Hi Frank, Thanks for the comments, and sorry for the accidentally delayed reply.
On Tue, 2013-01-15 at 10:32 -0500, Frank Manola wrote: > David-- > > A few quick comments below. > > On Jan 15, 2013, at 9:34 AM, David Booth wrote: > > > Hi, and thanks for your comments! > > > > On Tue, 2013-01-15 at 12:58 +0000, RebholzSchuhmann wrote: > >> Hi, > >> > >> don't know how someone reads this, who does not know all these benefits > >> anyways. Reads as if you are selling RDF to somebody who knows half-way > >> the benefits of RDF. > > > > Yes, we decided that we simply didn't have time to write a long document > > that more fully explained the benefits. (And actually, I'm not sure > > that would have been effective anyway, as people usually need to see new > > ideas multiple times before they understand them.) We don't expect this > > one comment to change anyone's mind, but our hope is that it will get > > people to start looking in this direction. > > The shortness of this is appropriate under the circumstances, but I'm > sure you know that the points you make are somewhat more "nuanced" > than they are made out to be here. Yes, they sure are! That's a big part of what makes full explanation so difficult. > > > > >> It would have made sense to be more precise on the privacy and security > >> issues. > > > > Good point, since that's such a fear-inducing topic. > > > >> Neither RDF nor XML have been developed to address privacy / > >> security, and either one is highly important in healthcare systems. Do > >> you have even stronger arguments for privacy and security issues? > > > > Not really. The main argument is that the same techniques that are > > currently being used can still be used. Privacy and security issues are > > orthogonal to information representation choices, or at least they > > should be. One could make arguments about the potential for using RDF > > to reason about access permissions, but I think that would be somewhat > > specious, because RDF could be used for that purpose even if the > > information representation language were not RDF. > > > > Perhaps one security argument we could make is that RDF reduces > > complexity, by providing a uniform information representation language, > > and as we all know, complexity reduces security because it increases > > vulnerabilities. But I don't think that's a particularly strong > > argument either. > > > > Do you have any ideas about privacy and security with respect to RDF? > > It seems to me that you could be more "precise" on the privacy and security > issue by not introducing it with the bare assertion that "RDF is secure". > This has an easy counter-argument (as you note, it's orthogonal to what RDF > is about), and thus weakens the presentation. What you say in explanation of > that bullet is fine. Perhaps the point should be simply along the lines of > "RDF works with existing privacy and security mechanisms". > > On another subject, it seems to me you could avoid making such a sharp > contrast between using RDF and using XML. There are lots of people > who are invested in XML, not inappropriately, and RDF is perfectly > compatible with using XML (and an XML representation for RDF is part > of the "standard", although that's not the only way to represent RDF > in XML), just as using RDF doesn't mean giving up relational databases > (as you note). It would take longer to explain the why this is true > but, as noted earlier, that's true of other points you make in your > response too. Yes, fair point. I have a tendency to contrast XML with RDF in order to highlight the difference in the way one needs to think about RDF as opposed to XML. But you're right, I should also stress that the two are compatible. Thanks! -- David Booth, Ph.D. http://dbooth.org/ Loss of web prodigy Aaron Swartz: http://tinyurl.com/ahe2k8c Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.
