- From: Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com>
- Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 13:29:40 -0500
- To: nathan@webr3.org
- CC: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>, Martin Hepp <martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org>, Linked Open Data <public-lod@w3.org>
On 1/13/11 1:16 PM, Nathan wrote: > Kingsley Idehen wrote: >> On 1/13/11 12:04 PM, Nathan wrote: >>> Hi Kinglsey, >>> >>> Kingsley Idehen wrote: >>>> When our engine describes entities it can publish these >>>> descriptions using variety of structured data formats that include >>>> RDF. The same thing applies on the data consumption side. >>>> Basically, RDF formats are options re. Linked Data (the concept). >>> >>> A generic problem here, when using non RDF types with Linked Data >>> over HTTP, is that there's currently no way to indicate that a >>> resource is/has a set of machine readable "linked data" variants, in >>> many cases it is useful to publish and consume with linked data in >>> CSV format and related (as you well note) - but without prior out of >>> band knowledge that the representation contains, or is, linked data, >>> the machines are pretty much screwed. Typically the RDF variants >>> don't have this problem because the media type sets the expectation, >>> so you can conneg on an RDF type and know your getting back "linked >>> data", you can't do this with CSV and related with any expectation >>> that you'll get back "linked data" - thus, if there was some way to >>> mark the set of representations given upon dereferencing a URI as >>> linked data, containing rdf, rdfable 3 tuples, or a view thereof, >>> it'd be a lot friendlier to the web of data in general. >> >> So what happens to RDFa in (X)HTML? Even worse, no DOCTYPE declarations? >> What about various JSON dialects for Linked Data graphs? >> How about N-Triples? Ditto TriX and others? > > Probably wasn't clear, I'm saying there needs to be something (for > instance a new header) which indicates that the representation > contains "linked data", then you machines could automatically throw > the CSV through a csv-linked-data parser and it'd work, likewise every > type you mentioned above. Yes, maybe, but that takes time. The practical thing is to work with what exists first, then finesse later. WWW already works this way. In a sense, the real ingenuity of the WWW is the fact that imperfection is an intrinsic feature :-) > > The problem here isn't the different types of media, the problem here is > > (1) internet media types are dire and badly need re-looked at > > (2) there's no information provided to machine so that it has a hope > in hell of understanding one of these other variants (lest it has it's > own special mediatype) See comments above. That's InterWeb reality. What needs fixing is Identity. Basically, what's happening via WebID which is a great example of Linked Data exploitation. > > Fix that and the door is opened to all of the above. > > - RDFa needs an indicator at HTTP Message level to say it's "html+rdfa" > - JSON dialects need standardized (coming soon to a WG near you) w/ > media type registered / well-known > - N-Triples needs it's own media type (doesn't have one) > - and so on.. But it ain't going to happen within realistic timeframes, if at all. > > Typically we need a machine to not only ask "Accept: something/rdf" > but to effectively ask "if linked data give me JSON" (swap json for > csv, turtle, rdf+xml, whatever) I think it should ask for data in a representation it understands as defined by its application senses. If the server can't produce what is required, the client should make a best effort to transform the data, and if it can't do that, move on. Perfection has never boostrapped anything. Pragmatism wins all the time. WWW is a contemporary example of the aforementioned statement. At this juncture, the goal has to be: Linked Data comprehension and mass exploitation. It has to be inclusive and devoid of distractions. Those who understand its nuances and innards should express these prowess via their solutions -- client or server side. Every new productive Linked Data solution -- that appreciate working with what exists -- simply enhances the ecosystem. Kingsley > > Best, > > Nathan > -- Regards, Kingsley Idehen President& CEO OpenLink Software Web: http://www.openlinksw.com Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen Twitter/Identi.ca: kidehen
Received on Thursday, 13 January 2011 18:30:09 UTC