Re: GRDDL and OWL/XML

I've read the thread so far, and only feel minded to respond to one of 
Bijan's earlier points that hasn't got much attention.

Overall, I'm sympathetic to Bijan's perspective: any W3C implementation 
of the transform should in my mind clearly be labelled as inferior and 
derivative to the normative spec; but I don't think that means that 
there shouldn't be one. The practical utility of its existence is the 
key argument for me.

Here's the point I wish to respond to:
Bijan Parsia wrote:
> 1) The primary purpose of W3C working group is to produce 
> specifictations...standards, in fact. Many members of the W3C (who pay 
> fees, after all) are implementors and vendors of implementations. The 
> W3C, itself, enjoys a great deal of prestige and attention that its 
> smaller members cannot hope to compete with. Futhermore, the W3C has a 
> monopoly of W3C web space. Thus, it has a monopoly on what 
> implementations it not just recommends, but *delivers* to people (via 
> GRDDL agents). This makes it very difficult to compete with that 
> implementation. Since WGs generally don't live very long, things 
> stagnate (i.e., the W3C doesn't generally have the resources to maintain 
> *lots* of software).
> 

I think this is based on a factual error.
An XSLT implementation of anything, particularly when you have to first 
do an HTTP GET (or even three or four) before you have any XML in your 
hand, to parse, compile, optimise ... is a bit of a nightmare from the 
performance point of view. Also the security point of view.

While it's still early days for GRDDL implementations, I find you're 
vision for GRDDL exciting.

A GRDDL agent that had explicit support for a few well known standards 
(e.g. RDFa, OWL/XML, POWDER) and had a pluggable architecture, that, for 
instance, could take Java code that implemented the normative specs 
directly, would be a hold lot better than the current situation, where 
GRDDL agents only handle XSLT, and at least in the Jena case, was 
sufficiently insecure to cause the HP lawyer to require a special "I 
agree to the BSD license 'no liability'" splash screen!

So, for my money, your custom OWL/XML parser is almost certainly better, 
faster, more secure, ... than a W3C XSLT stylesheet; and if I end up 
developing the Jena GRDDL reader further, I would be intrigued by the 
possibility of teaming up with you to incorporate your code as the 
implementation to be used for the OWL/XML transform.

I think the role of W3C blessed implementations is not as 'reference' 
implementations, but seed corn; and I don't think that your fears that 
the seed corn will be a weed stifling the growth of better 
implementations is well-founded.

Jeremy

Received on Monday, 12 May 2008 21:22:24 UTC