xml-dev - Re: RDF, SOAP and UML

[Henrik Frystyk Nielsen <frystyk@microsoft.com>]

> My main problem with RDF is that I cannot transform my UML
> into "nice" RDFS since UML is object-oriented whereas RDF
> is property-centric.
>
> And all my data is object-oriented, it just does not fit
> very well into RDF. Can you show me an example of semantics
> defined in RDFS+RDF that I can not express using UML+SOAP
> serialization? SOAP serialization seems much simpler
> and better readable than RDF.

I made a presentation at the WWW9 conference [1] on the subject of
serializing RDF using SOAP [2] based on work by Andrew Layman, Gopal
Kakivaya and others. Unfortunately I don't have a link for it.

From a graph perspective, the only difference is whether "about" is
special - RDF says yes but SOAP says no and instead says that the fact
that "about" is special is a result of the RDF semantics which can be
layered on top of the SOAP serializer.

As an example, the canonixal RDF statement that looks like this in RDF

      <rdf:Description about="http://www.w3.org/Home/Lassila">
        <s:Creator>Ora Lassila</s:Creator>
      </rdf:Description>

will look like this in SOAP:

      <rdf:Description>
        <rdf:about href="http://www.w3.org/Home/Lassila"/>
        <s:Creator>Ora Lassila</s:Creator>
      </rdf:Description>

Henrik Frystyk Nielsen
mailto:frystyk@microsoft.com

[1] http://www9.org
[2] http://www9.org/w9-devsemantic.html