RE: The king is dressed in void

Giovanni,

I think I see your argument here and I tend to agree up to a certain
point. What makes me wonder is that it is *you* stating this ;)

Seriously, I very much believe in self-descriptive documents, etc. I do
prefer simple things that work. However, voiD is just the next logical
step after semantic sitemaps (it actually is thought to extend it in
terms of using the sc:datasetURI as the entry point, see also [1]). So,
just in case you want to argument against your own proposal, please tell
me so ;)

I guess you're right that many things can be done already and I'm
positive that we should use the current layer, then advance to the next.
But what if, say, the current layer is missing something. To whom is it
up to decide when we are done? I guess it is up to the people using it.
So, let's not judge a book by its cover, please.

voiD intends to formalise what is already used in practice. I myself
have built some applications that exploit the LOD datasets and others
certainly have done as well. As it seems, there is a certain need to do
what we have done up to now mainly in our brains, in a more automated
way. There we are: a clear demand for something, a proposal to solve it.
It is as simple as it is. If it turns out that LOD dataset provides
don't use it - fine. They might use other methods, then, or nothing at
all.

I see two issues with what you propose, however - granularity &
scalability. Currently we have identified two use cases for voiD:

 1. automatic creation of a map (such as http://sindice.com/map)
 2. topic-based selection of LOD datasets 

I guess you're kinda familiar with (1). Now, think about scalability.
Today we have a bunch of LOD data sets or other sources -  tomorrow we
may have 10k and next year maybe a million. Next, when looking at (2),
I'd like to have a reliable, simple method to determine a 'good' entry
point into the LOD cloud. As soon as I'm in, I can follow my nose using
basically what you propose.

Finally, the reactions so far tell us that voiD seems to be what people
where waiting for in terms of easy to use and powerful enough to have an
added value.

Concluding, it is not 'Giovanni vs. voiD', it is Giovanni + voiD for a
better, finally a *real* Semantic Web.

Cheers,
	Michael


[1] http://sw.joanneum.at/voiD/img/void_discovery.png

----------------------------------------------------------
 Michael Hausenblas, MSc.
 Institute of Information Systems & Information Management
 JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH
  
 http://www.joanneum.at/iis/
----------------------------------------------------------
 

>-----Original Message-----
>From: g.tummarello@gmail.com [mailto:g.tummarello@gmail.com] 
>On Behalf Of Giovanni Tummarello
>Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 12:08 AM
>To: Hausenblas, Michael
>Cc: public-lod@w3.org; Semantic Web
>Subject: The king is dressed in void
>
>Wasnt RDF all aabout being self describing?
>
> if i say "giovanni works in research" .. do i really need a
>vucabolary that says "this rdf contains informations that describe
>what people claim to be working on" that's a suicide. If this is the
>case (which i totally dont believe) then the king is seriously naked
>and there is no hope whatsoever that RDF is going to have any
>relevance (and there i say it)
>
>to find one such file, instead of having to invent agree and markup
>i'd say its much easier to do something like [1] or [2].
>this is not marketing. its a plea to NOT jump on more layers of stuff
>when the previous layers have really to show there value and
>adoptability still. Solve some simple use cases first then jump to the
>more complex one.
>
>Giovanni
>
>[1] 
>http://demo.sindice.com/search?q=*+%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2
F2006%2Fvcard%2Fns%23title%3E+%27research%27&qt=advanced
>
>or 
>http://sindice.com/search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fxmlns.com%2Ffoaf%2F0.1
>%2Fknows&qv=http%3A%2F%2Frichard.cyganiak.de%2Ffoaf.rdf%23cygri&qt=ifp
> (documents which contain statements in which someone claims to be
>knowing richard)
>
>[2] http://forum.sindice.com/showthread.php?t=10
>
>
>On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 8:54 AM, Hausenblas, Michael
><michael.hausenblas@joanneum.at> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Dear interested people in linked datasets,
>>
>> As you may have gathered, we have recently initiated a 
>discussion on how
>> to discover the linked dataset cloud [1]. The result of our impromptu
>> kick-off meeting at the ESWC08 is literally voiD - the ' 
>vocabulary of
>> interlinked datasets' (see notes at [2]). This is a proposal for a
>> vocabulary and a mechanism how it should be deployed and 
>used. We have
>> some first slides available at [3] as well.
>>
>> Please consider commenting on it either by replying to this message
>> and/or sharing your thoughts with us at the Wiki [2].
>>
>> Cheers,
>>        Michael
>>
>> [1] http://richard.cyganiak.de/2007/10/lod/
>> [2]
>> 
>http://community.linkeddata.org/MediaWiki/index.php?MetaLOD#Kic
k-off_mee
>> ting_at_ESWC08
>> [3]
>> http://www.slideshare.net/mediasemanticweb/full-eswc08-lightning-talk
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>>  Michael Hausenblas, MSc.
>>  Institute of Information Systems & Information Management
>>  JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH
>>  Steyrergasse 17, A-8010 Graz, AUSTRIA
>>
>>  <office>
>>   phone: +43-316-876-1193 (fax:-1191)
>>  mobile: +43-699-1876-1165
>>  e-mail: michael.hausenblas@joanneum.at
>>   skype: mhausenblas
>>     web: http://www.joanneum.at/iis/
>>
>>  <see also>
>>          http://sw-app.org/about.html
>>          http://riese.joanneum.at
>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>

Received on Thursday, 12 June 2008 06:53:31 UTC