There are various resources you might want to take a look at. Perhaps a good place to start is "From XML to RDF: how semantic web technologies will change the design of 'omic' standards" (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nbt1139), which presents reasons for moving from XML to RDF. There are various introductions on the web, for example http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/w-rdf/ (bit old now). Tim Bray's article (http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/01/24/rdf.html) may also be useful. PlanetRDF has lots of stuff (and I do mean lots) (http://planetrdf.com/guide/). Because a lot is going on in the world of RDF, I've found reading blogs of some of the key players to be useful. Danny Ayers (http://dannyayers.com/) has some very useful stuff, probably more helpful for getting your head around the mindset. RDF is one of those things that you may need to have the "ahhh" moment when it suddenly clicks why it's potentially cool. I've found reading Danny's blog has been helpful in this respect. I got into this area via LSIDs, which in one sense are distinct from RDF, but for me I "got" LSIDs once I saw what one could do with all the RDF they are associated with. I have a manuscript on LSIDs, RDF, and taxonomic names that might be of interest (http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/lsid/examples/lsid.pdf). The other reason I got into this is via facetted browsing, which is an approach to browsing metadata-rich information using "facets". Again, this doesn't need RDF as such, but RDF and associated triplestores make this thing pretty straightforward to do. For a simple example see http://www.swed.org.uk/swed/index.html (which is driven by RDF). Silobreaker (http://www.silobreaker.com/corporate/) is this sort of approach on steroids. Regards Rod On 23 Mar 2006, at 20:15, Javier de la Torre wrote:

Hi all,

Now that so much is being discussed about RDF I was wondering if someone could point me to some good resources where I can learn more about it. I think there are several people right now trying to catch up with this technology so some help would be really appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Javier.

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------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------- Professor Roderic D. M. Page Editor, Systematic Biology DEEB, IBLS Graham Kerr Building University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QP United Kingdom Phone: +44 141 330 4778 Fax: +44 141 330 2792 email: r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk web: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html reprints: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/pubs.html Subscribe to Systematic Biology through the Society of Systematic Biologists Website: http://systematicbiology.org Search for taxon names: http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/portal/ Find out what we know about a species: http://ispecies.org Rod's rants on phyloinformatics: http://iphylo.blogspot.com

Thanks Lee and Roderick for all these references. To the extent I've dug into it, I find the W3C primer a rather accessible resource as well: http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-primer/ Flip On Mar 23, 2006, at 2:33 PM, Roderic Page wrote:

There are various resources you might want to take a look at.

Perhaps a good place to start is "From XML to RDF: how semantic web technologies will change the design of 'omic' standards" (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nbt1139), which presents reasons for moving from XML to RDF.

There are various introductions on the web, for example http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/w-rdf/ (bit old now). Tim Bray's article (http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/01/24/rdf.html) may also be useful. PlanetRDF has lots of stuff (and I do mean lots) (http://planetrdf.com/guide/).

Because a lot is going on in the world of RDF, I've found reading blogs of some of the key players to be useful. Danny Ayers (http://dannyayers.com/) has some very useful stuff, probably more helpful for getting your head around the mindset. RDF is one of those things that you may need to have the "ahhh" moment when it suddenly clicks why it's potentially cool. I've found reading Danny's blog has been helpful in this respect.

I got into this area via LSIDs, which in one sense are distinct from RDF, but for me I "got" LSIDs once I saw what one could do with all the RDF they are associated with. I have a manuscript on LSIDs, RDF, and taxonomic names that might be of interest (http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/lsid/examples/lsid.pdf).

The other reason I got into this is via facetted browsing, which is an approach to browsing metadata-rich information using "facets". Again, this doesn't need RDF as such, but RDF and associated triplestores make this thing pretty straightforward to do. For a simple example see http://www.swed.org.uk/swed/index.html (which is driven by RDF). Silobreaker (http://www.silobreaker.com/corporate/) is this sort of approach on steroids.

Regards

Rod

On 23 Mar 2006, at 20:15, Javier de la Torre wrote:

...

Hi all,

Now that so much is being discussed about RDF I was wondering if someone could point me to some good resources where I can learn more about it. I think there are several people right now trying to catch up with this technology so some help would be really appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Javier.

_______________________________________________ Tdwg-tag mailing list Tdwg-tag@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag_lists.tdwg.org

----------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---------------------------------------- Professor Roderic D. M. Page Editor, Systematic Biology DEEB, IBLS Graham Kerr Building University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QP United Kingdom

Phone: +44 141 330 4778 Fax: +44 141 330 2792 email: r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk web: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html reprints: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/pubs.html

Subscribe to Systematic Biology through the Society of Systematic Biologists Website: http://systematicbiology.org Search for taxon names: http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/portal/ Find out what we know about a species: http://ispecies.org Rod's rants on phyloinformatics: http://iphylo.blogspot.com

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