- From: Perry A. Caro <caro@Adobe.COM>
- Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 12:50:35 -0800
- To: www-rdf-interest@w3.org
Thanks to everyone who has commented so far, particularly Ralph Swick and Dan Brickley. Your comments have been helpful in clarifying my confusion. I understood that the Cambridge Communique lays out a plan for ... well, not convergence, but ... for rendezvous, I guess would be the best term. The action items spell out changes that need to happen (to RDF syntax in particular) in order to make the potential for mutual compatability a reality. The problem is, we can't wait. I also agree with what Sankar Virdhagriswaran said, particularly about cognitive load. The RDFMS is a wonderfully general model, but the usual reaction to generality is subsetting, if for no other reason than to simplify the level of understanding required to use it. I already have a difficult time helping colleagues and product managers understand the differences between metadata, XML, and RDF. These are people making fundamental decisions about long-lived data formats that products will depend on. They want things simple, settled, and stable. I can't imagine adding RDFSchema and XML Schema to the mix, particularly since I myself was confused by the Cambridge Communique. Please take this as intended, not as criticism, but as an expression of disappointment. I want to ship products with RDF *now*, but maybe now just isn't the right time. Still, I believe RDF is the best platform for interchangeable metadata that's ever existed, and I want to see it succeed. Perry
Received on Monday, 15 November 1999 15:51:36 UTC