Re: longevity of names

Nice post by Bill ... +1 for interoperability with the future :)
People interested in this issue might also be interested in the related
issue of tracking the evolution of concepts (and singularly concepts
represented using SKOS). Background reading has been made available on a
discussion/proposition space open a couple of days ago on SW Wiki.
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/wiki/SKOS/Issues/ConceptEvolution

Bernard

2010/3/25 Bill Roberts <bill@swirrl.com>

> I worked for many years on issues around long-term preservation of digital
> material.  Danny's point about longevity of identifiers is a good one and it
> deserves attention, but I can safely say that information expressed as RDF
> will be far easier to preserve than the vast majority of stuff currently
> around.  It has a well-documented standard syntax and explicit semantics.
>  Even if URIs stop resolving and are replaced by new URIs, at least they can
> still serve their purpose as unique identifiers and in most cases it would
> be possible to match old identifiers to new ones where necessary.  Contrast
> this with the current home of a lot of data, inside Excel and Word files
> where the ability to understand the data is closely linked to a particular
> application.
>
> The features of the semantic web that make it good for present day
> interoperability between applications also make it good for interoperability
> between today and unknown future systems.
>
> Cheers
>
> Bill Roberts
>
>
>

-- 
Bernard Vatant
Senior Consultant
Vocabulary & Data Engineering
Tel:       +33 (0) 971 488 459
Mail:     bernard.vatant@mondeca.com
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