xml-dev - Re: RDF Sample, ICAO Airport Codes

[David Megginson <david@megginson.com>]

Jeff Greif writes:

 > I'm not sure what the advantage of RDF is here, in comparison with
 > using an ordinary .xml file (changing rdf:about to a namespace
 > declaration somewhere and providing a DTD or XML Schema to specify
 > an apt:Airport).  An airport is a resource, so you might want a
 > description of a bunch of them, but I'm having trouble finding a
 > context in which this is metadata, not data.

Who said anything about metadata?

RDF is a general format for serializing entities and their
relationships -- sure it's useful for metadata, but it's main use (I
think) is as a more abstract layer on top of XML for exchanging
objects.

That said, the Airport sample isn't a particularly exciting RDF
application in itself: it will be interesting when I have time to
create other documents that point to it:

  <apt:SurfaceObservation>
   <apt:airport rdf:resource="http://www.megginson.com/exp/id/airports/KLAX">
   <apt:date>1999-07-30T11:00:00</apt:date>
   <apt:clouds>2300ft, broken</apt:clouds>
   <apt:clouds>5500ft, overcast</apt:clouds>
   <apt:wind>From 270 at 5kt, gusting</apt:wind>
   <apt:visibility>20 miles</apt:visibility>
  </apt:SurfaceObservation>

 > Is is just that this is reference data perhaps useful to many
 > xml-based apps, such as weather reporting, flight schedules, a java
 > applet that shows the progress of a flight and its endpoints?  If
 > so, would a table of cities and zipcodes be similarly metadata?

Or data, as you wish.  This is meant just to allow people to test
their RDF software on some real data (this is a developers' list,
after all), but lists like this in standard RDF formats would be very
useful.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 david@megginson.com
           http://www.megginson.com/

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