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Roger L. Costello wrote:
> With XML, information structures of virtually infinite variety and
> complexity can be created. And XML is usable across a broad range of
> applications. Surely, then, an information system - which undoubtedly has a
> much narrower focus than XML - should be able to achieve all the variety and
> complexity of information structures that it needs with no more than 2
> building blocks and 2 assembly mechanisms. Thoughts? /Roger
I don't know that I quite buy into this bit of "two is all there is" for
xml, but letting that go for the moment, you have rdf -
1) Two bulding blocks, resources and literals.
1) One means of assembly, the triple (or the predicate,if you prefer).
Trouble is, rdf isn't up to everything in the way of knowledge
representation - like you can't make statements about specific rdf
subgraphs.
I am a great believer in simplicity, but often, you have to use the
simple atoms in definite an repeatable structure, like molecules. Then
it can be much easier to work with the molecules instead of the atoms.
Topic maps has some molecule machinery, rdf does not.
Cheers,
Tom P
--
Thomas B. Passin
Explorer's Guide to the Semantic Web (Manning Books)
http://www.manning.com/catalog/view.php?book=passin
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