On 2/29/12 12:14 PM, John F. Sowa wrote:
KI
> RDF as a moniker is an unfortunate conflation of:
>
> 1. Data Model - EAV enhanced with URIs plus explicit semantics for
> typed literals and language tags .
>
> 2. A number of data representation syntaxes and across-the-wire
> serialization formats.
>
> With the above in mind, there is not broken genealogy re. LISP and
> other critical pieces of this innovation continuum re. structured data
> representation. Thus, we have to try to speak in clearer terms about RDF.
Those are useful comments about the underlying technology. But my main
complaint about the SW is not about Tim B-L's vision in 1994.
Yes, I know :-)
I liked
the vision from the beginning. My major complaint is that the vision
was never connected with any problems that anybody needed to solve.
Yes, I call that the broken narrative problem. There is/was a
timeless issue upon which to build a narrative with rich genealogy.
Basically, the issue of open data access and integration --
leveraging what already made the WWW successful.
I typically refer to the above as moving from Open Database
Connectivity (e.g. ODBC) to Open Data Connectivity where 'data
spaces' replace databases as the data access and integration focal
point. A single system no longer holds structured data ransom, at
any level in the value chain. Ultimately, this implies working with
what exists en route to solving a palpable problem.
Tim's major success was the WWW -- which is in the same category as
the iPhone, Google, and Facebook as successful from Day 1. He was
working as an engineer who had to solve the customer's problem
(enabling physicists to share research papers) within the constraints
of budget, deadline, and resources. He finished it in one year with
a few assistants. And it worked.
Yes.
For the SW, the W3C had no clue about what problem they were solving,
how they would solve it, or what kind of budget, deadline, or resources
they would need.
Yes.
+1000.
Evidence boils down to their not grabbing the opportunity to build
upon limitations that already started impeding utility of standards
such as ODBC, JDBC, OLE-DB, Native SQL CLIs etc..
But they wanted to do something, so they started
at the *worst* possible level: syntax.
Yes.
KI
> a significant number of folks will still interpret [RDF] as a statement
> about RDF/XML syntax rather than an exploitation of the RDF Data Model.
Both the syntax and the data model were premature optimizations that
should never have been considered until *after* the W3C had some idea
of what problem they were trying to solve.
Amen!
--
Regards,
Kingsley Idehen
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Personal Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca handle: @kidehen
Google+ Profile: https://plus.google.com/112399767740508618350/about
LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kidehen
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