RDF and XML

At 11:39 AM 5/23/00 -0500, Al Gilman wrote:
>What I would like to hear, here, is Simon's description of "what RDF is
>trying to do" that we could then test for consensus.  I am concerned that
>Dan, just like all the rest of us, may be confusing the details of what RDF
>thought was necessary with what is actually necessary to fully realize
>"what RDF is trying to do."

[diving into the RDF specs and statements again - may be a while coming out]

I'm not sure what we'll be testing for consensus, though, or whether we're
now attempting to rewrite RDF.  That last task in particular in one I'd
rather avoid.

>For my clients, I am keenly interested that the XML community be more
>pro-active in supporting "what RDF is trying to do."  

In my (limited, personal) experience, most of the XML community - in its
broadest sense - is pretty much unconcerned with RDF.  RDF is seen as
arcana for computer science wizards, not as friendly tools for getting
things done quickly.  I suspect that most of the XML community is willing
to be proactive to the extent of "RDF sounds like cool stuff that might be
useful someday" but not to the extent that changes in existing XML specs
for the sake of making RDF processing easier would be welcomed.

>If there are tactical
>blunders in RDF as designed that make it hard to get XML and "what RDF is
>trying to do" up and running together, I need to know because those clauses
>are no more unquestionable in my reading of the moral spreadsheet than is
>the literal comparison of ns-attr's.

It's not so much a matter of 'tactical blunders' as design choices that
might not be appropriate to XML development in general and which I don't
believe should be enforced on the larger world of XML.  I'll have more
detail when I get back from my plunge into the specs.

Technically, I think RDF can layer directly on top of XML and Namespaces
without changes any of the specs.  Philosophically, it seems that some
folks would like to see the assumptions made in RDF driven into the lower
layers of XML, and that's what's led me to spend (waste?) so much time here.

Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
Building XML Applications
Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical
Cookies / Sharing Bandwidth
http://www.simonstl.com

Received on Tuesday, 23 May 2000 11:47:48 UTC