RE: DPH

Pat Hayes said:

> To hell with the DPH. If he can't parse a nested bracket structure, 
> then he doesn't deserve the outrageous salary he is probably earning; 
> tell him to take up gardening instead.

I too used to think that we should not dumb-down things just
so programmers could avoid some basic tasks. But a conscious
decision not to make things as simple as possible is also a
conscious decision to limit the acceptance of RDF.

My belief is that the Semantic Web requires there to be a LOT of
high-quality RDF swirling around. Where will it come from? Small amounts
may be created for research purposes. Large amounts of high-quality
data will not be created unless there is a business justification.

Creating metadata costs money. For people to pay that cost, there
has to be a specific application, and the benefits of using the
data in that application must exceed the costs of creating it. Once
that application has justified creating the metadata, it may be
applied in other ways. But it won't happen in the other order.

In a specific application, programmers may 'know' that all they
need to do is copy a string from one place to another. Anything
that adds difficulty to that task is counter-productive (IMHO)
to realizing the Semantic Web.

Ron Daniel Jr.
Standards Architect
Tel: +1 415 778 3113
Fax: +1 415 778 3131
Email: rdaniel@interwoven.com 

Visit www.interwoven.com
Moving Business to the Web

Received on Monday, 22 October 2001 14:40:39 UTC