Re: The need for RDF in Linked Data

On 6/17/13 6:59 AM, Luca Matteis wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 12:55 PM, Melvin Carvalho 
> <melvincarvalho@gmail.com <mailto:melvincarvalho@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     One standard to do this is RDF.
>
>
> What other standards are there? We need to follow W3C's standards 
> right (from Tim-Berner Lee's note)? So for me RDF is the only player 
> in town.
It is really important that you remember, that accepting the notion of 
"independent invention" is an integral components of the Web's 
architecture and philosophy. The Web isn't about being draconian or 
tightly coupled to anything.

Linked Data is about making webby (or web-like) structured data. The 
original meme from TimBL was all about a principled approach to making 
Data webby (or web-like). You can follow the principles in meme with or 
without knowledge of RDF and arrive at webby structured data.

What does RDF bring to the table then?

The ability to make semantics of the links (which denote relations) 
*explicit* rather than *implicit*. Unfortunately, this virtue of RDF is 
lost when its proponents loose track of its place in the broader 
Semantic Web vision.

RDF enables the creation of Linked Data that's endowed with *explicit* 
machine- and human-comprehensible entity relationship semantics. It 
enables the development and exploitation of processors that are able to 
apply reasoning to the webby-structured data -- since the semantics in 
question are outlined by the RDF standard.

If you doubt my claim, you should indulge me in a very simple experiment 
re., structured data and entity relationship semantics:


Webby Structured Data:

Simply copy and paste the following to a Web accessible location (URL) 
and then share the URL via a response to this mail. If you can't then 
simply let me know and I'll do that for you.

## Structured Data Representation using Turtle Notation ##

<>
a <#Document> .
<#mentions> "Linked Data" , "Linked Data", "Semantic Web", "Inference 
Reasoning", "Web".
<#comment> "A mailing list post about Linked Data and RDF".
<#seeAlso> <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_data>, 
<http://dbpedia.org/resource/RDF>, 
<http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web>, 
<http://dbpedia.org/resource/World_Wide_Web>

## End ##


Once completed, please let me know if that's RDF, Linked Data, or RDF 
based Linked Data?  In addition, let me know if that detracts from any 
Linked Data meme that emphasizes the following:

1. entity denotation/naming using HTTP URIs
2. returning useful information (e.g., a description of the entity 
denoted by the HTTP URI) when HTTP URI is looked up.

I reduced TimBL's meme down to two points since the ones I left out 
simply expand the two outlined above.

-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Personal Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
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