It's not just consuming the data though... it's when you go beyond that and start doing inference and combining multiple databases, that the RDF approach really shows it's value.
If you established a standard for doing that kind of field name exposure, using JSON, and then sure, you could achieve the same effect. But, in the end, you'd probably just wind up with a JSON encoding of RDF anyway. Define things as subject/predicate/object is all RDF really is... the RDF/XML encoding is just one way of expressing RDF.
I agree that a lot of the standards surrounding RDF are ugly. I've always particularly disliked the RDF-as-XML serialization, which took two fairly simple ideas (triples and XML) and combined them into a complex mess. This is why I always hate parsing RSS 1.0. Also, the full generality of OWL just confuses me: It seems to be Prolog done badly.
But just as with XML, it's possible to ignore the cruft (XQuery, XLink, XML Schema, the current SOAP flavor-of-the-month), and just use the useful bits. A similar argument could be made about HTML: For every HTML 5, there's an XHTML 2.0.
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It's not just consuming the data though... it's when you go beyond that and start doing inference and combining multiple databases, that the RDF approach really shows it's value.
If you established a standard for doing that kind of field name exposure, using JSON, and then sure, you could achieve the same effect. But, in the end, you'd probably just wind up with a JSON encoding of RDF anyway. Define things as subject/predicate/object is all RDF really is... the RDF/XML encoding is just one way of expressing RDF.
Hey, I really wish that "subject/predicate/object" was all that RDF was, but I'm afraid it's a good deal more:
RDF Syntax: http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-syntax-grammar-20040210/
RDF Schema: http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-schema-20040210/
RDF Semantics: http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-mt-20040210/
(Those are all current W3C standards)
I agree that a lot of the standards surrounding RDF are ugly. I've always particularly disliked the RDF-as-XML serialization, which took two fairly simple ideas (triples and XML) and combined them into a complex mess. This is why I always hate parsing RSS 1.0. Also, the full generality of OWL just confuses me: It seems to be Prolog done badly.
But just as with XML, it's possible to ignore the cruft (XQuery, XLink, XML Schema, the current SOAP flavor-of-the-month), and just use the useful bits. A similar argument could be made about HTML: For every HTML 5, there's an XHTML 2.0.
Agreed. You can get all the benefits of RDF while eschewing the stupid parts. Just because something has a spec doesn't mean you have to use it.
The full XML spec, for example, is insanely complicated. But people still derive value from it by utilizing a more or less sane subset.
You don't have to use all of that stuff though. "Stuff" layers on progressively to add functionality.