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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] The RDF model *is* part of the problem
"Perry A. Caro" <caro@a...> writes:
[snipped way out of context]
> RDF may fail the using part without understanding all criteria --
> lack of full understanding of the model can get you into trouble.
> When I help people who are having a hard time understanding the
> model, I use this approach. The interesting bits of the full
> directed graph can often be transformed into ordinary trees without
> loss of information, each rooted at a node that was originally
> identified with an rdf:about attribute.
I agree, but I'd take it much further -- I find that the people I work
with (many of them software developers, granted) find the RDF model
terribly confusing, but light bulbs go on when I tell them to compare
a Java interface
public interface Person
{
public String getId ();
public String getName ();
public Date getBirthDate ();
public String getNationality ();
public Person getFather ();
public Person getMother ();
}
with an RDF instance
<acme:Person rdf:about="http://www.acme.com/ids/0001">
<acme:name>Jane Smith</acme:name>
<acme:birth-date>1970-11-17</acme:birth-date>
<acme:nationality>US</acme:nationality>
<acme:father rdf:resource="http://www.acme.com/ids/0002"/>
<acme:mother rdf:resource="http://www.acme.com/ids/0002"/>
</acme:Person>
When they realize that RDF is just a way to serialize objects in XML,
and that they can safely ignore all of the bizarre pseudo-grammatical
and pseudo-KR terminology (sometimes after several wasted days
puzzling over it), they warm up to RDF a little.
The model is a little less threatening to database people because it
looks a tiny bit like relational tables (though incompletely
specified).
--
David Megginson david@m...
http://www.megginson.com/
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