- From: Leigh Dodds <leigh.dodds@talis.com>
- Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:09:50 +0100
- To: Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com>
- Cc: public-lod@w3.org
Hi, On 20 October 2011 23:19, Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com> wrote: > On 10/20/11 5:31 PM, Dave Reynolds wrote: >> >> What's more I really don't think the issues is about not understanding >> about the distinction (at least in the clear cut cases). Most people I >> talk to grok the distinction, the hard bit is understanding why 303 >> redirects is a sensible way of making it and caring about it enough to >> put those in place. > > What about separating the concept of "indirection" from its actual > mechanics? Thus, conversations about benefits will then have the freedom to > blossom. > > Here's a short list of immediately obvious benefits re. Linked Data (at any > scale): > > 1. access to data via data source names -- millions of developers world wide > already do this with ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET, OLE DB etc.. the only issue is > that they are confined to relational database access and all its > shortcomings > > 2. integration of heterogeneous data sources -- the ability to coherently > source and merge disparately shaped data culled from a myriad of data > sources (e.g. blogs, wikis, calendars, social media spaces and networks, and > anything else that's accessible by name or address reference on a network) > > 3. crawling and indexing across heterogeneous data sources -- where the end > product is persistence to a graph model database or store that supports > declarative query language access via SPARQL (or even better a combination > of SPARQL and SQL) > > 4. etc... > > Why is all of this important? > Data access, integration, and management has been a problem that's straddled > every stage of computer industry evolution. Managers and end-users always > think about data conceptually, but continue to be forced to deal with > access, integration, and management in application logic oriented ways. In a > nutshell, applications have been silo vectors forever, and in doing so they > stunt the true potential of computing which (IMHO) is ultimately about our > collective quests for improved productivity. > > No matter what we do, there are only 24 hrs in a day. Most humans taper out > at 5-6 hrs before physiological system faults kick in, hence our implicit > dependency of computers for handling voluminous and repetitive tasks. > > Are we there yet? > Much closer that most imagine. Our biggest hurdle (as a community of Linked > Data oriented professionals) is a protracted struggle re. separating > concepts from implementation details. We burn too much time fighting > implementation details oriented battles at the expense of grasping core > concepts. Maybe I'm wrong but I think people, especially on this list, understanding the overall benefits you itemize. The reason we talk about implementation details is they're important to help people adopt the technology: we need specific examples. We get the benefits you describe from inter-linked dereferenceable URIs, regardless of what format or technology we use to achieve it. Using the RDF model brings additional benefits. What I'm trying to draw out in this particular thread is specific benefits the #/303 additional abstraction brings. At the moment, they seem pretty small in comparison to the fantastic benefits we get from data integrated into the web. Cheers, L. -- Leigh Dodds Product Lead, Kasabi Mobile: 07850 928381 http://kasabi.com http://talis.com Talis Systems Ltd 43 Temple Row Birmingham B2 5LS
Received on Friday, 21 October 2011 07:10:27 UTC