Thanks for picking this up Kingsley.
I'd just like to highlight the end of the report [1] where I've
described what we're proposing to our members on this, namely a new WG
that will look specifically at CSV and the metadata needed to easily
transform it into RDF or any other format. Jeni's work and others are
inputs to that group. All being well it'll be chartered in the early
autumn but we have hoops to go through first.
I gave a talk on this at SemTech last week and made a slidecast version
[2]. It sets out a bunch of things we're doing or proposing to do at W3C
in the imminent future.
Cheers
Phil.
[1] http://www.w3.org/2013/04/odw/report#next
[2] http://philarcher.org/diary/#semtech
On 11/06/2013 14:00, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
All,
"/RDF isn't natural --- and therefore is barely used --- by the average
Web developer or data wrangler. CSV, by contrast, is. And you are going
to need to win the hearts and minds of those folks for whatever approach
is proposed/." -- Rufus Pollock (OKFN) [1][2].
RDF is actually natural. Unfortunately, narratives around it have now
created the illusion that its unnatural. We observe our world using
patterns much closer to RDF (entity relationship graphs) than CSV (when
used a mechanism for Tabular representation of entity relationships).
SPARQL enables one to expose RDF based data in a myriad of ways will
also enabling easy to comprehend Linked Data utility (i.e., HTTP URI
based super keys that specically resolve to documents that describe a
URIs referent).
Following the Open Data meeting I stumbled across a CSV browser [3]
developed by @JeniIT . I took a quick look and realized it could provide
the foundation addressing some of the confusion around Open Data, RDF,
and Linked Data. Thus, I had one of our interns simply tweak the CSV
browser such that on receipt of SPARQL-FED protocol URLs that resolve to
CSV formatted data you end up with a Linked Data browser.
The simple example above basically showcases how Linked Data aids data
discovery using the Web's basic follow-your-nose exploration pattern by
leveraging what CSV has to offer i.e., using a format that many (users
and developers) are already familiar with as a bridge builder en route
to showcasing the virtues of RDF, SPARQL, and Linked Data.
Links:
[1] http://www.w3.org/2013/04/odw/report -- Open Data Report.
[2]
http://blog.okfn.org/2013/04/24/frictionless-data-making-it-radically-easier-to-get-stuff-done-with-data/
.
[3] https://github.com/theodi/linked-csv-browser -- CSV Brower
[4] https://github.com/theodi/linked-csv-browser/pulls -- pull request
that sniffs for HTTP URIs and then makes them live links
[5] http://bit.ly/18axeTP -- tweaked version of CSV browser showcasing
effects of live links based on a SPARQL-FED URL (Ordnance Survey) that
returns data in CSV format
[6] http://bit.ly/ZxSUnc -- ditto using data form health.data.gov.
--
Phil Archer
W3C eGovernment
http://philarcher.org
+44 (0)7887 767755
@philarcher1
