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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Something altogether different?
 Michael, On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:44 pm, Michael Champion wrote: > Also, he > > keeps talking about a "web for data", but doesn't he mean what we > > usually call metadata? > > It looks like these questions are answered in > http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/04/22/bosworth.html It looks to me more like that is where some good questions are being raised, rather than any answers. I think he's saying 'what about doing it this way or that'. > As I understand the argument: The problem with XML is that it isn't a > single simple sloppy syntax such as HTML is, it's a metaformat that > one can use to define many nice clean formats. Since everyone can > hard-code their knowledge of HTML (or RSS), they don't have to deal > with XML's meta-ness and can just get down to business. So, I guess > he's not talking about RSS as a metadata format to describe data, but > turning actual data inside out to fit it into the conceptual model of > RSS. Presumably the web would consist of documents in HTML and data > in this RSS-like format. That would let us query data using Google's > not-a-query-language rather than forcing us to use XQuery or SQL. I'm surprised to hear you promoting Google like that :-) Is this a new direction that we don't know about yet? But seriously though, why does all the web data have to go into one big supercomputer, get chunked, then dished out. Is that the only way that we can work. Don't get me wrong, I like it and use it. But it isn't xml oriented and won't help majority of xml developers to achieve their goals - ie keep working in their jobs - get paid more. It doesn't add any value to what they do inside their organisations. In fact, web search engines in general just have nothing to do with xml so it is just not a thing that would fascinate any xml techie apart from it's daily usefulness. My whole take on xml is that it is a distributed technology, where you can pump xml out to everyone and it will "workout right in the end". Leading to searches internally of the xml data using xquery, within the organisation on banks of computers. > I don't know what to say without sounding like Ted Nelson critiquing > the Web :-) I can turn my brain inside out and see how the Web might > evolve this way to accomodate data more pragmatically than it does > now. Stop being against xml development paths... > I can also see this turning the 'Net into an even worse sewer of > spam and malware than it is now, for roughly the reasons that Ken > North talks about earlier in this thread. It's so bad to see the delapidated state of xml these days. Oh well, like anything, there are interesting things happening on the fringes but the mainstreem is pretty bland. > I dunno ... I can't say this vision appeals to me, but I can see the > momentum for RSS and microformats converging to produce this kind of > thing more easily than I can envision the Semantic Web, or WS-* > creating a worlwide services network, or XQuery as a way of integrated > XML views of diversely structured data on the web. Just leave xml if you don't like where it is heading.... take up fishing or something... Microformats are cool. Just because they can't be monopolised by big companies doesn't mean they are inherently evil. > The world would > probably be a better place if one or more of these came into being > rather than the Web of Data, but the world being the way it is, I > guess Bosworth's vision is a lot more likely to evolve, at least if > you buy Shirky's analysis in > http://www.shirky.com/writings/evolve.html Well making the world a better place is what some people like doing. Not everything is about money. > I don't have any trouble believing that schemas, XQuery, WS-*, maybe > even formal ontologies have a place in business and government > intranets, and the B2B world, and other places where orderliness has > a real payoff and rules can be enforced. But somebody PLEASE talk me > out of thinking that Gresham's Law makes Bosworth's vision all too > plausible for the Web itself: "bad" sloppy, simple but useful data > driving out "good" data that requires schemas or queries that are hard > to define and users that know the rules. Well it really seems that you hate where xml is going. Yet it is natural... Take it easy anyway.... no point in getting stressed. David -- Computergrid : The ones with the most connections win. 
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