What RDF is (Was Re: Idea for Discussion, Differentiating between "type's" of identifiers)
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 8:53 AM, Peter DeVries pete.devries@gmail.com wrote:
[...] I think part of the problem we are having is that people are not recognizing how different RDF is from straight XML. ...
It's way worse than that. RDF is not XML at all. RDF/XML is merely a serialization of RDF It's not even the most human readable serialization. In fact it is one of the \worst/ for humans who need to figure out what triples are actually in play. It is so ubiquitous only because there are more tools that can process RDF/XML than any of the other RDF serialization syntaxes (syntices???). The persistent myth that human readability is an advantage of XML pretty much ignores all the use cases that humans have for reading something. It's about as readable as Lisp. Indeed, a Lisp loving colleague said of XML on the occasion of its first W3 recommendation : "I get it. It's Lisp with pointy brackets."
Bob
Some people might find the N3 serialization useful.
It simply lists the subject, predicate and object followed by a period.
It is somewhat easier to interpret, and can be easy to make. You can even create this with apps like FileMaker Pro.
You can then take this N3 form and convert it to RDF using online tools or standard libraries.
Many if not most of the triple / quad stores can read in the n3 form directly.
Here is an example that links a species concept to a geographical location. (in both directions)
http://sws.geonames.org/6255149/ < http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ontology/txn.owl#hasExpectationOf%3E < http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/iLCOZ#Species%3E .
http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/iLCOZ#Species < http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ontology/txn.owl#isExpectedIn%3E < http://sws.geonames.org/6255149/%3E .
- Pete
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 9:51 AM, Bob Morris morris.bob@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 8:53 AM, Peter DeVries pete.devries@gmail.com wrote:
[...] I think part of the problem we are having is that people are not
recognizing
how different RDF is from straight XML. ...
It's way worse than that. RDF is not XML at all. RDF/XML is merely a serialization of RDF It's not even the most human readable serialization. In fact it is one of the \worst/ for humans who need to figure out what triples are actually in play. It is so ubiquitous only because there are more tools that can process RDF/XML than any of the other RDF serialization syntaxes (syntices???). The persistent myth that human readability is an advantage of XML pretty much ignores all the use cases that humans have for reading something. It's about as readable as Lisp. Indeed, a Lisp loving colleague said of XML on the occasion of its first W3 recommendation : "I get it. It's Lisp with pointy brackets."
Bob
-- Robert A. Morris Emeritus Professor of Computer Science UMASS-Boston 100 Morrissey Blvd Boston, MA 02125-3390 Associate, Harvard University Herbaria email: morris.bob@gmail.com web: http://bdei.cs.umb.edu/ web: http://etaxonomy.org/mw/FilteredPush http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram phone (+1) 857 222 7992 (mobile)
I am wondering if this discussion and similar rdf, lsid topics should continue on tdwg-tag rather than tdwg-content. We might bore quite a few people...
On Oct 6, 2010, at 17:13, Peter DeVries wrote:
Some people might find the N3 serialization useful.
It simply lists the subject, predicate and object followed by a period.
It is somewhat easier to interpret, and can be easy to make. You can even create this with apps like FileMaker Pro.
You can then take this N3 form and convert it to RDF using online tools or standard libraries.
Many if not most of the triple / quad stores can read in the n3 form directly.
Here is an example that links a species concept to a geographical location. (in both directions)
http://sws.geonames.org/6255149/ http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ontology/txn.owl#hasExpectationOf http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/iLCOZ#Species .
http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/iLCOZ#Species http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ontology/txn.owl#isExpectedIn http://sws.geonames.org/6255149/ .
- Pete
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 9:51 AM, Bob Morris morris.bob@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 8:53 AM, Peter DeVries pete.devries@gmail.com wrote:
[...] I think part of the problem we are having is that people are not recognizing how different RDF is from straight XML. ...
It's way worse than that. RDF is not XML at all. RDF/XML is merely a serialization of RDF It's not even the most human readable serialization. In fact it is one of the \worst/ for humans who need to figure out what triples are actually in play. It is so ubiquitous only because there are more tools that can process RDF/XML than any of the other RDF serialization syntaxes (syntices???). The persistent myth that human readability is an advantage of XML pretty much ignores all the use cases that humans have for reading something. It's about as readable as Lisp. Indeed, a Lisp loving colleague said of XML on the occasion of its first W3 recommendation : "I get it. It's Lisp with pointy brackets."
