you can do with them.  OWL is a standard for describing specific
subject, predicates and objects for ontology representation and
inference.  XML just happens to be one syntax for representing RDF but
XML does not seem to be the important part of RDF (not withstanding the
common serialization, transporting, parsing etc).  The logical
capabilities of RDF do not seem to have anything to do with XML.  Once
again, I am relatively new to RDF but this is what I gathered from a
bunch of reading.  Am I missing something?

Keith

-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Stuart [mailto:Ian.Stuart@ed.ac.uk] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 7:04 AM
To: RDF Interest list
Subject: Re: Explaining why we use RDF instead of just XML


On Wed, 2003-06-25 at 12:53, Trent Shipley wrote:

> Unfortunately, this makes RDF sound like a complex and expensive way
to define 
> a simple namespace.  How is an RDF application different from an 
> XML-Namespace?
My understanding is that, yes, it is a complex and expensive way to
implement namespaced XML. The benefit is that there is a common
agreement of the basic structure of the XML data, defined and agreed by
consensus.

The benefit of this is that the XML document should be largely
understandable by all those who can interpret RDF-structured data.

The only grey area is when one starts to encode a new type of data, not
previously covered by another RDF subset.

As has been mentioned elsewhere (some web page I read a week or so ago),
RDF, et al, swell the size of the resultant data object by a significant
amount. The trade-off is between making the XML data-object and the
interoperability (another big word that sounds more important that it
really is :-) of the data
-- 
--==++
Ian Stuart, Perl Laghu. EDINA, Edinburgh University.

Information is not knowledge
Knowledge is not wisdom
Wisdom is not truth
Truth is not beauty
Beauty is not love
Love is not music
              -- Mary.

 Works web site:    http://edina.ac.uk/ 
 Personal web site: http://lucas.ucs.ed.ac.uk/

Received on Wednesday, 25 June 2003 10:00:41 UTC