On Jul 15, 2009, at 12:39 AM, SteveC wrote:
On 13 Jul 2009, at 11:34, Mikel Maron wrote:
> Sean Gillies wrote:
> > It's curious how alien the concept of geographic entities
identified by URIs is to GIS folks. See Adena Schutzberg (not a
programmer, but no dummy) scramble to make sense of it:
> > http://apb.directionsmag.com/archives/6086-Linked-Geodata-OSM-Gets-Linkable.html
. For all the talk of "GeoWeb" in GIS, we still don't quite get the
web.
>
> From: Bill Thoen <[email protected]>
> Well, when you pack 80 lbs of baggage into a 20lb suitcase, it
makes that suitcase surprisingly hard to lift. With sentences like
this one:
>
> "LinkedGeoData currently comprises RDF dumps, Linked Data and
REST interfaces, links to DBpedia as well as a prototypical user
interface for linked-geo-data browsing and authoring."
>
> Adena concludes "that project is about making OSM more useful for
programmers and to provide tools to browse it and author in it."
Adena is smart, but gets this one wrong. Can anyone explain how an
RDF representation of OSM is going to help any programmer?
Many many programmers, some from a web background, others GIS, make
perfectly awesome use of OSM. It also happens to have geographic
entities identified by URIs, and a RESTful UI. That doesn't mean
there isn't anything to improve, but I'm doubtful RDF is it
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Protocol_Version_0.6
+1
Best
or
Steve
I'm skeptical about RDF too, but the linked geodata folks are adding
some extra value (at least for a particular group of users):
hypertext, so that you or your software can follow your nose through
linked nodes and ways without having to know an API specific to OSM,
and persistent URIs. I'm not knocking OSM's API, but
http://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/node/264695865
isn't meant to be a "cool URI" for the Cafe B'liebig, is it? Requests
for the version 0.5 URIs like http://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.5/node/1
return a 403, which suggests to me that I shouldn't get too attached
to the 0.6 ones. Of course, URIs like
http://linkedgeodata.org/triplify/node/264695865
have their own issue. Stamping the name of the semantic web framework
you happen to be using today on the URIs you want to make future-proof
isn't a cool thing to do.
Whether this RDF-ization will increase the flow of updates into OSM
remains to be seen. I was only commenting originally on how foreign
the concept is to the GIS mainstream.
Cheers,
Sean
--
Sean Gillies
Software Engineer
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
New York University
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