Re: RE : Lack of RDF/XML examples in new standards

I have to fess up. As an rdf newbie involved in the skos work I kind
of pushed for turtle instead of rdf/xml for the Primer. I found that
turtle brought home the fact that there is a data model instead of a
document model behind rdf and skos. That being said I appreciate the
comments that at least tipping the hat to rdf/xml is important.
Perhaps we could have an appendix in the Primer with the examples in
rdf/xml?

Here's a little case study, which may be relevant. Recently I was
talking to some folks at epa.gov and nal.usda.gov who are looking at
doing controlled vocabulary interoperability using skos. They were
examining the rdf/xml skos output of different workflows, which
expressed the same types of assertions about different concept
schemes. But they got hung up on the use of different tags (the
document oriented perspective), and at first had difficulty seeing
that that their rdf data would inter-operate just fine...given
software that operated on the graph rather than the document via xslt,
etc.

I think emphasizing the data model behind skos is essential. Making
people digest turtle and rdf before they dig into skos may be kind of
a bitter pill for those that are already familiar with xml ... but in
the long run I think it's worth it.

//Ed

PS. also I've found Turtle plays well to the JSON friendly web2.0 crowd :-)

Received on Wednesday, 12 November 2008 14:02:24 UTC