Re: Test of Independent Invention: RDF

On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 8:11 PM, Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org> wrote:

> Not convinced. From my conversations with engineers there like Mischa
> Tuffield, I believe the answer is "yes" it could have been done
> without the Semantic Web and *the part of the company Experian
> bought*, i.e. the honeypot for identity fraud,  the main part of the
> business was done out without RDF. Thus, Experian is not maintaining
> the RDF infrastructure (at least 4store).
>
> So, I still haven't seen RDF used in any start-ups that have succeeded
> yet. I suspect there is probably some ones that *will* succeed in the
> healthcare space. However, in general there are major flaws in the
> entire Semantic Web concept ("follow your nose" URIs lead to
> accidental denial of service attacks, basic CS tells us graphs will
> always be slower than hash tables, etc.) that will likely prevent it
> from ever occupying the place XML or JSON has IMHO. That being said,
> it will likely to continue to be useful in niche markets involving
> data merger with dynamic schemas
>

The semantic web technology stack is a means... not the end.

The conversation should focus around the problem and solution, not the
technology. If somebody asks "how did you do it", then you say "we used
semantic technologies".


> And as a source of academic papers :)
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 8:58 PM, Bob DuCharme <bob@snee.com> wrote:
> > I never said that they were purchased "due to RDF." Sampo asked about "a
> > company or consortium out there which has made 1-10 million bucks
> applying
> > technology, which couldn't have been without the Semantic Web." Garlik
> > applied this technology and made a million bucks, so they were an obvious
> > answer to Sampo's question.
> >
> > Could they have done it without RDF technology? See what their CTO Steve
> > Harris said at
> >
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9159168/triple-stores-vs-relational-databases
> .
> >
> > Bob
> >
> >
> >
> > On 4/28/2015 5:51 PM, Harry Halpin wrote:
> >
> > On Apr 28, 2015 9:59 AM, "Bob DuCharme" <bob@snee.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 4/27/2015 5:08 PM, Sampo Syreeni wrote:
> >>>
> >>> All of this Semantic Web stuff has existed for a while now. One would
> >>> expect that there is a company or consortium out there which has made
> 1-10
> >>> million bucks applying technology, which couldn't have been without the
> >>> Semantic Web.
> >>
> >>
> >> If you're looking for a dramatic success story in which one company is
> >> 100% about semantic web technology and then makes a million dollars,
> here's
> >> one: http://www.dataversity.net/experian-acquires-garlik-ltd/
> >>
> >
> > Bob, they were not purchased due to RDF. Their triplestore and use of RDF
> > was at best support for their main project  They were purchased because
> they
> > would use honeypots to identify identity fraud. It's possible they used
> RDF
> > to help combat identity fraud, but they were not purchased because of
> RDF.
> > That's like saying a social networking company was purchased because they
> > were using this thing called a SQL database :)
> >
> > That being said, there's more investment in RDF than there used to be.
> Has
> > the technology hit a home-run like XML and taken over the industry?
> >
> > The honest answer is "no, not yet." And XML is rapidly being eroded by
> JSON
> > and Javascript. Who knows what will be next?
> >
> >    cheers,
> >          harry
> >
> >
> >
> >> Companies such as TopQuadrant, Franz, and Cambridge Semantics are doing
> >> just fine, and more importantly, their customers are doing quite well
> using
> >> this technology. I think the more interesting thing to look at is the
> number
> >> of well-known companies that while not devoting themselves 100% to this
> >> technology, are still getting more and more work done with it:
> >> http://www.snee.com/bobdc.blog/2014/05/experience-in-sparql-a-plus.html
> >>
> >> It's been interesting to see different divisions of Bloomberg joining
> >> these ranks lately.
> >>
> >> Bob DuCharme
> >> @bobdc
> >> snee.com/bobdc.blog
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>