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Re: RDF and the new releases

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• Subject: Re: RDF and the new releases
• From: Matt Gushee <mgushee@h...>
• Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 08:40:43 -0700
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On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 10:52:02PM -0800, Ken North wrote:

> As for RDF being unreadable or incomprehensible, Jonathan Borden's 
> always said you can do a presentation about RDF using one slide.

Could be. On the other hand, I've seen people--smart developers who have
little trouble grasping, for example, XSLT, struggle to get their heads
around RDF. But I have a hypothesis as to why this is so. 

As
    Simon St.Laurent wrote:

> There's a serious divide between the two approaches.  I'm very impressed
> by some of the people who do regularly cross between XML and RDF and
> that they can keep their heads straight as they do so.

Yes, and I think the RDF model is not at all hard to understand:
ignoring the standard terminology, it's all about objects with named
properties. What could be simpler? But the XML syntax seems to obscure
the simplicity of the model. I believe the source of the confusion is
that people expect the structure of an XML-RDF document to reflect the
structure of the underlying graph ... but very often it doesn't.

-- 
Matt Gushee                 When a nation follows the Way,
Englewood, Colorado, USA    Horses bear manure through
mgushee@h...           its fields;
http://www.havenrock.com/   When a nation ignores the Way,
                            Horses bear soldiers through
                                its streets.
                                
                            --Lao Tzu (Peter Merel, trans.)

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: RDF and the new releases
    • From: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@f...>

• References:
  • RDF and the new releases
    • From: "Shelley Powers" <shelleyp@b...>
  • Re: RDF and the new releases
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
  • Re: RDF and the new releases
    • From: "Ken North" <ken_north@c...>

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