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RE: Re: Syntax + object model

• To: "'Simon St.Laurent'" <simonstl@s...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: Re: Syntax + object model
• From: "Linda Grimaldi" <grimlinda@e...>
• Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 11:10:03 -0600
• Importance: Normal
• In-reply-to: <r01050400-1026-089EF5DB8D9611D7AA160003937A08C2@[192.168.124.11]>
• Reply-to: <grimlinda@e...>

I admire your single-mindedness and certainty about the universe- I just
don't share it.  I'm working on a project now that might use an
RDF-based ontology for a repository application, and, I think it just
might work pretty neatly.

It's a well-understood domain that has had a number of accretions over
35 years, with lots of variants on what things are called and how they
are used.  I find RDF quite handy for that. XML in and of itself (with
XSLT) would just require me to write a bijillion (that's a precise
number, by the way) individual transforms, even with a star architecture
approach. 

The ability to use inference engines can be really powerful and RDF
seems to my eye like a natural for those kind of applications, not as a
communications mechanism per se, but as a communications broker, with a
lot more flexibility than any ORB ever built- I never was a CORBA fan.
So, I must admit, at the risk of being banished from the list (of
course, I could always send out lots of emails with tons of offensive
expletives in them if I wanted to do that...), I like RDF. It just may
do for semantics what XML did for syntax.  In itself, it has nothing to
do with XML- it's another beast entirely for another purpose (despite
what some ontological extremists may say).  In the context of that
purpose, it's pretty cool.

I am short- I hope this doesn't make me a troll...

Best,
Linda


>Except that I get fed up with ontologists who keep coming round and
>asking why we bother with this mere syntactical stuff, and explaining
it
>gets more than a little irksome.  Maybe they're just trolls, maybe they
>genuinely believe that syntax isn't interesting, but damn they're
>annoying.

>When I most need agreement, I can't get it, and I certainly can't get
it
>usefully documented.  When I don't need agreement, it comes pretty
>easily.  Workarounds are the best part of XML, as the syntax keeps them
>possible.

>We have the benefit of many available tools, built around the same
>syntactic structure.  Use the ones that do you good and throw out the
>rest- until the next problem, when you just might need them.

I throw out most of them, all of the time.  Works fine for me.

-- 

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Syntax + object model
    • From: Bill de hÓra <bill.dehora@p...>
  • RE: Re: Syntax + object model
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>

• References:
  • RE: Re: Syntax + object model
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>

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