Bob
-- Robert A. Morris Emeritus Professor of Computer Science UMASS-Boston 100 Morrissey Blvd Boston, MA 02125-3390 Associate, Harvard University Herbaria email: morris.bob@gmail.com web: http://bdei.cs.umb.edu/ web: http://etaxonomy.org/mw/FilteredPush http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram phone (+1) 857 222 7992 (mobile)
--
Pete DeVries Department of Entomology University of Wisconsin - Madison 445 Russell Laboratories 1630 Linden Drive Madison, WI 53706 TaxonConcept Knowledge Base / GeoSpecies Knowledge Base About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
tdwg-content mailing list tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
_______________________________________________ tdwg-content mailing list tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
This is a very important discussion to be having, whatever list is used.
In fact, I was going to bring this discussion to the attention of colleagues who are not on the list, but I find that the tdwg-content list archive here:
http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/
has no content after Sept 11, 2010. The same is true for tdwg-tag. The discussion is going to go down the memory hole if this doesn't get fixed.
Arlin
On Oct 6, 2010, at 11:45 AM, Markus Döring wrote:
I am wondering if this discussion and similar rdf, lsid topics should continue on tdwg-tag rather than tdwg-content. We might bore quite a few people...
On Oct 6, 2010, at 17:13, Peter DeVries wrote:
Some people might find the N3 serialization useful.
It simply lists the subject, predicate and object followed by a period.
It is somewhat easier to interpret, and can be easy to make. You can even create this with apps like FileMaker Pro.
You can then take this N3 form and convert it to RDF using online tools or standard libraries.
Many if not most of the triple / quad stores can read in the n3 form directly.
Here is an example that links a species concept to a geographical location. (in both directions)
http://sws.geonames.org/6255149/ <http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ontology/txn.owl#hasExpectationOf
http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/iLCOZ#Species <http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ontology/txn.owl#isExpectedIn
- Pete
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 9:51 AM, Bob Morris morris.bob@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 8:53 AM, Peter DeVries pete.devries@gmail.com wrote:
[...] I think part of the problem we are having is that people are not recognizing how different RDF is from straight XML. ...
It's way worse than that. RDF is not XML at all. RDF/XML is merely a serialization of RDF It's not even the most human readable serialization. In fact it is one of the \worst/ for humans who need to figure out what triples are actually in play. It is so ubiquitous only because there are more tools that can process RDF/XML than any of the other RDF serialization syntaxes (syntices???). The persistent myth that human readability is an advantage of XML pretty much ignores all the use cases that humans have for reading something. It's about as readable as Lisp. Indeed, a Lisp loving colleague said of XML on the occasion of its first W3 recommendation : "I get it. It's Lisp with pointy brackets."
Bob
-- Robert A. Morris Emeritus Professor of Computer Science UMASS-Boston 100 Morrissey Blvd Boston, MA 02125-3390 Associate, Harvard University Herbaria email: morris.bob@gmail.com web: http://bdei.cs.umb.edu/ web: http://etaxonomy.org/mw/FilteredPush http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram phone (+1) 857 222 7992 (mobile)
--
Pete DeVries Department of Entomology University of Wisconsin - Madison 445 Russell Laboratories 1630 Linden Drive Madison, WI 53706 TaxonConcept Knowledge Base / GeoSpecies Knowledge Base About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
tdwg-content mailing list tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
tdwg-content mailing list tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
------- Arlin Stoltzfus (arlin@umd.edu) Fellow, IBBR; Adj. Assoc. Prof., UMCP; Research Biologist, NIST IBBR, 9600 Gudelsky Drive, Rockville, MD tel: 240 314 6208; web: www.molevol.org
_______________________________________________ tdwg-content mailing list tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
I think the tdwg-tag list was shutdown as part of a effort to condense the tdwg lists to those that had traffic?
- Pete
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Markus Döring m.doering@mac.com wrote:
I am wondering if this discussion and similar rdf, lsid topics should continue on tdwg-tag rather than tdwg-content. We might bore quite a few people...
On Oct 6, 2010, at 17:13, Peter DeVries wrote:
Some people might find the N3 serialization useful.
It simply lists the subject, predicate and object followed by a period.
