RE: Semantic Web pneumonia and the Linked Data flu (was: Can we lower the LD entry cost please (part 1)?)

I've got the feeling that you're confusing incentives and costs. Someone
does something when the incentive (the perceived benefit) is higher than
the costs. By making the tools easier to use, we lower the cost. If we
increase the incentive, people are willing to take higher costs.

 

in my opinion, while lowering the cost by providing easier tools is
good, we're still missing good incentives. And those data owners who do
not want to give data away right now won't do it independently of how
good the tools are. 

 

Cheers,

Georgi

 

--

Georgi Kobilarov

Freie Universität Berlin

www.georgikobilarov.com

 

From: Juan Sequeda [mailto:juanfederico@gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, February 09, 2009 3:17 PM
To: Georgi Kobilarov
Cc: Hugh Glaser; Yves Raimond; public-lod@w3.org
Subject: Re: Semantic Web pneumonia and the Linked Data flu (was: Can we
lower the LD entry cost please (part 1)?)

 

 

On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 8:13 AM, Georgi Kobilarov
<georgi.kobilarov@gmx.de> wrote:

Wait a second. Publishing Linked Data from relational databases? 

D2R-Server, Virtuoso Relational Mappings? Juan, you should be familiar
with that stuff...

Of course... but even though. IMO, not easy enough! I'm taking the
position as owner of one of the million web applications out there,
powered by a rdbms, and now hearing about the LD thing going on. If I
want to be part of it... I would have to invest a lot of time and effort
with existing tools such as d2r sever, etc... 

	 

	Easy linking of data? Not quite solved yet. But wait for the
Linked Data Workshop at WWW2009...

	 

As I said, that is my futuristic position... and I am waiting for things
to happen! 

	Georgi

	 

	--

	Georgi Kobilarov

	Freie Universität Berlin

	www.georgikobilarov.com

	 

	From: public-lod-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-lod-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Juan Sequeda
	Sent: Monday, February 09, 2009 3:02 PM
	To: Hugh Glaser
	Cc: Yves Raimond; public-lod@w3.org

	
	Subject: Re: Semantic Web pneumonia and the Linked Data flu
(was: Can we lower the LD entry cost please (part 1)?)

	 

	This is a point I have always brought up... it is hard! It is
hard to produce LD and hard to consume LD. No sane person will want to
do maintain this. Yves just explained everything he goes through and it
is wayyy to much! The majority of the data on the web is stored in
rdbms. Therefore, IMO, it is crucial to develop automatic ways of
creating RDF from relational data and linking it automatically. If this
is not going to happen, the whole web that runs on rdbms, will not have
an incentive to create LD. This is my futuristic position.

	
	
	
	Juan Sequeda, Ph.D Student
	Dept. of Computer Sciences
	The University of Texas at Austin
	www.juansequeda.com
	www.semanticwebaustin.org

	On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 5:45 AM, Hugh Glaser <hg@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
wrote:

	
	YES!
	Now I don't have to spend my time writing Part 2.
	(You did notice the (part 1) in the subject line?)
	I was wondering of anyone would ask me what was part 2.
	Well, this was it.
	Pretty exactly, and very nicely put.
	Many thanks.
	
	Despite what I have said about providing a search facility, I
think we need to ensure it is easy to join the LD, and make
medium-size-ish (or any) dataset publishers welcome, whatever the
perceived paucity of missing facilities or components.
	Maybe I am thinking two opposite things at the same time? I hope
not.

	
	On 09/02/2009 10:40, "Yves Raimond" <yves.raimond@gmail.com>
wrote:
	
	
	
	Hello!
	
	Just to jump on the last thread, something has been bugging me
lately.
	Please don't take the following as a rant against technologies
such as
	voiD, Semantic Sitemaps, etc., these are extremely useful piece
of
	technologies - my rant is more about the order of our
priorities, and
	about the growing cost (and I insist on the word "growing") of
	publishing linked data.
	
	There's a lot of things the community asks linked data publisher
to do
	(semantic sitemaps, stats on the dataset homepages, example
sparql
	queries, void description, and now search function), and I
really tend
	to think this makes linked data publishing cost much, much more
	costly. Richard just mentioned that it should just take 5
minutes to
	write such a search function, but 5 minutes + 5 minutes + 5
minutes +
	... takes a long time. Maintaining a linked dataset is already
*lots*
	of work: server maintenance, dataset maintenance, minting of new
	links, keeping up-to-date with the data sources, it *really*
takes a
	lot of time to do properly.
	Honestly, I begin to be quite frustrated, as a publisher of
about 10
	medium-size-ish datasets. I really have the feeling the work I
	invested in them is never enough, every time there seems to be
	something missing to make all these datasets a "real" part of
the
	linked data cloud.
	
	Now for the most tedious part of my rant :-) Most of the
datasets
	published in the linked data world atm are using open source
	technologies (easy enough to send a patch over to the data
publisher).
	Some of them provide SPARQL end points. What's missing for the
	advocate of new technologies or requirements to fulfill their
goal
	themselves? After all, that's what we all did with this project
since
	the beginning! If someone really wants a smallish search engine
on top
	of some dataset, wrapping a SPARQL query, or a call to the web
service
	that the dataset wraps should be enough. I don't see how the
data
	publisher is required for achieving that aim. The same thing
holds for
	voiD and other technologies. Detailed statistics are available
on most
	dataset homepages, which (I think) provides enough data to write
a
	good enough voiD description.
	
	To sum up, I am just increasingly concerned that we are building
	requirements on top of requirements for the sake of lowering a
"LD
	entry cost", whereas I have the feeling that this cost is really
	higher and higher... And all that doesn't make the data more
linked
	:-)
	
	Cheers!
	y