A problem of semantic web: not providing XML value
Today in the morning, I had a sudden "insight" about one of the problems of RDF and Semantic Web: it misses some of the value that XML offers. This is what my daily commuting bike ride is for, thinking...
The adoption of Semantic Web rises and falls with the adoption of it in standardization bodies. For example the Oil&Gas industry of Norway is thinking about Semantic Web, and I have recently been talking with people from the automotive supplier industry about Semantic Web. To interchange data in a business-to-business environment you would expect that RDF has more features than XML, but in fact, it doesnt.
Also the stack of XML technologies must be embraced better, for example a XSLT-friendly RDF/XML serialization. Please, dear reader, solve these problems and make a company around it.
The adoption of Semantic Web rises and falls with the adoption of it in standardization bodies. For example the Oil&Gas industry of Norway is thinking about Semantic Web, and I have recently been talking with people from the automotive supplier industry about Semantic Web. To interchange data in a business-to-business environment you would expect that RDF has more features than XML, but in fact, it doesnt.
- RDF is less expressive than XML. One example: you can't define pattern in RDF. Look in the XML spec, there is much more of it missing in RDF.
- RDF is not validated. Although in theory, it is possible to validate a file for semantic correctness, nobody does that because of the open world assumption. Hence, there is no validation of the XML in mainstream applications.
Also the stack of XML technologies must be embraced better, for example a XSLT-friendly RDF/XML serialization. Please, dear reader, solve these problems and make a company around it.
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leobard - 20. Oct, 10:40
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Overloading Structure
When RDF is combined with RDFS and/or OWL, there is a greater ability to perform semantic validation while allowing for (what I see in my environment) the constant changes and additions to upstream data sources. While open world assumptions can make it difficult to detect data out of place, it can provide an easier framework for data models that are constantly changing (provided the downstream consumers have a plan in place for how they handle new data).
the argument is theoretic
In theory... everything is possible, of course, but that does not help anyone buying a RDF validator or stopping people from writing