Re: Pondering RDF Path

hey Sean, Graham

Ooh, I was hoping someone would do this :)

I'd be very interested to see a series of mappings between simple
squish-like RDF queries and RDFPaths of some description. I'm hoping to
get around to doing it myself (not sure if I'll have time), maybe with
the RDF query tests we've been accumulating [1].

Damian Steer has come up with an implementation of an RDF path syntax as
an addition to Saxon:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2003Aug/0126.html
(he's been updating it, and about to do another release)

- it might be interesting to compare yours and his approaches Sean.

I really like the idea of an RDF path syntax, because I think that it
might enable the huge community of XSLT users to get to grips with RDF
quickly without dealing with the syntax, and using the XML tools they
are used to. Not being able to use XML transformation tools with RDF
is a big issue for the speed of adoption of RDF. Norm Walsh has been
working on similar lines with RDFTwig:

http://rdftwig.sourceforge.net/

though without using an Xpath syntax.

What I'd love to see is a mapping from (some subset of?) RDF-path type
queries to say Squish or RDQL so that you could get a relatively efficient
backend database behind an XSLT engine. I think Damian is planning to
implement this, although it doesn't seem to be straightforward in Saxon.

cheers

Libby

[1] http://www.w3.org/2003/03/rdfqr-tests/
http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/rdfquery/tests/
(also on sourceforge, but not accessible by the web as far as I can see:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/rdftests/)



On Thu, 4 Sep 2003, Graham Klyne wrote:

>
> I'd be interested to hear how you think an RDF Path language differs from
> the simple RDF query proposals that have been circulating.  To my mind, the
> simplicity of RDF's syntactic model, and its close relationship to its data
> representation framework, doesn't leave a lot of room for distinction
> between these ideas.
>
> (Roughly, I'm thinking of *Path as a selector that operates closely on the
> syntax to which it is applied, where *Query abstracts away somewhat to
> access (at some level) the information thus encoded.)
>
> #g
> --
>
> At 03:39 04/09/03 +0100, Sean B. Palmer wrote:
>
> >I wanted to implement an RDF Path language in an API that I'm working
> >on, but current proposals have some serious problems, which generally
> >fall into two groups: unclear data model, and conflation of arcs and
> >nodes.
> >
> >To that end, I've been working on an RDF Path language that doesn't
> >have these problems.
> >
> >    http://infomesh.net/2003/rdfpath/
> >    - Pondering RDF Path
> >
> >The goal is implementability. Feedback is most welcome, noting,
> >however, that it's still in its early stages.
> >
> >Cheers,
> >
> >--
> >Sean B. Palmer, <http://purl.org/net/sbp/>
> >"phenomicity by the bucketful" - http://miscoranda.com/
>
> ------------
> Graham Klyne
> GK@NineByNine.org
>
>
>

Received on Thursday, 4 September 2003 05:05:07 UTC