Re: Atom and RDF

I've trimmed the recipients list a bit, so I hope everyone who wants 
this gets it!

Read [1], particularly towards the end of the section "The web of data 
- beyond HTML".

I quote:
"Basically, the  problem is linear in the size of your system. Just as 
new web  servers can be fitted into the web without disturbing the 
rest, so  new RDF applications supply and use information without 
upsetting  the rest of the system. The huge number of custom date 
interfaces  has, seemingly miraculously, disappeared."

It puts quite clearly why RDF solves the MxN problem, from an 
enterprise perspective.

Regards,
-Richard

[1] J. Hendler, T. Berners-Lee, and E. Miller, “Integrating 
applications on the Semantic Web,” Journal of the Institute of 
Electrical Engineers of Japan, vol. 122, no. 10, pp. 676–680, 2002. in 
Japanese; English from http://www.w3.org/2002/07/swint.


On Oct 12, 2004, at 16:48, Danny Ayers wrote:

>
> On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 07:16:29 -0700 (PDT), Dare Obasanjo 
> <kpako@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> --- Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@gmail.com> wrote:
>> What is this N^2 interop problem and can you explain
>> how it doesn't apply to using RDF? I've read Ken
>> MacLeod's postings on the topic but as an aggregator
>> author I felt his arguments were specious.
>
> I thought Ken put it rather well, but it's easy enough to describe in
> terms of aggregators. An aggregator with RDF support can aggregate
> arbitrary data (say RSS plus the author's personal information and
> their work schedules) as long as it's expressed as RDF/XML. It can
> store it. Ok, you could argue that all that could be done with XML
> alone. But the big difference is that because the source data has been
> expressed as RDF it has consistent semantics that can be used for
> query or inference.
>
> So I could run a query like "give me all the items friends of Joshua
> posted on days when he was on vacation". You could build a similar
> system based on XML or a RDBMS. But the N^2 problem kicks in when you
> try to add a new vocabulary or terms - say "starsigns". Exactly the
> same store and query mechanism can be used to ask "give me all the
> items people with the same starsign as Joshua posted on days when he
> was on vacation".
>
> Every term/vocab you add, has to be fitted it in with the existing
> infrastructure, i.e. the N systems you've already got. Whereas if your
> original data is expressed in RDF, you only have to fit in with 1
> system.
>
> This doesn't work for XML alone as there isn't any consistent
> interpretation above the syntax. RDF can do it because it maps to
> certain bits of pretty well researched bits of predicate logic. It
> really justs pushes the shared language up a level is all.
>
> Cheers,
> Danny.
>
> -- 
>
> http://dannyayers.com
>

Received on Tuesday, 12 October 2004 16:46:35 UTC