Re: Proposal: "Canonical" RDF/XML

Hi Chaals,

Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Jun 2003, Benja Fallenstein wrote:
>>The first application for this is that my working group wants to
>>maintain a TODO list/calendar/schedule/note board/etc. as an RDF graph
>>in our CVS repository. We want to be able to mix many different
>>vocabularies there.
>>
>>I think that your approach doesn't apply there... :)
> 
> 
> I think it does. You keep RDF data, with whatever mixed vocabs and so on you
> have, in a document. But when you want to work with it you have an interface
> that gives a canonical form - an for different tasks you maight have
> different forms.

Hm, I don't think that I want the file we keep in CVS to be a 
task-specific XML form of the RDF data. Again, I see how task-specific 
XML can be useful when "working with it," but I think that my use case 
is more about "keeping it." I would definitely not want to change my 
canonicalization tool and adapt it to a new XML schema each time I want 
to use a new vocabulary in my RDF.

Yes, I think that's the reason that a task-specific XML conversion 
doesn't seem appropriate to me, here: I'm concerned with the *storing* 
and *exchange* (between the people using the CVS repository) of RDF 
data, and there the power of RDF is really limited if I use a 
task-specific conversion instead of a general XML serialization format.

(BTW, I also have a second, related, and to me actually more important 
use case: Identifying versions of RDF graphs by cryptographic hashes, so 
that I can reconstruct a version using diffs and then check it against 
the hash. -- Hm, I think I mentioned this once before on this list, 
months ago *scratches head* (anyway) :-) )

> My use case is as follows:
> 
> I collect data mixing foaf information about who knows who, what they are
> interested in and working on with information about what languages they
> speak, stuff about where they are when, (both in generic location and in
> terms of attending events), what they look like, and perhaps a few other
> things.

Sounds interesting -- out of curiosity: is there a practical application 
you have in mind for this or is it mostly just for fun? :-)

- Benja

Received on Sunday, 29 June 2003 11:50:19 UTC