Re: Triplr down. Thoughts on Distributed RDFization

Aldo Bucchi wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> Sorry if everyone is asking the same thing.
> Triplr went missing this weekend ( at least to us folks down in LatAm ).

This was the weekend I was changing my email, DNS and networking config.
If you'd have pinged me, I'd have fixed it quickly.  It's working right now.

Dave

> I believe triplr to be an *incredibly* smart and useful service (
> especially callback wrapped JSON ). It will probably do more in behalf
> of the semantic web, outreach-wise, than most other efforts out there
> ( once it finds its way into small widgets and tutorials with
> practical applications ).
> 
> But, with great power comes great responsibility.
> 
> This outage crippled several demos I was planting out in the wild, and
> the perceive damage is rather huge. "The Semantic Web is Down??" I got
> from a couple of High level execs. Of course there are no SLAs and no
> commitment on triplr's behalf, but the ( naive and irresponsible )
> expectation is that the service doesn't break.
> 
> I agree this is the developer's mistake but then again, the value
> proposition was to make it easier for them to play around with SW
> data.
> 
> This brings up the some FUD from the consumer's perspective.
> And then the same can be argued from the service provider's POV:
> 
> If someone builds a scutter on top of Triplr, for example, and tries
> to index the entire foaf-space, numbers can get big.
> 
> What are the rules?
> Should they enforce some sort of limits?
> Who's paying for infrastructure?
> ( Dave? )
> 
> Etc...
> 
> I am now changing all these small demos to fallback to an alternative
> proxy ( my own, running powered by virtuoso running on the cloud )
> and/or OpenLink hosted Demo endpoints.
> 
> My question is:
> 
> Has anyone given deeper thought to this issue?
> 
> For example. How about a Pay per use proxy service ( akin to Amazon S3
> ) using signed headers that could be financially viable and provide a
> SLA?
> ( and more complex services, like delegated auth and session management ).
> 
> Or perhaps a directory of open (and/or payed) rdf-izer services that
> shared the same REST interface and could be swapped. Triplr, OpenLink
> demo, etc.
> 
> ( of course the latter brings up trust issues and whatnot, but we can
> factor those in as well ).
> 
> The point is that RDFization of heterogeneous resources will remain a
> complex ( and evolving ) topic and a reliable simplification layer is
> definitely beneficial.
> 
> Thanks,
> A
>

Received on Monday, 8 September 2008 16:32:15 UTC