Re: RDFa + RDF/XML Considered Harmful? (was RE: Ordnance Survey data as Linked Data)

Tom Heath wrote:

> 
> As always it's a case of the right tool for the right job. Regarding
> your other (admittedly unfounded) claim, there may be many more people
> who end up publishing RDF as RDFa, but collectively they may end up
> publishing far fewer triples in total than a small number of publishers
> with very large data sets who choose to use RDF/XML to expose data from
> backend DBs.

Hey, size isn't everything :)

Generating a massive RDF dataset is as easy as piping one's HTTP logs 
through sed. There are many measures for data utility. Is the data 
fresh? accurate? useful? maintained? *used*? Does it exploit well known 
vocab? Does it use identifiers that other people use? Or identification 
strategies that allow cross-reference with other data anyway? Are the 
associated http servers kept patched and secure? Is it available over 
SSL? Is there at least 5 years paid up on each associated DNS hostname 
used? Do we know who owns and takes care of those ___domain names? Does it 
link out? do people link in? Does the data have clear license? And 
respect user's privacy wishes where appropriate? Is it I18N-cool?

On the size questsion: I'm wary of encouraging a 'bigger is better' 
attitude to triple count. In data as in prose, brevity is valuable. 
Extra triples add cost at the aggregation and querying level; eg. 
sometimes a workplaceHomepage triple is better than having a 'workplace' 
one and a 'homepage one'.

cheers,

Dan

--
http://danbri.org/

Received on Monday, 14 July 2008 19:49:02 UTC