It is somewhat easier to interpret, and can be easy to make. You can even
create this with apps like FileMaker Pro.
You can then take this N3 form and convert it to RDF using online tools
or standard libraries.
Many if not most of the triple / quad stores can read in the n3 form
directly.
Here is an example that links a species concept to a geographical
location. (in both directions)
http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ontology/txn.owl#hasExpectationOf%3E < http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ses/iLCOZ#Species%3E .
http://lod.taxonconcept.org/ontology/txn.owl#isExpectedIn%3E < http://sws.geonames.org/6255149/%3E .
- Pete
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 9:51 AM, Bob Morris morris.bob@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 8:53 AM, Peter DeVries pete.devries@gmail.com
wrote:
[...] I think part of the problem we are having is that people are not
recognizing
how different RDF is from straight XML. ...
It's way worse than that. RDF is not XML at all. RDF/XML is merely a serialization of RDF It's not even the most human readable serialization. In fact it is one of the \worst/ for humans who need to figure out what triples are actually in play. It is so ubiquitous only because there are more tools that can process RDF/XML than any of the other RDF serialization syntaxes (syntices???). The persistent myth that human readability is an advantage of XML pretty much ignores all the use cases that humans have for reading something. It's about as readable as Lisp. Indeed, a Lisp loving colleague said of XML on the occasion of its first W3 recommendation : "I get it. It's Lisp with pointy brackets."
Bob
-- Robert A. Morris Emeritus Professor of Computer Science UMASS-Boston 100 Morrissey Blvd Boston, MA 02125-3390 Associate, Harvard University Herbaria email: morris.bob@gmail.com web: http://bdei.cs.umb.edu/ web: http://etaxonomy.org/mw/FilteredPush http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram phone (+1) 857 222 7992 (mobile)
--
Pete DeVries Department of Entomology University of Wisconsin - Madison 445 Russell Laboratories 1630 Linden Drive Madison, WI 53706 TaxonConcept Knowledge Base / GeoSpecies Knowledge Base About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
tdwg-content mailing list tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
TDWG-TAG was not to be decommissioned.
If this discussion on TDWG-Content is not being archived (as Alrin noticed), then there was a glitch in the reconfiguration. I think (hope) Markus can look into that tomorrow.
Addressing Markus’ earlier question, I don’t think this is boring to people interested in TDWG-Content. It will just need to be explained and/or summarized to those not fully aware of the technical issues, particularly if we reach a consensus. A regular restatement of the choices and issues helps to keep people focused.
-Stan
On 10/6/10 11:52 AM, "Peter DeVries" pete.devries@gmail.com wrote:
I think the tdwg-tag list was shutdown as part of a effort to condense the tdwg lists to those that had traffic?
- Pete
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Markus Döring m.doering@mac.com wrote: I am wondering if this discussion and similar rdf, lsid topics should continue on tdwg-tag rather than tdwg-content. We might bore quite a few people...
Im looking into the archiving issue right now. As Stan pointed out both lists still exist as you can see here: http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo
Markus
On Oct 6, 2010, at 22:04, Blum, Stan wrote:
TDWG-TAG was not to be decommissioned.
If this discussion on TDWG-Content is not being archived (as Alrin noticed), then there was a glitch in the reconfiguration. I think (hope) Markus can look into that tomorrow.
Addressing Markus’ earlier question, I don’t think this is boring to people interested in TDWG-Content. It will just need to be explained and/or summarized to those not fully aware of the technical issues, particularly if we reach a consensus. A regular restatement of the choices and issues helps to keep people focused.
-Stan
On 10/6/10 11:52 AM, "Peter DeVries" pete.devries@gmail.com wrote:
I think the tdwg-tag list was shutdown as part of a effort to condense the tdwg lists to those that had traffic?
- Pete
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Markus Döring m.doering@mac.com wrote:
I am wondering if this discussion and similar rdf, lsid topics should continue on tdwg-tag rather than tdwg-content. We might bore quite a few people...
