Re: Linkbases, Topic Maps,and RDF Knowledge Bases -- help me understand, please

[uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com]

> At 09:33 AM 4/6/01 -0400, Michael Champion wrote:
> >The xmlhack article about the turmoil in the XML Topic Maps world
> >http://xmlhack.com/read.php?item=1158 got me wondering yet again:
> >CONCEPTUALLY (not syntactically, politically, religiously, or
> >organizationally), what are the similarities and and the differences among
> >XTM topic maps, XLink link bases, and RDF knowledge bases (or whatever the
> >correct term for a "web" of RDF is)?
>
> Even though XLink and RDF are targeted at different purposes, it's still a
> fair observation that XLink has a lot (not all) of the power of RDF.  For
> info on a suggested way to map XLink to RDF, see the note "Harvesting RDF
> Statements from XLinks":
>
>    http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink2rdf/

I strongly disagree with this.  Just because basic RDF graphs can be
"harvested" from XLink doesn't mean that XLink has a lot of the power of
RDF.  RDF can be harvested from HTML as well, but that says nothing about
the power of HTML relative to RDF.

With enough contrivance, one can, of course, get everything RDF can do in
XLink, for instance, one could use XPointers referring to XLink elements
to simulate reification, and one could concoct a schema system, but this
isn't a useful counter to RDF's facility.

And then again there are aspects of RDF that are pretty much outside the
capacity of XLink, such as the flexibility of RDF's XML serialization
(which can be burden as much as boon, but is a fact).

I actually don't think there's much overlap between RDF and XLink at all.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com               +1 303 583 9900 x 101
Fourthought, Inc.                         http://Fourthought.com
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