RE: what RDF is not (was ...)

> From: Jeremy Carroll [mailto:jjc@hplb.hpl.hp.com]
[...]
> I tend to regard RDF as an assembly language for information.
> Like assembly you can do many things, but also like assembly, 
> it isn't 
> really the appropriate level to work at for almost everything.

I disagree.  An assembly language is designed for a processor with a known
instruction set, and therefore almost* all the instructions have
well-defined semantics.  There is currently no known 'instruction set' for
RDF; further, attempts to create one are working at the level of defining
semantics for the triples in RDF, and I think at least Peter and Pat accept
that this work will not be fully compatible with layers such as WebOnt.

I alternate between considering RDF as (a) the bytes within the Semantic Web
processor but where you don't know what the processor will be, or (b) a damn
nuisance.

		- Peter

* Many processors have some combinations of words that map to (at best)
undocumented or (at worst) buggy instructions.

Received on Wednesday, 2 January 2002 05:43:57 UTC