On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 1:23 PM, Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>wrote: > Nicely pointed out, TN. > > Thinking about "metadata" as some other category of data is usually a bad > sign. I've often found it to mean, in practice, "data I care less about". > > Phil, to make the case that RDF helps here, we would want to compare how > easy it is to do significant work using the ill-represented examples you > find versus raw text, versus xml, versus tab-delimited files. > While there is some limited benefit to getting rid of the surface syntax > problem, it's not clear how much of a problem that ever was. > > surely you're joking Mr. Ruttenberg! for anybody who has worked with more than one file format clearly understands the challenges and productivity death in dealing with multiple ad-hoc syntaxes that require specialized parsers (I assume you are familiar with this). Bio2RDF primarily exists just to normalize syntax first (RDF), and then to ensure referential integrity second (naming). Other projects can now take these normalized data and transform them into unifying schema and vocabulary (e.g. we use SIO to do this), and others (e.g. cytoscape, virtuoso, etc) can build tools to analyze and make pretty views of data. It's pretty clear to me that this effort is not a all or nothing proposition. Standardization and agreement at every level brings benefits, but it's a non-starter to wait for full agreement just as much as it's a non-starter for a small group of people to claim (and be solely recognized for) their "community" standard. m. > -Alan > > -- Michel Dumontier Associate Professor of Bioinformatics, Carleton University Chair, W3C Semantic Web for Health Care and the Life Sciences Interest Group http://dumontierlab.com
Received on Monday, 8 April 2013 18:11:16 UTC