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RE: RDF for unstructured databases, RDF for axiomatic systems

• To: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: RDF for unstructured databases, RDF for axiomatic systems
• From: "Danny Ayers" <danny666@v...>
• Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 00:42:27 +0100
• Importance: Normal
• In-reply-to: <r01050400-1022-D0B97CDEFA6811D687D90003937A08C2@[192.168.124.21]>

>danny666@v... (Danny Ayers) writes:
>>Maybe so. But one of the reasons for that may be that many of the
>>'straight XML uses' can be done a lot better in RDF.
>
>For people who think in RDF, yes.
>
>For people who think in XML, no.

I first stumbled on RDF when I was working on some site indexing stuff, and
was looking for a good way of cataloguing pages. I was looking for a nice
web-friendly approach (i.e. XML). RDF looked ideal. When I dug a bit deeper
into the site's requirements, only a handful of categories were required,
and given that I already had a relational DB for related material on the
same server, I just made a few tables. I would do the same again today. Does
that mean I think in RDBMS?

>Those of us who think in XML have plenty of reason to be cautious about
>the good intentions of our RDF friends, I fear.

What exactly is it that you fear?

I don't know much about the political situation is at the W3C, but the only
reason RDF has got this far is that it generally attempts to work with
existing specs. There may be strange amplification effects from the
interactions, and perhaps some less-than-optimal ideas get promoted more
than they might otherwise have done. But those ideas have to work in the
first place, and IMHO the net effect is a positive one. As it happens, I
think a lot of the material in the RDF documents could be seen as being as
much descriptive of the (web) environment in which it was designed as
prescriptive of any new way of doing things.

I don't think that RDF is a danger to people that use XML any more than
string is to someone that uses rubberbands. If you've got a lot of different
parcels to wrap, you're better off having the choice.

Cheers,
Danny.

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