xml-dev - RE: The failure to communicate XML - and its costs to e-business

[David Megginson <david@megginson.com>]

Michael Brennan writes:

 > > And yes, I do see some 'real' RDF work out there.
 > 
 > I'd be very interested in hearing from folks on this list about
 > real world implementations of RDF that they can share -- especially
 > any novel applications other than putting the
 > ubiquitously-mentioned Dublin Core metadata in documents. I'm
 > fascinated by RDF but have had a hard time finding implementations
 > that can make tangible in people's minds the potential and
 > significance of RDF.

Where I've been, people use RDF for serializing general data; I've
never had occasion to mess with DC headers in Web pages.  I cannot
give you a real example right now, but to get the idea, compare

  package com.acme.data;

  public interface Person
  {
    public String getId ();
    public String getName ();
    public Date getDateOfBirth ();
    public Person getMother ();
    public Person getFather ();
  }

with

  <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
           xmlns:acme="http://www.acme.com/ns/data/">

   <acme:Person rdf:about="http://www.acme.com/ids/11111111">
    <acme:name>Jane Smith</acme:name>
    <acme:date-of-birth>1960-10-31</acme:date-of-birth>
   </acme:Person>

   <acme:Person rdf:about="http://www.acme.com/ids/22222222">
    <acme:name>John Doe</acme:name>
    <acme:date-of-birth>1962-05-01</acme:date-of-birth>
   </acme:Person>

   <acme:Person rdf:about="http://www.acme.com/ids/33333333">
    <acme:name>Jean Doe-Smith</acme:name>
    <acme:date-of-birth>1990-01-01</acme:date-of-birth>
    <acme:mother rdf:resource="http://www.acme.com/ids/11111111"/>
    <acme:father rdf:resource="http://www.acme.com/ids/22222222"/>
   </acme:Person>

  </rdf:RDF>

RDF libraries give you a high-level object view of your data instead
of a low-level tags 'n data view.


All the best,


David

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