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> Their conclusion is that RDF and XML are complementary technologies

Sorry, Bruce - but I just had to quote that line. ROTFLOL ;)  Honestly now,
who gets to think up these wicked wheezes? Almost choking to death (or is
that chortling?) with laughter here. (RDF is a simple, almost trivial, data
model which can expressed in mutilple serializations: XML, N3, binary,
triples, whatever.  XML on the other hand is a markup syntax for element
containment which has had a containment data model - the 'Infoset' -
retrofitted onto it. The two are like comparing a goldfish to a goldfish
bowl.)

I think anyway that Raymond's #6 is bang on. RDF is here, is now, is
gradually being productionized, and is available for real-world use. So,
let's use it.

Cheers,

Tony


-----Original Message-----
From: Metadata Object Description Schema List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Raymond Yee
Sent: 10 July 2005 00:32
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MODS] rdf and library metadata


I would also commend Mark Butler's "Is the Semantic Web hype?"   I am glad
that he has updated his slides since I read it a while back while wrestling
with the whole RDF vs XML question.  I wrote up my thoughts on my wiki:
http://raymondyee.net/wiki/FiguringOutRdf
<http://raymondyee.net/wiki/FiguringOutRdf>   I was specifically wrestling
with the question of whether RDF would help solve the problem of
interoperating among metadata specifications.  For instance, if I need to
convert among between DC, MODS, and Amazon metadata;  among  METS, IMS
Content Packaging and MPEG 21-2; between Microsoft Office 2003 XML and
OpenOffice.org XML, where can I use RDF?   At that time I came up with the
following conclusions:



1.      RDF
<http://raymondyee.net/wiki/FiguringOutRdf#head-7a56a0c9acfc4cf03e13f3d42abe
4217a2a7680d> is promising technology in spite of all the confusing hype
around it.

2.      RDF
<http://raymondyee.net/wiki/FiguringOutRdf#head-0b12fac5b2d167a2e309ef6b1702
2db0411b4abd> is not a monolithic topic. RDF can be used independently of
the Semantic Web. RDF is not inherently tied to XML.

3.      The
<http://raymondyee.net/wiki/FiguringOutRdf#head-14d3f31f28ce1e85ec8d227e6361
260ba4c5156a> RDF triple concept is a simple, elegant, and seemingly
powerful one at its heart.

4.      RDF/XML
<http://raymondyee.net/wiki/FiguringOutRdf#head-5cbbccb786f28dc66d0366af4143
4ebda5b66461> is obscure to the uninitiated and makes it easy to confuse the
relationship between RDF and XML.

5.      RDF
<http://raymondyee.net/wiki/FiguringOutRdf#head-1c355d238224023dbda1ec0cf69b
9d97672d151e> Tools help a lot to make RDF understandable -- and usable.

6.      RSS
<http://raymondyee.net/wiki/FiguringOutRdf#head-3b377cadb83e0a1ba967b1ae8ef3
00f506b915bf> 1.0 is a good place to start with RDF.

7.      Non-hype
<http://raymondyee.net/wiki/FiguringOutRdf#head-9e9164817176abc8dc33a178896a
3d3ead22a053> filled assessments of RDF and the somewhat related Semantic
Web are hard to find.

8.      Blending
<http://raymondyee.net/wiki/FiguringOutRdf#head-cc9ba9e4afc73ded97df0ff2b284
b80fb313c41c> RDF vocabularies is probably easier than blending XML
vocabularies but it's not magic either! Some human must do the mapping of
meanings between vocabularies.

9.      Too
<http://raymondyee.net/wiki/FiguringOutRdf#head-e91e319f33670a5bebb83775ed97
ecc0d7423b53> much abstraction and confusion might kill off RDF.

Not having taken a closer look since that time, I don't know whether I'd
stand by those conclusions today.  I suspect that I would.

Bruce, have you tried the Piggy Bank 2 Firefox plugin-in?  I think that I
will take a look at this time and suspect that it's a nice place to get into
both RDF and Firefox.

-Raymond

Bruce D'Arcus wrote:

On 7/9/05, Houghton,Andrew  <mailto:[log in to unmask]> <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:





There is an excellent presentation "Is the Semantic Web hype?" (7 March
2005) by Dr. Mark H. Butler of HP Labs Bristol Digital Media Systems
Department.





[...]



Their conclusion is that RDF and XML are complementary technologies

(though they're seeing XML as a source for RDF, via XSLT).



Anyone that wants to play with an application of this (from SIMILE)

should install the Piggy Bank 2 Firefox plug-in.  They use a

combination of XSLT and Javascript to massage web data into RDF, and

then from there to do some magic with it.





--

--

Raymond Yee                            2195 Hearst (250-22)

Technology Architect                            UC Berkeley

Interactive University Project      Berkeley, CA 94720-3810

[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
510-642-0476 (work)

http://iu.berkeley.edu/rdhyee <http://iu.berkeley.edu/rdhyee>
413-541-5683  (fax)




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