Re: XRDF - an eXtensible Resource Description Framework

Dan Brickley wrote:
> 
> Interesting proposal, 

I hope it is not like "interesting" in: (dinner context): "Hm, that is
really an *interesting* taste ... would you please excuse me ... " ;)

> though I'm left wondering whether it proposes a
> fix-up to W3C's RDF or is a proposal for something different that happens
> to have very a similar name (XRDF). I guess N3 is in a similar boat: is
> it an RDF notation or an RDF-like system...?

Hm, from my point of view, we tried to put into XRDF some of the stuff*
(see footnote) that we've been missing when we tried to use RDF for a
specific purpose (simplicity, preciseness, universality,
comprehensibility, extensibility - and I could argue for each of this in
detail, but this would only be ONE personal perspective). 

In the end, the question is not if it is an RDF notation (no, it's
*only* XML) or an "RDF-like" system (yes, IMHO) but if it matches the
needs of people that are looking for capabilities that they "somehow"
expect from an "RDF-like" system. I would really like to know, how such
expectations/hopes have looked like and what kinds of successes and,
more importantly, disappointments have occured while trying to use
RDF/RDFS. Compiling such a collection (not only of applications (I
remember Brian's poll), but also of applications/ideas/concepts that
newer came to live due to whatever problems encountered with RDF) might
be a helpful step in judging about the relevance/useability of languages
like RDF/N3/XRDF/XTM. Perhaps, I should simply ask the people in RDF-IG
to give an impression of their experiences, compile it, and  afterwards,
we may be able to begin to ask which language (RDF, N3, X RDF, XTM,
XWhatEver) is closer to what we expect to be an "RDF-like" language?


Best regards,
	Wolfram 

*) simplicity, preciseness, universality, comprehensibility,
extensibility - and I could argue for each of this in detail, but this
would only be ONE personal perspective. (I certainly do not claim, that
all these noble objectives have been fulfilled with XRDF,
http://nestroy.wi-inf.uni-essen.de/rdf/xrdf, but it may be seen as an
"interesting" step ;)

Received on Wednesday, 31 January 2001 09:45:41 UTC