Re: RDF: XULing or Grueling

Bijan Parsia wrote:
>
> (working my way backward; I'd prefer to have this on a list I'm 
> subscribed to, i.e., semantic-web@w3.org )
>
> On Oct 5, 2007, at 5:04 PM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
> [snip]
>> 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).
>
> Kingsley, please indulge my devil's advocacy. I've heard the network 
> effect argument for *years*. The flipside of the network effect is 
> that *most* things can succeed if everyone is using it, however 
> crappy. People have *always* been doing big dumps of data into RDF 
> (DMoz; musicbrainz; TAP; WorldBook, etc.). So I tend to be skeptical 
> about this line, or, at least, about it's analytical content.
>
>> In addition, the RDF/XML serialization and RDF Data Model separation 
>> didn't help either.
>
> I dealt with a bit of this in my reply to Harry, but I'll also point 
> out that I've encounter loads of people who don't like the model. For 
> many purposes, I'm one of them. I think both of the critical XUL 
> reflections were critical *of the RDF model* (esp. Hyatt who didn't 
> care for the graphs at all).
>
>> Some outside the SemWeb community pointers re. Linked Data:
>>
>> 1. http://www.mkbergman.com/?p=400
>> 2. http://www.mkbergman.com/?p=405
>
> I'm afraid I don't immediately see how that's from outside the community.
>
>> 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
>
> Perhaps. I didn't find it to have a decent end user interface. I 
> didn't see how to get it to do what it claimed to be able to do:
>
> """Wikipedia currently only supports keyword-based search and does not 
> allow more expressive queries like “Give me all cities in New Jersey 
> with more than 10 000 inhabitants” or “Give me all Italian musicians 
> from the 18th century.” This restricts the overall utility of 
> Wikipedia."""
>
> Being able to exhibit data from Wikipedia is, indeed, useful to me. 
> But this is more interface than anything else.
>
> This is a bit of a tangent from my original purpose which is to figure 
> out what went wrong with some major RDF projects and, eventually, to 
> have some sort of sane decision tree for when or when not to use RDF.
>
> Thanks for the reply.

Bijan,

To cut a long story really really short.

I am talking about the crystallization of a "Data Web" exemplified by 
DBpedia.

I am talking about a Web of Structured data that is demonstrably similar 
to a Database i.e query access via a query language.

I am referring to a Web that is friendly to database centric programming 
and solutions.

I am referring to a Web where the URI is the basic unit of value for 
exposing RDF Linked Data in a manner that unobtrusive re. injection into 
the Document Web.

I am referring to a Web that is defined or dominated by Human interfaces 
(re. your comments about Dbpedia & UI).

Today, the above is coherently demonstrable and available, in the past 
that wasn't the case.

The Structured Data Web is here, the viral propagation happened at the 
onset of Web 2.0 (where blogging commenced the annotation of a lot of 
Web Content).

BTW, in response to your original question re. RDF:

Use RDF when you need to integrate disparate data source aligned to 
disparate data schemas. Do conflate RDF the data model and RDF 
serialization formats (problems of the past). All will be good :-)



Kingsley

>
> Cheers,
> Bijan.
>
>


-- 


Regards,

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

Received on Monday, 8 October 2007 01:50:20 UTC