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RE: patterns vs. identifiers

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: patterns vs. identifiers
• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 11:07:22 -0400
• In-reply-to: <003501c24921$8f04a570$1fc8c8c8@mitchum>

Bill de hÓra writes.
> LOL. For the nth time: RDF is not XML.

So I've heard.  I guess you haven't noticed that I'm complaining about
the RDF model.

> > RDF and XML are a poor fit in general, but I don't think it's 
> > remotely possible to claim that RDF-think is as accessible as 
> > XML-think to most people.
> 
> More FUD. Whenever I've shown people n-triples and visuals of RDF
> graphs, they 'got it' very quickly. I show them the XML for that RDF,
> programmers and people alike (interesting distinction) run away
> screaming. Much the same to be said for UML and XMI. 

I'm afraid your FUD is my reality.  Ugly serializations are just one
small part of the problem.  How much UML can people deal with at any
given time - one they have to cross-reference all the pretty pictures?

The RDF model is elegant and powerful.  That doesn't mean that it's
appropriate for every project, nor does it mean that it's a good model
for how people like to work with information.  

RDF and URIs are great stuff - kept in their communities of people who
like to think that way.  Unfortunately, they're downright toxic when set
loose on communities who don't think that way.  Namespaces qualifies as
a toxic spill from that world into the pattern-oriented world of
embedded XML markup.




-------------
Simon St.Laurent - SSL is my TLA
http://simonstl.com may be my URI
http://monasticxml.org may be my ascetic URI
urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.6320 is another possibility altogether

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  • RE: patterns vs. identifiers
    • From: Bill de hÓra <bill.dehora@p...>

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