Re: true/false in RDF?

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 07:54:52 -0800, Joshua Allen <joshuaa@microsoft.com> wrote:
> > Or do you think that it's the knowledge overhead/learning curve of
> > rdfs/owl that limit its use to a subset of the developer population?

[snip]

> But if we want wide deployment like flickr, del.icio.us, and RSS -- like
> the original WWW that is to say -- then we need to focus on the part of
> the stack that mere mortals can use.  

Ok, I take your point. 
RDF and RDF accessories can provide a useful Web-friendly data model
(essentially graph structure, URIs and an XML interchange format). But
a considerable amount more commitment is needed to use inference tools
along with this model, not least in terms of the change of mindset
from object orientation or (wide) relational tables.

But I do think that many of the off-the-shelf tools are getting to the
stage where they do make a viable alternative for mere mortals. I
suspect SPARQL can make a massive difference, the step from a content
management app using PHP+SQL to PHP+SPARQL is a comparitively small
one, with fairly immediate benefits - plug in PRISM, FOAF, whatever.
Standing back, what's happening in the engine may still be inference
(as it is in SQL DBs) but in a cosy procedural-coder-friendly wrapper.

The nice thing about OWL is that
> it doesn't break with the simple mortal subset of RDF that I'm
> proposing.

Yep. But that's part of why I'd opt for doing the true/false in an
OWLish fashion, rather than shunting the logic to the app. It allows
the kind of data mobility Geoff touched on.

Cheers,
Danny.

-- 

http://dannyayers.com

Received on Thursday, 17 March 2005 17:17:42 UTC