Comments on: Enrique on what RDF gets us

By: shopogolic

shopogolic — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:06:17 +0000

The thinness of the triple layer can be an advantage, not only in simplifying the universe of possible primitive operations, but also in reducing threshold anxiety.

By: Bookmarks about Ontologies

Bookmarks about Ontologies — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:30:24 +0000

[...] - bookmarked by 6 members originally found by infryq on 2008-09-17 Enrique on what RDF gets us [C. M. Sperberg-McQueen] http://cmsmcq.com/mib/?p=60 - bookmarked by 4 members originally found by piss666off [...]

By: Richard Cyganiak

Richard Cyganiak — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:06:43 +0000

Nice analysis. I would add one thing. In RDF, everything has a URI. It’s trivial to do an HTTP GET on a URI and thus look up more information about the things that make up a graph ?~~ documentation for the classes and properties, definitions and descriptions of the individuals. And the use of URIs means that it doesn’t matter at all, from a data model point of view, if those vocabulary terms and individuals have been defined by yourself or someone else, they are always just one GET away. I find that, if used correctly, this makes a huge difference.

I, too, am a bit skeptical about claims that RDF is inherently ?~~more semantic?~? than other data models. I think it’s the natural modelling, the easy mergeability, and the natural interlinking with other data and documentation thanks to ubiquitous URIs, that set apart RDF from XML.

By: Thomas Roessler

Thomas Roessler — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:50:11 +0000

For my response, see: Si tacuisses, Enrique…

By: John Cowan

John Cowan — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:44:47 +0000

It ain’t the circles and arrows that make ‘em semantic, it’s the paragraph on the back of each one, explaining what each one was, to be used in evidence against you.

By: Jacek Kopecky

Jacek Kopecky — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:07:42 +0000

Dear Michael,
this post and the last have been very helpful for me to understand how RDF should (and how it shouldn’t) be promoted. In my view, semantics is a matter of agreement, and the use of URIs in RDF makes that agreement easier to implement (and disagreement easier to avoid), and the easy merging of RDF data makes it easier to bridge disagreements. I guess now what we need is a rule language and a way of incorporating rules as background knowledge in queries (e.g. ontology mappings, so that the query itself can be kept simple), but I may be going too far for the scope of this comment…

Thanks for writing, and thanks for listening to Enrique. Btw, you are the only writer I read regularly who often makes me reach for the dictionary, for which you also deserve my thanks.
Jacek

By: karl dubost, W3C

karl dubost, W3C — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:54:08 +0000

I don’t know enough about it, BUT what I know is that at least in one project RDF helped me to be lazy.

http://www.w3.org/QA/2003/08/rdf-reloaded