Comments on: Eleemosynary RDF http://cmsmcq.com/mib/?p=59 CMSMcQ's klog Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:29:17 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: John Cowan http://cmsmcq.com/mib/?p=59&cpage=1#comment-6435 John Cowan Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:50:57 +0000 http://cmsmcq.com/mib/?p=59#comment-6435 I think your colleague was probably stone cold sober. Because of the flexibility of RDF/XML, it's much easier to create and publish RDF than it is to locate and interpret it. Reuters Health, when I was working there, chose to publish its metadata as RDF because it cost essentially nothing to do so: they wanted to publish the metadata anyhow, and using RDF/XML format embedded in the articles was easier than inventing their own format for it, and no easier or harder to generate programmatically. We didn't have any particular need to read RDF, so its complexities didn't cost us anything. Analogous enterprises are publishing open-source software and Ecclesiastes' remark about casting your bread upon the waters and finding it after many days. (I have, indeed, read all seven Potter books, but I had forgotten Nurmengard and had to look it up. The name sounds to me like a hybrid of Nuremberg and Isengard.) I think your colleague was probably stone cold sober. Because of the flexibility of RDF/XML, it’s much easier to create and publish RDF than it is to locate and interpret it. Reuters Health, when I was working there, chose to publish its metadata as RDF because it cost essentially nothing to do so: they wanted to publish the metadata anyhow, and using RDF/XML format embedded in the articles was easier than inventing their own format for it, and no easier or harder to generate programmatically. We didn’t have any particular need to read RDF, so its complexities didn’t cost us anything.

Analogous enterprises are publishing open-source software and Ecclesiastes’ remark about casting your bread upon the waters and finding it after many days.

(I have, indeed, read all seven Potter books, but I had forgotten Nurmengard and had to look it up. The name sounds to me like a hybrid of Nuremberg and Isengard.)

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