RE: Assumptions about anonymous resources

McBride, Brian wrote:
> 
> Whilst you could do that, it doesn't feel like a very clean
> solution.  What advantage do you get out of using
> RDF in this way?

The advantage is that I don't have to keep track of unique IDs when
manipulating data in this format.  But I agree, it doesn't feel very clean.

> Could XSLT help here at all?  Would it be possible to start
> with a file in the format you prefer and have the fragment
> ID's inserted automatically by an application or XSLT transform.
> Then you would have more useful RDF, could use standard RDF
> tools and your data could be processed by other systems.

Good idea.

I think I was trying to tie together too many things in one place.  It is
very easy for me to write an XML DTD that neatly defines the data I am
manipulating, and to write software to process it - but nobody outside my
organisation would know what my data means, which is why I started looking
at RDF.  I *like* the idea of search engines and other agents being able to
understand my data.

I believe that implementing an RDF parser is currently overkill for my
particular application (tranferring data between two relational databases),
but I ultimately want the data to be useful to other systems, which is why I
was trying to inline RDF with it.

Regards,

Tim Serong
Senior Software Developer, Publishing
IXLA Limited
Email: tims@ixla.com.au
Web: http://www.ixla.com/