- From: Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:40:22 +0200
- To: martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org
- Cc: Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@gmail.com>, bill.roberts@planet.nl, public-lod@w3.org, semantic-web at W3C <semantic-web@w3c.org>
On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 6:44 PM, Martin Hepp (UniBW)<martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org> wrote: > Hi all: > > After about two months of helping people generate RDF/XML metadata for their > businesses using the GoodRelations annotator [1], > I have quite some evidence that the current best practices of using > .htaccess are a MAJOR bottleneck for the adoption of Semantic Web > technology. > > Just some data: > - We have several hundred entries in the annotator log - most people spend > 10 or more minutes to create a reasonable description of themselves. > - Even though they all operate some sort of Web sites, less than 30 % of > them manage to upload/publish a single *.rdf file in their root directory. > - Of those 30%, only a fraction manage to set up content negotiation > properly, even though we provide a step-by-step recipe. > > The effects are > - URIs that are not dereferencable, > - incorrect media types and > and other problems. > > When investigating the causes and trying to help people, we encountered a > variety of configurations and causes that we did not expect. It turned out > that helping people just managing this tiny step of publishing Semantic Web > data would turn into a full-time job for 1 - 2 administrators. > > Typical causes of problems are > - Lack of privileges for .htaccess (many cheap hosting packages give limited > or no access to .htaccess) > - Users without Unix background had trouble name a file so that it begins > with a dot > - Microsoft IIS require completely different recipes > - Many users have access just at a CMS level > > Bottomline: > - For researchers in the field, it is a doable task to set up an Apache > server so that it serves RDF content according to current best practices. > - For most people out there in reality, this is regularly a prohibitively > difficult task, both because of a lack of skills and a variety in the > technical environments that turns into an engineering challenge what is easy > on the textbook-level. > > As a consequence, we will modify our tool so that it generates "dummy" RDFa > code with span/div that *just* represents the meta-data without interfering > with the presentation layer. > That can then be inserted as code snippets via copy-and-paste to any XHTML > document. > > Any opinions? Been thinking about this issue for the last 6 months, and ive changed my mind a few times. Inclined to agree that RDFa is probably the ideal entry point for bringing existing businesses onto Good Relations. For a read/write web (which is the goal of commerce, right?), you're probably back to .htaccess, though, with, say, a controller that will manage POSTed SPARUL inserts. I think taking it "one step at a time", in this way, seems a sensible approach, though as a community, we'll need to put a bit of wieght behind getting the RDFa tool set up to the state of the art. > > Best > Martin > > [1] http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/ > > Danny Ayers wrote: >> >> Thank you for the excellent questions, Bill. >> >> Right now IMHO the best bet is probably just to pick whichever format >> you are most comfortable with (yup "it depends") and use that as the >> single source, transforming perhaps with scripts to generate the >> alternate representations for conneg. >> >> As far as I'm aware we don't yet have an easy templating engine for >> RDFa, so I suspect having that as the source is probably a good choice >> for typical Web applications. >> >> As mentioned already GRDDL is available for transforming on the fly, >> though I'm not sure of the level of client engine support at present. >> Ditto providing a SPARQL endpoint is another way of maximising the >> surface area of the data. >> >> But the key step has clearly been taken, that decision to publish data >> directly without needing the human element to interpret it. >> >> I claim *win* for the Semantic Web, even if it'll still be a few years >> before we see applications exploiting it in a way that provides real >> benefit for the end user. >> >> my 2 cents. >> >> Cheers, >> Danny. >> >> >> > > -- > -------------------------------------------------------------- > martin hepp > e-business & web science research group > universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen > > e-mail: mhepp@computer.org > phone: +49-(0)89-6004-4217 > fax: +49-(0)89-6004-4620 > www: http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group) > http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal) > skype: mfhepp twitter: mfhepp > > Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce on the Web of Data! > ======================================================================== > > Webcast: > http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/ > > Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009: "Semantic Web-based > E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology" > http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp > > Tool for registering your business: > http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/ > > Overview article on Semantic Universe: > http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe > > Project page and resources for developers: > http://purl.org/goodrelations/ > > Tutorial materials: > Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in One Day: A Hands-on > Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology, RDFa, and Yahoo! SearchMonkey > > http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009 > > > > >
Received on Friday, 26 June 2009 12:41:02 UTC