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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Why RDF is hard
 jonathan@o... (Jonathan Borden) writes: >but RDF gets hard fast. That's because the problems that RDF can be >used to solve might be very tricky problems. It's not that RDF >*itself* is so complicated, it's that its problem domain (e.g. >unstructured databases or "knowledge representation") is complicated. I don't think the problem is as simple as "what RDF does is hard." For me, the problem with RDF is the demands it places on me for keeping track of the structures described. Invariably, when I look at information stored in RDF (or a Topic Map) in a graphical form, the connections make sense, the overall structure or lack thereof is very clear. When I look at the same information in its raw RDF document form, I start to mutter about people who are too damn smart creating models which are suitable only for computers and people who can think like computers. I find markup very human - even annoyingly human. I just came back from a meeting where I showed off some SVG maps but really wowed them with the raw XML used to store the data. I never mentioned or explained XML, but I didn't have to - they were looking at the marked-up data and comparing it to the SVG and performing their own transformations. Then they asked if they could add X, Y, and Z or put it into Excel/SPSS/etc. and were happy that the answer was yes. (Given that I hadn't finished the demo, this was very gratifying, but to continue...) Embedded markup, whatever its sins may be, is very good at making things explicit. I can usually look at a well-designed document and keep track of even complicated hierarchical relationships and even the occasional ID/IDREF connection. I can't do that with most RDF - when I have to think about it in terms that go beyond simple markup the overhead of keeping track of the pieces makes the effort outweigh the benefits. I don't think the RDF community has ever really understood that what they do is genuinely difficult for most people. The RDF community seems very self-selecting to me - those who can cope with RDF like it, and the rest of us keep our distance. I'm not sure it's ever been clear to people who find RDF intuitive why so many people bounce off of it completely, and I'm not convinced that it's possible to explain that to someone who genuinely likes RDF. I guess we'll see if this message generates the usual "but you're wrong about RDF it's so simple and clear" messages that previous efforts to state the same thesis have garnered. ------------- 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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