It was not my intend to insult anybody. But I still don't get why some
of you want to recommend a pattern that breaks with a current W3C
recommendation just on the basis that there are many documents out there
that break with it. The Swoogle post from 2007 simply says that there
are many documents out there that are not using it properly. But there
are also many RDF resources out there that break with LOD principles and
LOD recommendations and nobody would dare to question the principles
solely on the basis of bad implementations.
And Michael, please be frank - there is a tendency in the LOD community
which goes along the lines of "OWL and DL-minded SW research has proven
obsolete anyway, so we LOD guys and girls just pick and use the bits and
pieces we like and don't care about the rest".
As Kingsley said - deceptively simple solutions are cheap in the
beginning but can be pretty costly in the long run.
What made the Web so powerful is that its Architecture is extremely
well-thought underneath the first cover of simplicity. Exactly the
opposite of "I will use this pragmatic pattern until it breaks" but
instead "architectural beauty for eternity".
Just look at the http specs. The fact that you can do a nice 303 is
because someone in the distant past very cleverly designed a protocol
goes well beyond the pragmatic "I have a URL (sic!) and want to fetch
the Web page in HTML (sic!)".
So when being proud of being the "pragmatic guys" keep in mind that
nothing is as powerful in practice as something that is theoretically
consistent.
Best
Martin
Michael Hausenblas wrote:
Martin,
(moving this to LOD public as suggested)
Thanks.
General note: I am quite unhappy with a general movement in parts of the
LOD community to clash with the OWL world even when that is absolutely
unnecessary. It is just a bad engineering practice to break with
existing standards unless you can justify the side-effects. And this
stubborn "i don't care what the OWL specs says" pattern is silly, in
particular if the real motivation of many proponents of this approach is
that they don't want or cannot read the OWL specs.
I don't think it is particular helpful to insult people, to utter
imputations and judge a book by its cover. If we can agree to stop using
such terminology I'm more than happy to continue the discussion.
On the other hand - what is your pain with using RDFa in a way so that
the extracted RDF model is equivalent to the model from an RDF/XML or N3
serialization? Why this absolutely arbitrary "we LOD guys don't like
owl:import ( we don't like OWL anyway, you know?), so we simply omit it"
behavior?
It is just silly to break with established standards just for saving 1 -
2 triples.
Ok, so, again, for the chaps who didn't get the entire story. Martin
champions the use of owl:import (and wants to see it written down as a good
practice?) in linked data.
My take on this is as follows: when one takes the linked data principles and
applies them in practice (esp. referring to #2, here) there are naturally a
dozens implementation choices as the principles simply leave room for
interpretation.
The people here know me from the RDFa TF, from the AWWSW TF and last but not
least from the LOD community as a simple-minded, pragmatic guy, I hope ;)
So, my hunch would be: the market will make the final decision, not a Martin
Hepp and also not a Michael Hausenblas. If people think this is a clever
idea, they will use it when publishing linked data. AFAIK, to date the usage
of owl:import in linked data is close to non-existing (even in pre-LOD times
it seemed to be not very common [1]).
Concluding, I'd propose - respecting the nature of good *practice* - once we
notice a serious usage of owl:import in LOD data, we may want to rehash this
topic.
Cheers,
Michael
[1] http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2007/06/15/how-owlimport-is-used/
--
--------------------------------------------------------------
martin hepp
e-business & web science research group
universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
e-mail: [email protected]
phone: +49-(0)89-6004-4217
fax: +49-(0)89-6004-4620
www: http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
skype: mfhepp
twitter: mfhepp
Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce on the Web of Data!
========================================================================
Webcast:
http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/
Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009:
"Semantic Web-based E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp
Tool for registering your business:
http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
Overview article on Semantic Universe:
http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe
Project page and resources for developers:
http://purl.org/goodrelations/
Tutorial materials:
Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in One Day: A Hands-on
Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology, RDFa, and Yahoo! SearchMonkey
http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009
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tel;work:+49 89 6004 4217
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