- From: Dan Brickley <Daniel.Brickley@bristol.ac.uk>
- Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1999 02:05:06 +0000 (GMT)
- To: www-rdf-interest@w3.org
- cc: RDF mailing list <rdf-dev@mailbase.ac.uk>
On Mon, 8 Nov 1999, Sergey Melnik wrote:
> A number of people asked me to put the streaming-based version of SiRPAC
> on the Web.
> It is available now at
>
> http://www-diglib.stanford.edu/diglib/ginf/sirpac.html
>
> There you'll also find the directions how to parse the Open Directory
> dumps.
[ I'm moving this thread across to www-rdf-interest as per my announcement
of the RDF-DEV lists retirement[1]. Anyone following up, please send
only to www-rdf-interest. (RDF Interest Group members: you may have
missed this. We've recently had an influx of new listmembers from the
older RDF-DEV list - I thought it sensible to consolidate around a
single mailing list to avoid fragmentation).]
Anyway, and straying off the original topic, this announcement reminds
me that the simple RDF datasource API in SiRPAC was only intended
as a stopgap, and that standardised parser APIs for RDF would be
enormously useful...
Since we have a new version of SiRPAC looming, and have recently had a
second Perl parser for RDF announced (not to mention the libwww
C-translation of the SiRPAC parser and the Mozilla.org implemention
[2]), I suspect now would be good time to revisit the topic of RDF APIs.
SiRPAC currently includes a very simple RDF parser API defining RDF
Consumer and DataSource objects. A number of other approaches have been
used elsewhere -- with SiRPAC being re-released, it seems sensible to
invite suggestions about improvements that might be made to the way
SiRPAC interfaces with other RDF-based applications.
RDF-DEV folks will remember a thread back in June in which Ron Daniel
began discussions of a community-driven API for RDF ("RADIX"). The mail
archives for these remain online and searchable [3]. Since then there
have been a number of new developments which make RADIX seem like a good
thing to spend time on: more parsers in development, the
Cambridge Communique clarifications about the relationship between RDF
and XML [4], new applications such as GINF and DATAX, as well as the
submission to OMG of a CORBA interface to RDF [5]).
The Cambridge Communique on RDF and XML makes a point of saying:
8. A new simplified XML transfer syntax for RDF and
an API for accessing RDF data models should be produced.
This latter point (an RDF API) strikes me as a good reason to revisit
the notion of a simple lightweight RDF API, and the RDF Interest Group
is chartered to explore exactly these issues. So... it might be worth
starting with Ron's original RADIX post, 'A proposal for an RDF API'[6]
in the RDF-DEV archives, and seeing where we go with that...
cheers,
Dan
[1] http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/rdf-dev/1999-11/0000.html
[2] all linked from http://www.w3.org/RDF/
[3] http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/rdf-dev/search.html
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webglimpse?query=radix&doand=yes&listname=rdf-dev&form=compact
[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/NOTE-schema-arch-19991007
[5] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/1999Oct/0004.html
[6] http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/rdf-dev/1999-06/0002.html
Received on Monday, 8 November 1999 21:05:09 UTC