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Mike Champion wrote:
>...
>
> I'm not hostile to RDF (for localized domains in which effective
> taxonomies exist, anyway, don't get me started about the "Semantic Web"),
What do you think the Semantic Web is? To me, it is just the union of
the localized domains with links between them where possible. If there
is value in the localized domains, why would the integration of them
into a Web of links be problematic?
> just skeptical that it's worth a significant investment of my time.
> Does anyone want to try to persuade us skeptics that RDF's time
> has come?
Although I'm no fan of RDF's XML syntax, I would say that one of the
major benefits of RDF (beyond the tools, of course) is that with OWL (or
DAML) RDF is much more naturally extensible and integratable than plain
old XML. For instance if you have a property called isSon, I can say
that implies my isChild property and its inverse isParent. I can also
say that your isSon proprty implies my isMale property. Those are
important forms of extensibility. Of course it is easy to make those
kinds of assertions in Java or Python code but only using SemWeb
technologies can I publish those assertions in a standardized manner so
that someone else can build upon them.
For instance, if a third party knows about my isMale property and they
see my assertion about its relationship to your isSon property then they
now know something important about isSon.
Paul Prescod
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