Comments on: digging ourselves back from the Semantic Web mire http://www.alandix.com/blog/2007/11/11/digging-ourselves-back-from-the-semantic-web-mire/ just starting ... Tue, 6 Jan 2009 09:23:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Alan’s blog » practical RDF http://www.alandix.com/blog/2007/11/11/digging-ourselves-back-from-the-semantic-web-mire/#comment-8683 Alan’s blog » practical RDF Sat, 23 Feb 2008 15:14:15 +0000 http://www.alandix.com/blog/2007/11/11/digging-ourselves-back-from-the-semantic-web-mire/#comment-8683 [...] Chris Bizer, Richard Cyganiak and others at Freie Universität Berlin. In a previous post, “digging ourselves back from the Semantic Web mire“, I worried about the ghetto-like nature of RDF and the need for “abstractions that [...] [...] Chris Bizer, Richard Cyganiak and others at Freie Universität Berlin. In a previous post, “digging ourselves back from the Semantic Web mire“, I worried about the ghetto-like nature of RDF and the need for “abstractions that [...]

]]> By: Paul Miller http://www.alandix.com/blog/2007/11/11/digging-ourselves-back-from-the-semantic-web-mire/#comment-4659 Paul Miller Mon, 12 Nov 2007 13:37:01 +0000 http://www.alandix.com/blog/2007/11/11/digging-ourselves-back-from-the-semantic-web-mire/#comment-4659 As Alan's post arose from a discussion on the Advisory Group mailing list, let me share the response that I sent to that list... Alan thanks for that. Were you having a bad day? ;-) RDF and the other Semantic Web technologies certainly aren't perfect, and perhaps we're therefore seeing a number of attempts to develop more focussed solutions to the specific subset of problems faced by each of the activities that you mention. The problem comes, of course, when we wish to expose data from some of these to the wider Web, or when we wish to interoperate between them. At that point, don't we end up reinventing or reverse engineering an awful lot of the stuff that's in RDF, OWL, SPARQL etc that these more lightweight alternatives originally omitted? Either that, or you end up with competing and partisan solutions that have to fight it out... or wait until tool developers cope with the additional complexity of supporting multiple possibilities. Our own chosen path has been to remain pretty close to the W3C specifications, and although not without their issues we are finding them largely fit for (our) purposes. Ian can elucidate... ;-) Son/daughter of RDF will end up better, though, by observing and learning from the successes and failures associated with each of these attempts. Paul -- Dr Paul Miller Technology Evangelist, Talis w: www.talis.com/platform skype: napm1971 mobile/cell: +44 7769 740083 www.linkedin.com/in/pau1mi11er As Alan’s post arose from a discussion on the Advisory Group mailing list, let me share the response that I sent to that list…

Alan

thanks for that. Were you having a bad day? ;-)

RDF and the other Semantic Web technologies certainly aren’t perfect, and perhaps we’re therefore seeing a number of attempts to develop more focussed solutions to the specific subset of problems faced by each of the activities that you mention.

The problem comes, of course, when we wish to expose data from some of these to the wider Web, or when we wish to interoperate between them. At that point, don’t we end up reinventing or reverse engineering an awful lot of the stuff that’s in RDF, OWL, SPARQL etc that these more lightweight alternatives originally omitted?

Either that, or you end up with competing and partisan solutions that have to fight it out… or wait until tool developers cope with the additional complexity of supporting multiple possibilities.

Our own chosen path has been to remain pretty close to the W3C specifications, and although not without their issues we are finding them largely fit for (our) purposes. Ian can elucidate… ;-)

Son/daughter of RDF will end up better, though, by observing and learning from the successes and failures associated with each of these attempts.

Paul

–
Dr Paul Miller
Technology Evangelist, Talis
w: http://www.talis.com/platform skype: napm1971
mobile/cell: +44 7769 740083

http://www.linkedin.com/in/pau1mi11er

]]>