Re: Blank Nodes Re: Toward easier RDF: a proposal

> On 27 Nov 2018, at 18:00, Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us> wrote:
> 
> On the other hand, understanding how RDF relates to OO programming boggles my imagination.

This is the basis for the Web of Things :-)

RDF as the basis for a) semantic descriptions of the kinds of things and their relationships to each other and to the context in which they reside, and b) describing software objects that applications can interact with locally independent of where the actual thing is or the means to communicate with it. 

Why? Developers are familiar with the basics of object oriented design, and benefit from not having to deal with the myriad technologies and standards used for IoT devices.  Furthermore, device vendors need to differentiate their products both in terms of a product range and with respect to their competitors. We thus need flexible ways to describe the capabilities of particular devices and how these are realised in terms of the object model that developers can interact with.

JSON-LD lowers the learning curve for developers who can initially just concern themselves with the object model, and later discover the benefits from being able to inspect and reason about the capabilities and context. Such reasoning can be expressed in terms of simple path traversal and set operations without the need for mastering SPARQL.

There are plenty of opportunities for graphical models for rules and data using simple transformations from RDF to e.g. the GraphViz DOT notation - I have experimented with this using JavaScript and Web Workers.

Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett
W3C Data Activity Lead & W3C champion for the Web of things