Re: [xml-dev] The triples datamodel -- was Re: [xml-dev] SemanticWeb permathread, iteration n+1

[Henrik Martensson <henrik.martensson@bostream.nu>]

On Sun, 2004-06-06 at 21:52, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
> At 10:50 AM -0700 6/6/04, Robert Koberg wrote:
> 
> 
> >So you had a contract with the client. The client did not stick to 
> >the contract and you had to do a great deal of work to make your end 
> >work. If it was me, I would say to the client that you have to 
> >simply conform to the schema that we agreed to, otherwise we have to 
> >do a great deal more work and we will have to charge for all this 
> >work.
> 
> No. This is not true. Thomas was quite clear that they do not have a 
> contract with their data supplier, in this case a government agency. 
> They are receiving critical data from this agency, but they have no 
> contract with it and and no ability to tell them what to do or charge 
> them for anything. Possibly they have a contract with a downstream 
> client, but their upstream information provider is in no way under 
> their control or influence, contractual or otherwise.
> 
> This is the world we have to deal with. This is the world envisioned 
> by the semantic web. We exchange information without contracts or 
> agreements. Some people say we should do this with RDF. Some people 
> think plain XML will suffice. But the old style model of contracting, 
> negotiating, and/or agreeing to everything in advance has hit its 
> limits. The complexity of prenegotiating data formats is at least 
> linear in the number of parties who have to communicate, with a big 
> hefty constant multiplier provided by your friendly lawyers. This 
> model is as outmoded as subscribing to every magazine and newspaper 
> you want to read and having a stack of dead trees dropped your 
> doorstep each morning.

Låt oss då prova ett praktiskt experiment. Vi har en (outtalad)
överenskommelse om att använda engelska i den här mailinglistan. Nu
ändrar jag den, vilket ger samma konsekvenser som om jag ändrade
markupen i ett XML-dokument.

Visst kan du läsa det här, men medge att det kräver mer arbete än om jag
hade hållit mig till det språk vi kommit överens om att använda.

Applikationer som är tillräckligt smarta för att förstå markup utan att
vara hårdkodade för den kommer i slutändan att behöva vara ungefär lika
komplexa som en applikation som förstår mänskligt språk. Den dagen
behövs inte XML längre. Vi kommer nog dit så småningom, men än är det
långt kvar.

/Henrik

PS. Just an example of exchanging information without contracts and
agreements, and without prenegotiating a format.