Uche Ogbuji is another voice raised in the “RDF is too hard, make it more simple” crew that seems to be have reached a crises all at the same time. Perhaps it’s the moon. Maybe it’s the water.
Uche wrote:
I get the feeling that in trying to achieve the ontological purity needed for the Semantic Web, it’s starting to leave the desperate hacker behind. I used to be confident I could instruct people on almost all of RDF’s core model in an hour. I’m no longer so confident, and the reality is that any technology that takes longer than that to encompass is doomed to failure on the Web.
Well damn, there goes my use of MySQL. PHP, too. I’m also working with REST and SOAP. Then there’s syndication feeds–if anyone thinks you can talk about ‘syndication feed’ in less than an hour, you don’t know the people associated with RSS, RDF/RSS, or Atom.
Uche also mentions microformats, but as he’s found, these are anchored to whatever structure is used within a web page, and that’s not encompassing enough for all metadata needs. He then goes on to say that he’ll stick with RDF for now, hoping to be able to do what he needs to do without the more escoteric elements getting in the way.
Getting in the way. Hmmm. Well, let’s see:
Mozilla/Firefox has been quietly using RDF for much of its underlying menu structure and other uses for six years or so now.
RDF/RSS, known as RSS 1.0, has been providing syndication feeds for years.
FOAF is used to drive out networking in various environments.
Isn’t there a music site that outputs its data in RDF? I know the government is heavily into it, but that’s not necessarily a recommendation.
As for my own work, I update the metadata in my photographs in PhotoShop, which is used to provide information such as name, description to Flickr when I upload the pictures. When I embed a photo in this page, I create a data store of RDF information for the photos either by accessing this data directly from the photo, or getting it from web service calls from Flickr. This includes translating the EXIF data into RDF/XML format. I then make all of this accessible just by attaching /rdf/ to any post. This is used to drive out Tinfoil Project, and the photo page. In the photo page, I also reference the Google Maps API to use the geotagging included in RDF to pinpoint on a map where the photo was taken. I also have uses to manage my syndication feed, as well as providing references and pointers to other externally associated web pages.
And these are just the beginning of the uses of RDF I’m incorporating into my pages. Best of all, the data that I generate has been picked up by others–I know because I was asked to clean up my use of dates, which I did. Which means then you can use the data however you want.
Every technology has its controversial elements, its more escoteric side. Most technology has aspects that many of the people using it aren’t even aware. RDF is no different, and one can get by using RDF without even once having to become proficient with reification, or use a container. I know this. I have proved this. I have created several applications, have tried to give away code, have written about it time and again and what…not a damn thing. But then, I’m not one of the heads of RDF.
(What makes a person a ‘head’ in RDF? I could define ‘head’ at this moment, but this is a PG 13 weblog post.)
What’s even more frustrating is that when I focused on the more practical aspects of RDF before the specification was even on the street, I did not receive universal approbation from the RDF community for the fact that my coverage of these more escoteric elements was light. Or that I covered this implementation but not that, and so on. Now, these same people are calling out for a ‘kinder, simpler’ RDF.
*bang bang bang* If a technologist falls over in the forest, does she make a sound?
I am giving a talk called “Pushing Triples: An Introduction to Street RDF” at XML 2005, but I’ve about had it with talking.
I was once challenged to put code down to prove a point. So here is my response: put your code on the table, gentleman. Put your code down. I have.
cool, i hope this means we get to meet
i’m giving a talk on “Remixing RSS: Past Present and Future”
looking forward to meeting you!
..Roland
p.s. when is your presentation? please link to it!
Shelly, this is off topic (mostly because I think I’ve resurrected and beaten this particular horse dead again several times over), but the term ‘head’ as I use it is slang for a person who is known to have an affinity or some minimal expertise for a topic, subject, or tool (as in gear head, hip-hop head, etc..)
My cut is this. You’re right about PHP and MySQL, but they are core technologies, part of the LAMP stack. At the limit, people are willing to invest to learn the core. The question is whether RDF will ever become core.
To be frank, I don’t see much substantive argument with my points here. I do find it hilarious to hear Mozilla’s RDF trotted out as an example. Not only does Mozilla’s RDF *not* pay attention to the very esoterica my post was bemoaning (it predates that esoterica), but it is also used in a way that reinforces my own “desperate hacker” bent towards RDF. It’s an example that vindicates, rather than refutes my arguments.
