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

[<Satya.Rao@chase.com>]

The first line in RDF specification says

"The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a foundation for processing
metadata"

I thought this is the major use of the RDF. For serializing the entities can't
we use XML?

Thanks
---------------------- Forwarded by Satya Rao/CHASE on 08/30/99 12:35 PM
---------------------------


David Megginson <david@megginson.com> on 07/30/99 11:44:00 AM

Please respond to David Megginson <david@megginson.com>


To:   xml-dev@ic.ac.uk
cc:    (bcc: Satya Rao/CHASE)
Subject:  Re: RDF Sample, ICAO Airport Codes




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/

xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN
981-02-3594-1
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)




xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)