Re: [xml-dev] What is Data?

[Peter Hunsberger <peter.hunsberger@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 10:47 AM, Frank Manola<fmanola@acm.org> wrote:
>
>
> A variant on this might be a good way to tease out some of the issues people
> have with RDF (or with definitions of data in general).  Suppose we answered
> Roger's original question by saying that data is anything that can fit into
> a relational DBMS.  The fit isn't always obvious (hence issues of database
> design), but take that as a starting point.  Now lets discuss the problems
> folks have with that definition.  Since anything you can fit into a
> relational DBMS you can fit into RDF (with its own issues of "database
> design"), presumably many of the problems will be the same.
>

The big difference is that RDF should be mostly all inclusive;
metadata (well at least partial), relationships and data all laid out
in one (or two if you count the schema) place.  You won't see that big
picture with a DBMS.

-- 
Peter Hunsberger