A major problem with RDF is that it is almost impossible to build applications on top of it. You'd need another layer of abstraction to handle the complexity.
I really like the approach Freebase takes. It’s a proprietary format, basically. They use JSON rather than XML and they have their own query language MQL (also expressed using JSON). However their graph of entities maps to RDF as well, so they use RDF (along with common ontologies) as an export format. I think while their system is still complex under the hood, it’s less verbose, less scientific, and more user-friendly w.r.t. the public interface. And most important, thanks to MQL it's super easy to build applications on top of it.
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For me modeling data as a graph (as RDF proposes) is a really great idea! What I always wanted to do is building client applications (single-page web apps) that can operate on a graph of data directly (instead of talking to a REST service). That's why I'm putting efforts in the creation of Data.js, which features a Data.Graph that can be manipulated in JavaScript environments (like the browser or Node.js). Such Data.Graphs can be persisted (synced) at any time. There's support for CouchDB as a backend.
Well, in the README I also pointed out why I decided not to use RDF and instead took inspiration from the Metaweb Object Model (that Freebase uses).
I'd enjoy some feedback btw. The lib is actually working, but the examples are out of date. Have a look at the source or ping me if you want to try it out.
Comments
A major problem with RDF is that it is almost impossible to build applications on top of it. You'd need another layer of abstraction to handle the complexity.
I really like the approach Freebase takes. It’s a proprietary format, basically. They use JSON rather than XML and they have their own query language MQL (also expressed using JSON). However their graph of entities maps to RDF as well, so they use RDF (along with common ontologies) as an export format. I think while their system is still complex under the hood, it’s less verbose, less scientific, and more user-friendly w.r.t. the public interface. And most important, thanks to MQL it's super easy to build applications on top of it.
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For me modeling data as a graph (as RDF proposes) is a really great idea! What I always wanted to do is building client applications (single-page web apps) that can operate on a graph of data directly (instead of talking to a REST service). That's why I'm putting efforts in the creation of Data.js, which features a Data.Graph that can be manipulated in JavaScript environments (like the browser or Node.js). Such Data.Graphs can be persisted (synced) at any time. There's support for CouchDB as a backend.
Well, in the README I also pointed out why I decided not to use RDF and instead took inspiration from the Metaweb Object Model (that Freebase uses).
https://github.com/michael/data
I'd enjoy some feedback btw. The lib is actually working, but the examples are out of date. Have a look at the source or ping me if you want to try it out.