But the main reason I respond is to impart the inconvenient fact of the day. Shelley, you try to make it sound as if you were the lone wise one in focusing in practicality rather than esoterica way back when you wrote her book. Funny thing was that I was a tech reviewer for your book, remember? I was given that job because we were kindred spirits in our “desperate hacker” view of RDF, and I’d been very public with my own practical approach for a couple of years before I ever even saw your manuscript. And even back then, there were many other, Eric van der Vlist and Edd Dumbill in particular, who had kindred attitudes towards RDF. I’m not sure how we can all of a sudden be “hese same people are calling out for a ‘kinder, simpler’ RDF”. I think this just shows that you’ve got hold of quite the wrong edge of things in this entry of yours.
I’m presenting on Friday, Roland. If anyone wants to show up to work with the horrid, mean, nasty RDF.
Chimezie, I was being sarcastic. But thank you for your patient response and clarification as to the term. Really.
Bud, RDF will never become anything as long as people sit there yakking about how ‘hard’ it is — how uggie. Most people could get the hang out of using any of the RDF libraries in probably less than an hour. But what do I know? I’m not a ‘head’ of RDF.
Uche, then where is your hacker spirit now? If we were such kindred spirits back a few years ago, why am I reading now that you’ll have to see if you can make do with RDF. Why now? If you’re a hacker spirit, then you go in and hack. You make it work. It’s the same damn RDF that was released two years ago, more or less. It hasn’t suddenly become ‘harder’.
My point on Mozilla was that it didn’t use any of the escoteric elements. Frankly, FOAF is pretty plain jane, too. So is RSS 1.0. Oh yeah, they use containers and blank nodes, but it’s not that big a deal. People have been able to code these without their thumbs falling off.
As for being ‘lone’, damn straight I feel alone in this–other than Danny Ayers, Norm Walsh, Leigh Dobbs, Dan Brickley, and Edd Dumbill and a few other folks who just quietly go about building stuff. People who work through the spec to create great APIs like Dave Beckett and Chris Bezer and the Jena folks, not to mention the creators of PiggyBank. In fact, there’s a ton of tech to use to make working with RDF easy — just because people accepted RDF, liked the idea of a global metadata model, and made stuff. And not all of us have been accepted with open arms in the semantic web community, either.
We can be seen as dumb hicks to the semantic web movement, but we’re those “escoteric RDF types” to the web developers. In the meantime, I’m building stuff that I think is cool, and don’t even get a nod from either group. And I bet I’m not alone.
Time to stop apologizing for the spec. Time to stop bemoaning the complex bits. Don’t like it, don’t use it. Otherwise, isn’t it about time we just accepted what is it and use it?
Whatever.
Shelley, for the pictures, you might want to look at Net Flick Backup which exports the full content of your Flickr account in RDF.
The whole adobe suite keeps data as RDF in a format called XMP.
MusicBrainz has a metadata suite in RDF for music.
The packaging service RPMfind is working with an RDF architecture.
People are waiting for the killer application when I think ,the killer App doesn’t exist. For me it’s more like HTTP, it’s here, we are using it without knowing it and the end user doesn’t need to know it’s here.
What exactly should this code, the code that is to be put down, be doing? This is unclear. Should the code be proving in some way the nonviability of RDF? This is essentially a difficult thing to prove. The best one could do with code would be to prove the viability of another format. Is this what you are asking?
Or is the code to be put down code that will prove the viability of RDF? If so, isn’t it rather wrongheaded to ask people who don’t believe in the viability of RDF to provide code proving its viability?
cool, i will definitely try to make your talk on Friday the 18th (please bring copies of your book so i can get it autographed)
I am an RDF avoider but I have of course studied it from afar. One thing I wonder about, because I have not seen it discussed, is there the equivalent of common RDF design patterns in the design of RDF dialects in the same way that one could argue that there are common XML design patterns in the design of XML dialects? Or is the data model of RDF strict enough that it would be absurd to discuss a particular RDF dialect as matching a particular design pattern, which I assume is the case.