Re: ACTION: elaborate on 4.4

On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 10:51:02AM -0700, Rob Shearer muttered something about:

> Perhaps both groups would be happier if we actually tried to define what
> "the info" is and whether it is necessary before trying to shove it in
> either place. Because I sure don't understand it; it strikes me that
> we're trying to add a feature relevent only to a small portion of
> queries (those returning RDF) and a small portion of users (those who
> refuse to accomodate RDF/XML) for an application that is nothing more
> than an artifact of the current academic state of RDF (viewing the RDF
> without actually processing it for human consumption).

Hmm, wrong, grounds?, grounds?, and wrong. :>

But, first, it's interesting that you are debating the merits of doing
something that you then claim not to understand. I try to avoid that
wherever possible. But maybe that's just me.

You make four claims:

1. 4.4 is only relevant to subgraph results

Wrong. 4.4 might also be relevant to variable binding results or to boolean
results, depending on whether there are >1 on-the-wire representations of
these result types.

2. Queries returning RDF are a minority.

Proof? That's how things are for you at Network Inference. At this point, I
think we all understand, Rob, that you are adamantly opposed to queries
returning RDF graphs. But one of the query languages we've looked takes
returning RDF so seriously it has a keyword (SerQL's CONSTRUCT) for doing
it. Plus, yr making a strictly empirical claim for which I'd like to see
some empirical warrant. 

3. Users of serializations other than RDF-XML are a minority of all RDF users.

Proof? Another empirical claim for which you offer no grounds whatever.
Further,  the characterization of people who use other serializations, that
they "refuse to accomodate RDF/XML" is tendentious at best. These people --
communities, really -- *claim* to have good reasons for doing the extra work
of designing and implementing alternative serialization formats. I think
it's arrogant for us to tell them to sod off.

4. 4.4 is only useful for something you call an "academic artifact".

Wrong. My primary motivation, which isn't an academic concern at all, is
making cell phones Semantic Web clients. I'm working on making Nokia Series
60 phones run Python triple stores. That's *hardly* an "academic artifact".

Plus, being dismissive of academic projects per se is annoying.

Kendall Clark
-- 
You're one in a million
You've got to burn to shine

Received on Thursday, 24 June 2004 14:07:06 UTC