Re: Please publish Turtle or JSON-LD instead of RDF/XML [was Re: Recommendation for transformation of RDF/XML to JSON-LD in a web browser?]

One problem is that what many web developer likes is JSON with a
structure. We already had RDF/JSON which was a flat and verbose
"subject":  { "uri": "http://example.com/" }  style serialization that
nobody liked.

What made JSON-LD popular is the @context - being able to simplify
namespaces and structures, but also that applications can give out a
consistent JSON structure that just happens to also be LD and have
clearly defined semantics of the links and properties.


This is easy enough if your data is stored in a relational or no-sql
database, and you generate the JSON with a template.

However, if your data is stored natively in a triple/quad store, then
to produce a consistent JSON structure you would currently have to use
hard-coded templates and custom code (which sounds silly, converting
from RDF to RDF manually),  or use JSON-LD Framing, which has not been
fully standardized, and has many missing features and bugs.   I think
we need to work more on the Framing, so that RDF can be more than just
a publication format.

JSON-LD Framing was also meant as a way for applications to receive
arbitrary JSON-LD content, and then frame it and apply a new @context
to shape/select the particular bits of the data the application is
interested in.

(Mandatory XSLT warning applies)


On 3 September 2015 at 22:34, Paul Houle <ontology2@gmail.com> wrote:
> Bernadette,
>
>      it is not just perception,  it is reality.
>
>      People find JSON-LD easy to work with,  and often it is a simple
> lossless model-driven transformation from an RDF graph to a JSON graph that
> people can do what they want with.
>
>      Ultimately RDF is a universal data model and it is the data model that
> is important,  NOT the specific implementations.  For instance you can do a
> model-driven transformation of data from RDF to JSON-LD and then any JSON
> user can access it with few hangups even if they are unaware of JSON-LD.
> Add some JSON-LD tooling and you've got JSON++.
>
>       We can use a use relational-logical-graphical methods to process
> handle data and we can accept and publish JSON with the greatest of ease.
>
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 5:18 PM, Bernadette Hyland <bhyland@3roundstones.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> +1 David, well said.
>>
>> Amazing how much the mention of JSON (in the phase JSON-LD) puts people at
>> ease vs. RDF <anything>.  JSON-LD as a Recommendation has helped lower the
>> defenses of many who used to get their hackles up and say ‘RDF is too hard'.
>>
>> Perception counts for a lot, even for highly technical people including
>> Web developers.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Bernadette Hyland
>> CEO, 3 Round Stones, Inc.
>>
>> http://3roundstones.com  || http://about.me/bernadettehyland
>>
>>
>> On Sep 3, 2015, at 1:03 PM, David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote:
>>
>> Side note: RDF/XML was the first RDF serialization standardized, over 15
>> years ago, at a time when XML was all the buzz. Since then other
>> serializations have been standardized that are far more human friendly to
>> read and write, and easier for programmers to use, such as Turtle and
>> JSON-LD.
>>
>> However, even beyond ease of use, one of the biggest problems with RDF/XML
>> that I and others have seen over the years is that it misleads people into
>> thinking that RDF is a dialect of XML, and it is not.  I'm sure this
>> misconception was reinforced by the unfortunate depiction of XML in the
>> foundation of the (now infamous) semantic web layer cake of 2001, which in
>> hindsight is just plain wrong:
>> http://www.w3.org/2001/09/06-ecdl/slide17-0.html
>> (Admittedly JSON-LD may run a similar risk, but I think that risk is
>> mitigated now by the fact that RDF is already more established in its own
>> right.)
>>
>> I encourage all RDF publishers to use one of the other standard RDF
>> formats such as Turtle or JSON-LD.  All commonly used RDF tools now support
>> Turtle, and many or most already support JSON-LD.
>>
>> RDF/XML is not officially deprecated, but I personally hope that in the
>> next round of RDF updates, we will quietly thank RDF/XML for its faithful
>> service and mark it as deprecated.
>>
>> David Booth
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Paul Houle
>
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-- 
Stian Soiland-Reyes, eScience Lab
School of Computer Science
The University of Manchester
http://soiland-reyes.com/stian/work/    http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9842-9718

Received on Friday, 4 September 2015 10:13:35 UTC