- From: Sam Lerouge <sam.lerouge@rug.ac.be>
- Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 16:42:35 +0200
- To: <www-mobile@w3.org>
Hello Carl, The RDF model in itself perhaps does not provide any semantics advantages compared to XML Schema, as far as I know (I am not an RDF expert). The advantages come when you start using RDF Schema. Or better, when different vocabularies are used, that refer to other vocabularies. These "inter-vocabulary relationships" are not known in XML Schema, I believe. The previous version of the RDF Schema specification (see http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-rdf-schema-20000327/) gives some basic hints on how one could use this. I think RDF is all about machine-readability, rather than human-readability. The interesting part of RDF is that a software agent that has a basic knowledge on some constructs (e.g. the CC/PP model and core vocabulary) can learn to use other vocabularies when you feed him a new RDF Schema that refers to the vocabularies he already knows. One strong point of RDF Schema is the ability to express of relationships between different vocabularies. I am thinking of a useful application: when a content provider knows that a) "requested_file --mime-type--> image/jpeg", and b) "user_agent --accepts--> [text/html, text/plain, image/jpeg, image/gif]", then he should be able to deduce the client will be able to process the data. In order to do so, he must know the relationship between the "mime-type" property, that belongs to a multimedia metadata vocabulary, and the "accepts" property, that belongs to some CC/PP vocabulary. Using RDF Schema (or one of the related technologies, such as DAML+OIL) to express both vocabularies, and their relationships, would enable the content provider to learn new vocabularies and their use. Secondly, when I am thinking about "correct use" (I'd better say "proper use") of RDF, I am thinking of using RDF Schemas to define vocabularies, and making use of the rdf:type property in RDF models. I think I wasn't very clear about that in my previous mail. Hope this wasn't too much information in one time. Sam Lerouge
Received on Monday, 10 June 2002 10:42:43 UTC