- From: Broekstra, Jeen <jeen.broekstra@wur.nl>
- Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:17:07 +0100
- To: "Parnell Springmeyer" <ixmatus@gmail.com>, <semantic-web@w3.org>
semantic-web-request@w3.org wrote: > Why are so many of the mature tools and libraries for RDF, OWL, and > Topic Maps built atop Java? I know Python has some great tools and the > Redland libs are mature too, but they pale in comparison to the > number of tools built using Java. It "just grew that way" I think. Sesame, for example, was developed in Java simply because the company that builds it (Aduna) did all of its software development in Java (platform independence was a big thing for them at the time the project was started). Also, I think that projects like Sesame and Jena were started at a time when for example Python was not quite as mature as it is today (though I'm not sure about that, not being a Python expert). The Java platform has long had excellent support for web application development. > It also surprises me because the JVM is slow in comparison to compiled > LISP (RDF expressed in S-Expressions?) and many other alternatives... I know this gets bandied around a lot, but it's really a myth. Java is at least comparable in performance to any modern compiled language. Of course, _badly programmed_ Java is slow, but then, so is badly programmed C or LISP. > I've been a long time follower and partial implementer of the Semantic > Web in my projects but this one point perplexes me (it's also because > I'm not a Java programer). De gustibus and all that :) But these days there's a plethora of good tools (or even ports of tools) to choose from, in a variety of languages. Cheers, Jeen -- dr. J. Broekstra Wageningen UR, Food & Biobased Research Intelligent Systems group P.O. Box 17, 6700 AA Wageningen Wageningen Campus, Building 118, Bornse Weilanden 9, 6708 WG Wageningen Tel. +31 (0)317 480145 http://www.afsg.nl/InformationManagement
Received on Saturday, 27 February 2010 13:13:44 UTC