Re: SIMILE Research Drivers

On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 02:50:52PM +0100, Seaborne, Andy wrote:
> 1/ Just using RDF as a transport format is not really utilizing RDF because
> the semantics are hidden in the internal processed representation and not
> necessarily preserved on converting into and out of RDF.  As it is the
> internal semantics that matter (i.e. are first-class), you might as well use
> XML for a transport as you are relying on the converters to maintain the
> semantics across the Web.  
> 

This undersells RDF a bit, don't you think?  RDF is useful as a transfer
format because it correctly expresses the relationships between data
elements.  In XML those relationships have to be inferred or known.

In any case, the semantics of RDF qua RDF are those of a graph.  Any
refinement beyond that point must depend on something additional.  The
main difference vice XML is that it is very inconvenient to leave 
live object data in a DOM tree, whereas RDF graphs make it tolerable
to leave the live data in graph form while adding semantics in the
objects which implement the objects referred to in the graphs.

[...]
> My example of the schedules related to course material was supposed to bring
> out that some information comes from SIMILE while some comes from other
> sources, and it is combined by some service into a useful element.  This
> dynamic information does not follow the formal ingestion process that, say,
> publication metadata does yet the community (here maybe students taking the
> course) would find the service useful in the way it combines SIMILE
> information with other sources.
> 

One aspect of this, the ingest of metadata from sources of live data,
is on the issues list.  The mirror of that namely publication of live 
data, is the other half of what you are trying to get at, if I understand
correctly.

Hopefully Simile team will clarify their goals and requirements in this
area.
-- 
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Received on Monday, 7 April 2003 12:18:14 UTC