[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
Mark Baker wrote:
>
> RDF provides an evolutionary story for XML; it enables to-be-developed
> software to process old documents, and old software to process
> yet-to-be-authored documents.
Maybe yes, maybe no. In the sense that the triples would be there, yes.
But in real, complex applications, I think that structures of triples
will almost always play an important role. I call them "idioms". It is
highly unlikely that unspecialized software will be able to make use of
those idioms. In this way the older software may not be able to make
good use of the newer documents. In general, the generalized software
may not be able to use the idioms effectively.
Let's say, for example, that I develop a fairly complex topic map,
making use of a lot of topic map features. I can most likely translate
this to an RDF graph (unless it deals with making statements about
subgraphs). But a general RDF processor will have no notion of what to
do with, say, scopes or instanceOf relationships. It will produce the
right triples, but that won't be enough.
If this picture is right, RDF won't offer as much evolutionary oomph as
you expect.
Cheers,
Tom P
--
Thomas B. Passin
Explorer's Guide to the Semantic Web (Manning Books)
http://www.manning.com/catalog/view.php?book=passin
|
