Re: [ANN] Linked Data Templates: First draft and Call for participation

This could turn into a long discussion ;) But I'll try to keep it short.

There seems to be a culture clash between the niche and "academic" Semantic
Web and the mainstream web development.

Semantic Web is academic because it needs to be. SPARQL has an algebra not
because it tries to be fancy, but because it's the most precise way to
define its execution.

We need to treat Linked Data, and the Web in general, the same way. More as
science rather than engineering, which looks at the global picture (system
integration, distributedness, reuse etc.), also 10-20 years from now. An
ecosystem with 10,000s different APIs and formats, where stuff is cobbled
together with JSON, is not a scalable solution to that.

The Semantic Web has a steep learning curve, and its benefits are not
always direct or obvious. But not everyone has to be a coder to enjoy them
(think Knowledge graph metadata in your Google search). With the advance of
SW technology, future semantic developers might be implementing processes
and link systems buy building models and directing data flows, rather than
programming [1]. When this happens, the overall benefits will be great
enough for wider SW adoption (starting with the enterprise), without even
becoming mainstream.

Our mission is not to convince people of the benefits of RDF or SPARQL. Our
mission is to provide those who already use those technologies with a
uniform and non-ambiguous way to define applications and their operations.

http://in.pcmag.com/microsoft/112748/news/in-the-future-apps-will-be-programmed-in-models-not-code-mic

On Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 7:48 PM, Alfredo Serafini <seralf@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> It's not that we decided one day that the world needs one more API
>> description format. No, LDT has evolved over many years of building SPARQL-
>> and Linked Data-native systems. Since it's useful to us, we think that by
>> extension it could be useful for other people working on such software.
>>
>> of course, I can imagine it: the comment was not trying to say the
> project is unuseful (sorry if I give that impression), my only concern is
> the adoption outside the "semantic" world. For example I'm not sure how
> many providers have implemented hydra in a first place.
> And -just to be clear- I like the ideas behind hydra, and I'm really
> curios to know more about LDT, but in my experience in order to learn from
> the past it's better to think about how to engage a mixed and large
> community from the beginning, just that. Many people I know at work doesn't
> consider the idea of intrudicing SPARQL, but could be engaged with a good
> api model which integrates JSON-LD, just to say.
> Maybe taking those kind of problem into accounts could help people
> understand the benefits of the adoption.
>
> When the discussion starts with the algebra, people almost always run
> away, in my direct experience :-) Finding a way to show practical fundation
> examples gives the opportunity instead to somebody who doesn't have a
> strong theory background but interests in study, a starting point for
> reading more and better. Otherwise it would be difficult to share the
> projects in team which are not composed only by "semantic web" expert. The
> suggestion was in that direction: if it's not helpful, please ignore it,
> and sorry for citing swagger and other things in a first place :-)
>
> I look forward to study more about the project
>
> Alfredo
>
>
>
>