John and everyone.<div><br></div><div>great stuff (I did enjoy the Tim Bray piece)</div><div><br></div><div>Eagerly awaiting the pro-RDF camp's response</div><div><br></div><div>Adam<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 4 December 2011 01:58, John F. Sowa <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sowa@bestweb.net">sowa@bestweb.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">Dear Jens, Ewan, Matt, Leo, and Arnim,<br>
<br>
JL<div class="im"><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Are you talking about RDF/XML syntax specifically? Otherwise,<br>
you are comparing apples and oranges, since RDF can be serialised<br>
in different formats like Turtle.<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
Unfortunately, RDF is wrong in so many ways that it is hard to summarize<br>
them. There is nothing wrong with having a readable human notation that<br>
compiles into an unreadable but efficient computer version. But the<br>
RDF/XML notation is so bloated that it is horribly inefficient for<br>
computer processing, network transmission, and storage.<br>
<br>
At the semantic level, a serious flaw of RDF is the complete lack of<br>
typing. There is no way to indicate that a URI is intended to represent<br>
a literal (the URI itself), the document identified by the URI, the<br>
content of that document, or the result of evaluating that content<br>
(if it happens to contain some executable or interpretable language).<br>
<br>
JL<div class="im"><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
IBM Watson does use some background knowledge from the Web of Data (DBpedia).<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
The IBM research group headed by Dave Ferrucci was aware of RDF, but<br>
they designed UIMA (Unstructured Information Management Architecture)<br>
as a more compact, readable, and efficient XML-based format.<br>
<br>
For Watson, they used a large volume of web resources, including some<br>
that may have been developed with RDF. But to say that IBM actually<br>
used RDF in any essential way would be misleading.<br>
<br>
JL<div class="im"><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Facebook has OpenGraph (<a href="http://ogp.me/" target="_blank">http://ogp.me/</a>).<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
They do not use RDF. They use RDFa, which is a notation for tagging<br>
HTML (or XML) documents. But RDFa has nothing in common with RDF/XML<br>
other than the three letters R, D, and F. Facebook, like nearly<br>
everybody who uses RDFa tags, translates the data from those tags<br>
to a more efficient notation than RDF -- JSON, for example.<br>
<br>
Even the W3C documents show that the translation to JSON is simpler,<br>
more compact, and more efficient than the translation to RDF/XML.<br>
Look at their document <a href="http://dev.w3.org/html5/md-LC/" target="_blank">http://dev.w3.org/html5/md-LC/</a> and compare<br>
Section 5.1 (translation to JSON) to Section 5.2 (translation to RDF).<br>
<br>
JL<div class="im"><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Google Shopping uses it (<a href="http://purl.org/goodrelations/" target="_blank">http://purl.org/<u></u>goodrelations/</a>).<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
GoodRelations is an ontology that happens to be expressed in OWL.<br>
But if you look at the actual OWL statements, you'll notice that<br>
they don't use any features of OWL that could not be expressed<br>
in Aristotle's original syllogisms. In fact, the overwhelming<br>
majority of sites that claim to use OWL don't go beyond Aristotle.<br>
<br>
Furthermore, Google is one of the founding members of <a href="http://schema.org" target="_blank">schema.org</a>,<br>
which has developed their own vocabulary and methods of processing.<br>
See their hierarchy of terms: <a href="http://schema.org/docs/full.html" target="_blank">http://schema.org/docs/full.<u></u>html</a><br>
<br>
Look at the way they use those terms: <a href="http://schema.org/docs/gs.html" target="_blank">http://schema.org/docs/gs.html</a><br>
You won't see any RDF or OWL there.<br>
<br>
EK<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "expressing triples" -- is it<br>
the URIs that you have problems with?<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
That's a separate issue. I just meant that the information expressed<br>
in RDF/XML can be stated more simply, readably, and efficiently in<br>
many other notations, ranging from LISP to JSON.<br>
<br>
EK<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
RDF also provides a foundation for OWL, which is increasingly used for ontologies<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
See the above point about Aristotle. And see the remarks below by<br>
R. V. Guha, who worked with Tim Bray to define RDF. Guha now works<br>
at Google, where he is one of the chief proponents of <a href="http://schema.org" target="_blank">schema.org</a>.<br>
<br>
As for Tim Bray, he apologized for the mistakes in RDF. As Tim said,<br>
"It's the syntax, stupid." See his web site:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/05/21/RDFNet" target="_blank">http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/<u></u>When/200x/2003/05/21/RDFNet</a><br>
<br>
EK<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
the growth of the LOD cloud suggests that there is a lot of mileage<br>
in the linking part of Linked Data.<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Linked Open Data (LOD) began with the WWW twenty years ago. The RDF+OWL<br>
method of doing semantics "never caught on." (That is a quotation from<br>
the talk by Guha, cited below.) Guha also noted that the adoption rate<br>
of <a href="http://schema.org" target="_blank">schema.org</a> is much faster than RDF and OWL. In terms of web pages,<br>
it already dwarfs the use of RDF/XML.<br>
<br>
MP<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
But RDF itself is just the underlying subj-pred-obj triples model<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
As I said, that model can be expressed more easily in LISP or JSON.<br>
For a linguist, calling those triples a "subj-pred-obj model" is so<br>
hopelessly naive that there is no way they could take it seriously.<br>
<br>
Leo<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="im">
R.V. Guha of Google (talking about <a href="http://schema.org" target="_blank">schema.org</a> at the Ontolog Forum<br>
yesterday: <a href="http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2011_12_01" target="_blank">http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-<u></u>bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_<u></u>2011_12_01</a>)<br>
and Dan Brickley said that originally in the late 1990s RDF had<br></div>
an s-expression -like syntax: <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-pics-ng-metadata" target="_blank">http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-<u></u>pics-ng-metadata</a><div class="im"><br>
but that "then XML happened."<br>
</div></blockquote>
<br>
Yes. In response to my question about using a LISP-like syntax, Guha<br>
said "I wish we could have done that." For anybody who might still be<br>
interested in this topic, I strongly recommend Guha's talk about<br>
<a href="http://schema.org" target="_blank">schema.org</a> and the discussion period, which addressed many related<br>
issues.<br>
<br>
AB<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Conceptual Graphs have never really made it either.<br>
Some don't know what KIF stands for but see no prb in<br>
foaf:currentProject & monotonic RDF.<br>
So.. lets call it research<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
That is true of every notation for NLP semantics. WordNet is<br>
probably the most widely used NLP resource, but they don't claim<br>
that their notation is suitable as an interchange format for NLP.<br>
<br>
The FOAF work is more popular because it is at a very low level<br>
that does not require any knowledge of logic, ontology, or<br>
linguistics. That is also why the usage of <a href="http://schema.org" target="_blank">schema.org</a> is<br>
growing rapidly: it doesn't use scary words like 'logic'<br>
or 'ontology' that frighten the unwashed masses.<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
John</font></span><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
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