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Re: Meta-somethingorother (was the semantic web mega-permathre

• To: XML Developers List <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: Meta-somethingorother (was the semantic web mega-permathread thing)
• From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@c...>
• Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 15:26:44 -0400
• In-reply-to: <2E9DDDC2-BC79-11D8-BADE-000A95BA5A2C@o...>
• References: <0E36FD96D96FCA4AA8E8F2D199320E520212EC67@R... t.com> <p06010202bcef46a8e8f7@[192.168.254.88]> <20040611165350.GB14122@m...> <p06010203bcf09c0d1e93@[192.168.254.88]> <2E9DDDC2-BC79-11D8-BADE-000A95BA5A2C@o...>
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Jonathan Borden wrote:

 >  RDF itself is hardly a standardized
> database schema. That is akin to saying that since all database schemas 
> are written down on paper as a sequence of characters, that Unicode is a 
> standardized database scheme.
> 
> What Mark is trying to say is that the advantages of RDF, like Unicode, 
> are better than the disadvantage of not having RDF, or Unicode. It 
> remains to be seen if triples are this powerful -- we could, for 
> example, get by with tuples as encoded as lists -- indeed KIF has many 
> proponents, and I'm sure that if RDF were to disappear from the face of 
> the earth, that people could take off with KIF where RDF was left 
> behind. But similarly there have been alternatives to Unicode, and what 
> Mark is trying to say is that there are advantages to having standard 
> languages with which to communicate. RDF/OWL is not then a schema 
> *itself*, rather a way to write down and communicate schemas.
> 

I just re-discovered this page that Tim BL put up in 1999 -

Semantic Web - Why RDF is more than XML
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/RDF-XML.html

It's actually pretty relevant here, even five years later.

BTW, I found this while working on on-the-fly clustering of bookmarks 
using just their titles.  All that semantic content in titles, and it's 
so hard to get at (if you are not a person)!  This title clustered 
nicely under "Semantic web".

Cheers,

Tom P

-- 
Thomas B. Passin
Explorer's Guide to the Semantic Web (Manning Books)
http://www.manning.com/catalog/view.php?book=passin

• References:
  • RE: Meta-somethingorother (was the semantic webmega-permathread thing)
    • From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
  • Re: Meta-somethingorother (was the semantic web mega-permathread thing)
    • From: Mark Baker <distobj@a...>
  • Re: Meta-somethingorother (was the semantic webmega-permathread thing)
    • From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
  • Re: Meta-somethingorother (was the semantic web mega-permathread thing)
    • From: Jonathan Borden <jonathan@o...>

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