What *is* RDF?

On 24 Mar 2011, at 19:32, Peter Frederick Patel-Schneider wrote:
> ...I have lots of other things that I could be doing...
>
> If I don't end up understanding JSON I'm likely to not vote for 
> the JSON work in the WG, or maybe even vote against it, just
> maybe causing all the efforts of the WG to fail.  So, then,
> of course, effective for people who want to use the JSON
> efforts of the WG.
> 
> I don't think that I am unique in this position.

I haven't worked with you before, Peter, so I'm going to assume good
faith on your part and interpret that you are frustrated and didn't mean
the above like it came across. Here is one way to interpret what you said:

"If I don't understand something, I'm going to vote against it."

That sounds scary and like a veiled threat. Another way is:

"If I don't understand this stuff, I'm not going to try to take part in
the discussion"

Take my toys and go home. Yet another is:

"I wish this WG wasn't wasting its time on this."

I've been watching this thread and becoming somewhat dismayed with the
direction that the discussion has taken. I do think you have some very
good questions, and I think that they haven't been answered in an
optimal way for someone that is new to JavaScript and JSON. That doesn't
mean that the answers do not exist. In other words, I think your subtext is:

"Why is this steaming pile of crap so badly defined and hard to
understand!?"

Fair enough. It can be at first.

The same could be said about RDF, couldn't it? Where would I point a Web
Developer to get an understanding of RDF? You could say that I'd point
them to RDF Concepts, but that doesn't help figure out how to serialize
the data, does it? I point them at the HTML+RDFa Primer and now they
kind-of understand it, but they really need to go read the XHTML+RDFa
spec to get a full understanding, which then requires them to read the
XHTML spec, and then the XML spec, as well as the XML Namespaces spec,
and then the URI spec, ad nauseum. Each new spec raises a slew of new
questions. What if they ask the question "What does a URI represent in
the semantic web?" - well, I could point them at the HTTP Range 14
decision or the Cool URIs document, but that would just confuse them
even more.

My point is that when you approach problems in the wrong way, and ask
the wrong questions (or get the wrong answers), you get stuck down a rat
hole. That's where this discussion is going, so I think it would be wise
of all of us to constrain the discussion by talking about exactly how we
need to define an RDF in/on/with JSON specification such that it avoids
the touchier issues. For example:

  * What is the object model for JSON?
    Answer: JSON (the serialization) doesn't have a defined object
            model, it is a serialization format, it has a well-defined
            grammar specified in RFC4627 - use that.
  * Exactly what is the valid JSON grammar?
    Answer: If it doesn't conform to RFC4627, it's not valid.
  * What happens when you use multiple keys that have the same value?
    Answer: Don't do that, nobody does that, it doesn't work in any
            implementations, even if it is valid according to the
            grammar.
  * Exactly what object model for JSON should we use?
    Answer: We don't need to specify a JSON object model in order to
            specify a syntax that works for RDF.
  * and so on...

There are other ways to answer the questions above, but they lead us
down rat holes.

To be fair to those that have attempted to answer your questions - you
asked the questions and were given the actual answers. You felt the
answers were too complicated for a regular web developer to grasp, and
they are. However, you asked them as a member of this group and the
assumption when answering you was that you wanted to know all of the
gory details.

No developer is going to need to know these gory details.

However, as language designers, we need to know all of the gory details.
It's a steep learning curve for someone that has never used JavaScript
before. However, it seems as if you think that developers are going to
need to know these idiosyncrasies as well - they are not going to need
to know them. They're going to cut/paste and program by example, and if
we do this correctly, they won't have to learn much of anything new in
certain scenarios.

I'm going to try to answer each of your questions in another e-mail, but
this time by attempting to focus on what I think this group should use
to specify the RDF in/on/with JSON specification. Maybe that will help
shed some light on the implied plan forward. As you read that e-mail,
please do try to understand that there are a number of us on the list
that are attempting to help explain all of this in a way that is
helpful. Have patience, there are answers - we will get to them eventually.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Payment Standards and Competition
http://digitalbazaar.com/2011/02/28/payment-standards/

Received on Friday, 25 March 2011 00:31:08 UTC