Re: Ending the Linked Data debate -- PLEASE VOTE *NOW*!

On 6/13/13 3:04 PM, Norman Gray wrote:
> RDF is indeed just one of the things implied by the term 'linked data', but RDF is (I'm pretty sure) the only data representation mechanism included in that bag of things.  An HTML page pointing to a CSV file is_not_  Linked Data, because it's not_data_  linking to data.

It is coarse-grained Linked Data. Put differently, what does 
<http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_data> mean? Note, it resolves to an 
HTML document that describes what the HTTP URI denotes.

There are key issues in play here:

1. identifiers
2. data structure
3. relationships and their semantics.

RDF adds granularity and machine comprehension to #3 i.e., it adds 
*explicit* machine readable and comprehensible relationship semantics. 
In doing so, what used to be in our heads also gets woven into the Web 
that scales up to the Internet.

A basic Entity Relationship Model handles #2, even though most of the 
time the entity relationship semantics are *implicit* i.e, in our heads 
and on the walls of many a broken (due to schema constraints and 
overreach) SQL RDBMS project.

We don't need to be provincial about this matter. Our Web is inherently 
tolerant and dexterous. Just trust it :-)

-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
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Received on Thursday, 13 June 2013 19:15:45 UTC