Re: RDF Syntaxes 2.0

In message <4B5DC7CD.90206@dajobe.org>, Dave Beckett <dave@dajobe.org> 
writes
>
>> For working with RDF graphs, wouldn't it be useful to define a "DOM/API
>> for RDF"?  This would be a programmatic API exposing the structure of a
>> parsed RDF graph, and offering a range of operations on it.  (Or have I
>> just missed the fact that this already exists? - entirely possible.)
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Richard
>
>That's come up before but the DOM for HTML/XML has had it's own interop
>problems, at least in browsers.  There might be a lesson from that.
>
>I think primarily the Java world would benefit from this since there would
>be several major systems that could use it and it's a world that likes
>Enterprise Standard APIs That Start With J (TM)

The current discussion on Jena and Scala encourages me to pick up this 
thread.

Jena (now I've found out about its existence ;-) ) looks like the sort 
of thing I was talking about, except that it is obviously bound to Java. 
A quick glance at the Scala documentation suggests that it moves more in 
the direction of XML.  This (you might be surprised to hear) is the 
opposite direction to what I was thinking.  This API should be pure, 
native, RDF graph stuff.  Even the Jena spec talks far too much about 
RDF/XML issues for my liking.  It could, IMHO, be a whole lot simpler 
and cleaner.

The key feature of the HTML/XML DOM is that it defines, in a 
language-independent manner, a set of classes and properties that define 
HTML/XML instances, and operations that are generally useful for the 
programmatic manipulation of such instances.  One could take the Jena 
API and render it in OMG IDL as a starting point for an RDF "DOM".  Then 
one could generate language bindings for EcmaScript/JScript.

Of course, this wouldn't give users any more code to use, but it would 
give (e.g.) JavaScript library developers a specific target interface to 
implement.

As ever, please gently put me right if there is a whole initiative which 
addresses these points and whose existence I'm not yet aware of.

Best,

Richard
-- 
Richard Light

Received on Monday, 8 February 2010 10:14:09 UTC