Kingsley, (01)
No Amens here. I prefer to be tolerant of sinners. (02)
I have just argued that RDF is not necessarily better. (Let him who is without
sin among you...) The XML form of spreadsheets is quite useful. So let's not
throw out the baby with the bathwater.
The simple syntax model in the XML specification is a structured expression
language that is capable of expressing many things simply without prejudicing
what can be said. (03)
The problem with XML is mostly a problem with DTDs (a document structure
language) and XML Schema (a data language trying to be a modeling language for
SQL, Java, tree structures and oh yes, documents, and also a mapping language
that relates all the concepts in these languages to XML syntax). The
requirement was to define modeling languages that say things about classes and
properties and have a MAPPING to the XML structure. Instead, XML Schema
defines information concepts in data engineering terms for implementation
features that XML does not have. And somehow we allowed this half-modeling and
half-mapping language to become the dominant data modeling language, even
though it does neither job well. At least the RELAX folk distinguished between
defining structure and writing content rules, while XML Schema conflates them.
So, IMNSHO, the problem with XML is XML Schema. (04)
Yes, XML files are bloated in terms of character count, but that is a direct
consequence of a perceived requirement: exchange text that can be read by
humans using Notepad (assuming you put CR/LF sequences after the closing
brackets). You can't debug your program if your need another (new, untrusted)
program to look at the data. (Of course, that logic does not apply to
relational databases, but, also of course, they belonged to an earlier era of
unfriendly software conventions, which no new software engineer should have to
use, right? ;-)) (05)
-Ed (06)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontology-
> summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kingsley Idehen
> Sent: Friday, January 24, 2014 8:35 AM
> To: ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] The tools are not the problem (yet)
>
> On 1/23/14 8:55 PM, John F Sowa wrote:
> > I agree that tools are not the problem. The major problem is the XML
> > mindset. That turgid, bloated notation blinds people from seeing the
> > underlying simplicity.
>
> Amen!
>
>
> --
>
> Regards,
>
> Kingsley Idehen
> Founder & CEO
> OpenLink Software
> Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
> Personal Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
> Twitter Profile: https://twitter.com/kidehen
> Google+ Profile: https://plus.google.com/+KingsleyIdehen/about
> LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kidehen
>
>
>
> (07)
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