Per molti forse non e’ ancora chiaro cosa sia il Semantic Web e il mondo che ruota intorno a RDF, un formato che mette in discussione molti…

Se guardate tra i miei links in del.icio.us usando i tags RDF e guide forse troverete qualcosa…

Intanto per quelli che vogliono capire dove stiamo andando e capire le maggiori critiche nei confronti della eccessiva complessita’ di RDF, proprio in questi giorni e’ in atto una interessante discussione blog-centrica da tenere d’occhio…

Consiglio di guardare planetRDF per una maggiore comprensione…

Ecco alcuni passaggi interessanti, la maggior parte di Danny Ayers:

  • Optimism

    Si accenna al fatto che si parla male di RDF, della sua complessita’ e che allo stesso modo anche XML veniva criticato a suo tempo rispetto agli altri linguaggi…

  • QOTD: RDF will never succeed…

    In parole povere viene qui ripreso come esempio di successo di RDF il portale planetrdf stesso, basato appunto su tale linguaggio

  • Alternatives to the Semantic Web?

    As far as I can see **it does seem a natural progression from a Web of Documents to a more general Web of Data, and it also seems to make sense to use URIs as the key identifiers.**Er… but that’s the Semantic Web.

I think it was Rich Newman commented that if it wasn’t for RDF he’d have to invent a relational model which used URIs of his own. The quasi-object-orientation of RDFS and OWL (complete with logical formalisms) makes for useful layers on top is a huge plus, although not strictly a fundamental prerequisite for the Semantic Web.

Another plus is the fact that a considerable proportion of the work needed to make the vision a reality (specs, tools, implementations) has already been done.

Once over the first learning curve hump (starting points), it’s clear that** Semantic Web technologies can offer good solutions to immediate problems**.For example a few people have found them useful in their content management systems.

E tra i commenti oltre a citare PiggyBank, viene detto anche questo:
I’ll suggest the alternative to the SemWeb is the SynWeb, a web which doesn’t need “key identifiers”.

A world with lots of online data, marked up with *syntactic* cues which make it easy to parse (eg. good old fashioned XML, or Markdown or YAML); more powerful tools and libraries for parsing and querying data with these formats; plus lots of *programs* which scoop up the data and combine them in interesting ways.

**The difference is that the *knowledge* needed to give semantics to the data resides in the programs which do the combining, rather than in a schema which has been prepared earlier**.

Poi c’e’ un altro punto sul quale fermarsi: questa domanda…

> I would like to be able to assemble and publish the knowledge that I have accumulated from web sites and feeds so that I can ask web services to provide me information related to my interests but filtered so that I only receive knowledge that I have not already consumed.

Is there any work being done in the Semantic Web space that I could use or repurpose to get there from here?
E questa e’ la risposta:
Scott, the companion to Piggy Bank, the **Semantic Bank **(http://simile.mit.edu/semantic-bank/), will do just what you ask for.It provides a nice way to persist data that you have collected and/or created locally, and which then becomes available for all to use and/or download.
Viene poi accennata la questione del SynWeb e della interessante iniziativa di Laurent che trovo perfettamente riassunta in questo post, che commentero’ a breve, ma che e’ un chiaro riassunto delle questioni spinose di RDF…
-> The Naked RDF King

Visti i contenuti e il materiale e’ probabile che aggiungero’ delle parti per spiegare meglio il dibattito, e continuarlo in un post successivo.

Intanto leggetevi con calma questi interventi e proviamo a capire le esigenze qui espresse…in questioni molto interessanti…

Stay tuned :)