I see a lot of RDF bashing. Particularly from the "Web 2.0" crowd. It has warts, no doubt (is anything borne of the human mind without warts?), but it also has its strengths. A lot of people say it is a failed technology but it's less the failure of the technology and more a failure of the people saying so to properly understand what it can/does do.
Is that a failure of the technology? Because most people don't understand what they would use it for or how they would apply it? I don't think so. I think the claims that it would change the web were high-flown. I also think its creators did a bad job of explaining it. However, you'll find the people that do understand it and have a domain in which it is clearly applicable - love it.
One of my friends works for the library at UCSD and they use RDF, RDFS, and OWL-DL extensively - I couldn't even imagine doing what she does with the library's book ontology using JSON (as some have proposed replace XML and it's vocabularies, even with a JSON "schema" language). I have another friend working for a biotech company - and he uses it there, extensively. These are only two examples and it excludes the other web projects and companies out there that also use it and it's higher level vocabularies/ontologies (UMBEL, etc...).
Is it a failure for the web? (a topic in another thread a few days ago) I don't think it is, I think it is a failure on the part of developers to understand it and apply it (Drupal has applied it).
Comments
I see a lot of RDF bashing. Particularly from the "Web 2.0" crowd. It has warts, no doubt (is anything borne of the human mind without warts?), but it also has its strengths. A lot of people say it is a failed technology but it's less the failure of the technology and more a failure of the people saying so to properly understand what it can/does do.
Is that a failure of the technology? Because most people don't understand what they would use it for or how they would apply it? I don't think so. I think the claims that it would change the web were high-flown. I also think its creators did a bad job of explaining it. However, you'll find the people that do understand it and have a domain in which it is clearly applicable - love it.
One of my friends works for the library at UCSD and they use RDF, RDFS, and OWL-DL extensively - I couldn't even imagine doing what she does with the library's book ontology using JSON (as some have proposed replace XML and it's vocabularies, even with a JSON "schema" language). I have another friend working for a biotech company - and he uses it there, extensively. These are only two examples and it excludes the other web projects and companies out there that also use it and it's higher level vocabularies/ontologies (UMBEL, etc...).
Is it a failure for the web? (a topic in another thread a few days ago) I don't think it is, I think it is a failure on the part of developers to understand it and apply it (Drupal has applied it).