_______________________________________________ tdwg-content mailing list tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
Thanks for spotting this, Stan. It was a file permissions problem that Ive fixed now. Ironically all mails since September 11th have not been archived, but I manually copied the missing ones from my local mail client into the respective mailman archives and rebuild the whole thing. Both content and tag should be fine now. The tdwg announcement mailing list was never touched, so it has archived mails fine all the time. Here are the archive links in case anyone wants to make sure all mails are there:
http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/ http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-tag/ http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg/
Sorry for the problem. Markus
On Oct 7, 2010, at 10:00, Markus Döring wrote:
Im looking into the archiving issue right now. As Stan pointed out both lists still exist as you can see here: http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo
Markus
On Oct 6, 2010, at 22:04, Blum, Stan wrote:
TDWG-TAG was not to be decommissioned.
If this discussion on TDWG-Content is not being archived (as Alrin noticed), then there was a glitch in the reconfiguration. I think (hope) Markus can look into that tomorrow.
Addressing Markus’ earlier question, I don’t think this is boring to people interested in TDWG-Content. It will just need to be explained and/or summarized to those not fully aware of the technical issues, particularly if we reach a consensus. A regular restatement of the choices and issues helps to keep people focused.
-Stan
On 10/6/10 11:52 AM, "Peter DeVries" pete.devries@gmail.com wrote:
I think the tdwg-tag list was shutdown as part of a effort to condense the tdwg lists to those that had traffic?
- Pete
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Markus Döring m.doering@mac.com wrote:
I am wondering if this discussion and similar rdf, lsid topics should continue on tdwg-tag rather than tdwg-content. We might bore quite a few people...
Thanks to Arlin for spotting the archiving problem! And many thanks to Markus for fixing and restoring the missed emails!
To return to the discussion of types of identifiers:
I think there is broad support for keeping DwC concepts independent of technologies. If that's accurate, then I think the next questions are: do we need additional specification to make DwC more usable with RDF, Semantic Web or Linked Open Data and make everyone's lives easier? Do names and identifiers in DwC need to be defined more narrowly, perhaps through something like in an applicability statement, to be used effectively in the LoD world?
-Stan
On 10/7/10 2:07 AM, "Markus Döring (GBIF)" mdoering@gbif.org wrote:
Thanks for spotting this, Stan. It was a file permissions problem that Ive fixed now. Ironically all mails since September 11th have not been archived, but I manually copied the missing ones from my local mail client into the respective mailman archives and rebuild the whole thing. Both content and tag should be fine now. The tdwg announcement mailing list was never touched, so it has archived mails fine all the time. Here are the archive links in case anyone wants to make sure all mails are there:
http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/ http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-tag/ http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg/
Sorry for the problem. Markus
yes, we do need guidelines on how to use dwc with rdf. As Steve and others have experienced it is not obvious and there are multitude ways of doing so.
For xml we have created guidelines and some xml schemas to be very precise on how to use dwc with xml: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/guides/xml/index.htm
For text files ala csv we have created guidelines and added a new meta.xml file format with a matching xml schema to add semantics to the plain text files: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/guides/text/index.htm
So I think we should do the same for rdf. At least we should create an rdf guideline documenting conventions, but potentially there could even be an rdf schema or some owl files associated with it. The big question though is what are these conventions...
Markus
On Oct 7, 2010, at 19:01, Blum, Stan wrote:
Thanks to Arlin for spotting the archiving problem! And many thanks to Markus for fixing and restoring the missed emails!
To return to the discussion of types of identifiers:
I think there is broad support for keeping DwC concepts independent of technologies. If that's accurate, then I think the next questions are: do we need additional specification to make DwC more usable with RDF, Semantic Web or Linked Open Data and make everyone's lives easier? Do names and identifiers in DwC need to be defined more narrowly, perhaps through something like in an applicability statement, to be used effectively in the LoD world?
-Stan
On 10/7/10 2:07 AM, "Markus Döring (GBIF)" mdoering@gbif.org wrote:
Thanks for spotting this, Stan. It was a file permissions problem that Ive fixed now. Ironically all mails since September 11th have not been archived, but I manually copied the missing ones from my local mail client into the respective mailman archives and rebuild the whole thing. Both content and tag should be fine now. The tdwg announcement mailing list was never touched, so it has archived mails fine all the time. Here are the archive links in case anyone wants to make sure all mails are there:
http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/ http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-tag/ http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg/
Sorry for the problem. Markus
tdwg-content mailing list tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
participants (6)
-
"Markus Döring (GBIF)" -
Arlin Stoltzfus -
Blum, Stan -
Bob Morris -
Markus Döring -
Peter DeVries