Re: Why is RDF such a tough sell?

>>>Seth Ladd said:

<snip/>

> We had to scrap RDF because we couldn't find a working rdf toolkit 
> written in C that could open a URI over the network, get an RDF stream 
> (as XML or triples, we don't care), parse it, store it and later on, 
> serialize it back (to XML or triples), and send it back over the wire to 
> a URI (we are very REST here).
> 
> In short, my point is, we all "got it" about RDF, but couldn't for 
> practical reasons.  There just aren't RDF toolkits for C out there 
> (without hacking together a URI/network library into an RDF parser into 
> a good storage with querying, and back out again).  I believe RDF is 
> tough sell /because you can't do it yet/.  Too much glue right now for a 
> real life project.  Everyone here wanted to use RDF and DAML+OIL for 
> transfering information but couldn't without a LOT more code, and we're 
> not in the business of writing RDF frameworks.  (although that would be 
> pretty fun)
> 
> I hope someone proves me wrong and says "Duh, here is that library you 
> are looking for" so next time we can do it right. :)

Here is 90% of what you are look for:

  Redland RDF Application Framework
  http://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/

You can read the details of the Redland blurb on the site but
addressing your particular requirements, it does everything on your
list in a single library except for:

  URI/network handling - easy to use something like libcurl, libwwww
    that does that in <10 functions.  I plan to add an interface to these.

  Serializing - I have working code for this now.

  Querying - I assume you mean a query language.  In the design stage
    at present.

Being more positive, I guess I can take your requirements as feedback
that these, already planned, features are still needed.

> Not to be so gloomy, but a real RDF solution isn't practical now for 
> fast moving projects.

I would say it is not that bad ;)

Cheers

Dave

Received on Wednesday, 26 June 2002 01:50:16 UTC