Re: Fwd: RDF: XULing or Grueling

Danny Ayers wrote:
> passing on to SWEO list - note discussion on semantic-web@w3.org - thanks Bijan
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Bijan Parsia <bparsia@cs.man.ac.uk>
> Date: 4 Oct 2007 22:48
> Subject: RDF: XULing or Grueling
> To: SW-forum Web <semantic-web@w3.org>
>
> http://www.jerf.org/resources/xblinjs/whyNotMozilla/notXulTemplates.html
> http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20071004#%23l-543
>
> These days, I generally muck in the OWL end of things, as y'all might
> have noticed. However, I see these sorts of RDF bashing now and again
> and wonder. Several of the showcase applications of RDF from earlier
> in the 00s seem to have gone a bit bust leaving a bad taste in some
> folks mouth (RSS 1.0, XUL, I would say OWL's RDF syntax..certainly
> for me; I didn't *start out* disliking it in the DAML+OIL days; my
> own personal cross the WSDL RDF mapping).
>
> Now some of these may have had other factors as well (RSS 1.0 is an
> obvious example). But it's not clear to me that RSS 1.0 is such a
> great idea. If we could press a button and eliminate all the other
> flavors and Atom, or RDFize all of them, would we do so? Would it be
> a good idea?
>
> (I suppose XMP is still chugging, yes? Does creative commons still
> use RDF? Is anyone tracking these attempts over time and writing them
> up as case studies?)
>
> In my experience, several communities resented the injection of RDF
> "from above" (certainly that was a strong feeling in the WSDL group).
> Exposure made them more angry about it rather than less. This is not
> a happy thing. When I compare with things like JSON (which is
> popular) or YAML (which I think isn't nearly as popular...don't have
> anything more than my impression), they don't seem to arose the same
> sort of hostility, nor are they generally *imposed*. (Though
> interesting, in that same chat log there is a bit of discussion about
> why Hixie defined his own syntax for a manifest file instead of using
> JSON or even XML.)
>
> The linked data stuff seems harmless in that afaict it doesn't hork
> anyone off and seems sorta neat (though I've personally not read a
> lot of excitement about it from outside our community; pointers are
> welcome).
>
> Sorry to ramble: My question is whether we can or should come up with
> an analysis of these cases. Both the tactics of pushing adoption and
> the actual technological solutions. These don't feel like Clay
> Shirkleyesque confused naysaying, but some real issues. Maybe the
> issues are *all* idiosyncratic (e.g., perhaps mozilla's "bad" RDF
> implementation was to blame for the perceived problems...but then,
> why didn't any of us step up to the plate and fix it? did we not
> think this was an important evangelization opportunity?)
>
> GRDDL seems like a reasonable attempt to rehabilitate the hegemonic
> reputation of the RDF community. So that's potentially good. I'd be
> interested in some reflection about these cases (and others).
>
> BTW, this isn't meant as a nay-saying bit, but as a wanting to derive
> useful lessons from past experience. The above links *do* contain nay-
> saying, but I'm less interested in refuting that than understanding
> what drove it and if there is any way to do better.
>
> (Does SWEO do case studies where RDF "failed"? Or analyses of when
> RDF might not be the right choice?)
>
> Cheers,
> Bijan.
>
>
>
>   

Bijan,

You make valid points.

Personally, my experience is that the SemWeb community hit the classic 
"chicken & egg" conundrum and unfortunately there where too many 
"exploitation of RDF based structured data demos via DL" without actual 
widely accessible interlinked structured data sources expressed in RDF 
(i.e. Linked Data). In addition, the RDF/XML serialization and RDF Data 
Model separation didn't help either.


Some outside the SemWeb community pointers re. Linked Data:

1. http://www.mkbergman.com/?p=400
2. http://www.mkbergman.com/?p=405


I think DBpedia [1] is doing a great job of demonstrating the Semantic 
Data Web's potential via Linked Data.

Links:

1. http://dbpedia.org

-- 


Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	      Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
President & CEO 
OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com

Received on Friday, 5 October 2007 16:04:55 UTC