Some questions

[Jeffrey E. Sussna]

It's funny: when you talk about RDF, it seems very complex, but when you use
it, it seems very simple. I am using RDF as an interchange format for
metadata about assets in a distributed publishing environment. I have, for
example, a photo of a car racer. I need to know who the racer in the picture
is, who took the picture, what format it was taken in (i.e., JPEG), what
date it was taken on, and so forth. RDF works just gorgeously for this. As
to whether it's suitable for all conceivable object interchange, I don't
know and I'm not sure I care since I only try to use RDF for its intended
purpose (metadata). I actually think the "meta" part is what makes the spec
comprehensible, because I can always return to a specific purpose. I believe
that RDF went too far with its syntax to try to make virtually every XML
document valid RDF. If you want to define a metadata language, define one.
If you want to define a general object interchange language, define that
instead.

Jeff

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
> [mailto:owner-xml-dev at ic.ac.uk]On Behalf Of
> Eve L. Maler
> Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 1999 2:59 PM
> To: 'xml-dev at ic.ac.uk'
> Subject: Re: Some questions
>
>
> At 05:58 AM 10/30/99 -0400, David Megginson wrote:
> >That's just the problem with the spec -- if you forget the
> word/prefix
> >"meta" completely, RDF is just an XML format for object exchange; it
> >just happens that one possible application of those objects if
> >metadata, and the RDF-Syntax spec mixes the two together.
>
> When people talk about RDF, the "meta" part is what I have
> trouble with in
> general.  In what way is markup not metadata?  In what way
> are element
> content and attribute values not also metadata (depending on
> what you do
> with them)?  It feels weird for one particular data model to
> claim to have
> cornered the metadata market.
>
>          Eve
>
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