Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: RDFStyles: alternative to XSLT for RDF

On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 08:27:28PM +0100, Graham Klyne wrote:
> RDF and XSLT are tuned to different kinds of problem space.  XSLT's is
> manipulation of tree-structured data.  RDF's is handling information
> that originates in a variety of structural forms, and which is not
> closed to the addition of new information relating to any existing
> component.

One more aspect of RDF that I notice is often forgotten is that it's
supposed to be distributed (see more below).

> To say that an incompatibility is the fault of either one or the other
> is to ignore the most important factor:  what problem are you trying
> to solve?
> 
> The "root cause" of any problem here is a mismatch between the problem
> to be solved and the tool that is brought to bear on it.  If you have
> problems trying to use a screwdriver to drive nails, is it a fault in
> the screwdriver?  I think not.

You've really driven the nail home with this argument ;)

My favorite screw in need for screwdriver is RDF query (as opposed to
RDF transformation): since RDF is really distributed, you are not
supposed to be able to process the whole problem domain in-memory and on
a single host, you're rather supposed to _query_ different remote
knowledge bases and process _results_ of these queries.

Fetching whole of WordNet, Wikipedia, and DMoz and running an XSLT
transform on the combined result doesn't fit into the original vision of
Semantic Web as I understand it.

-- 
Dmitry Borodaenko

Received on Wednesday, 22 October 2003 08:37:15 UTC