Questa purtroppo e’ parecchio grossa come notizia:

-> XML, MS ottiene un brevetto chiave

Il brevetto registrato da Microsoft, e approvato dall’USPTO col numero 6.898.604, descrive un metodo per la conversione di oggetti in file XML: metodo che, secondo gli esperti, si trova alla base di quasi ogni applicazione che utilizzi XML per trasferire dati.
Ciò significa che il big di Redmond potrebbe chiedere royalty a un bel po’ di società e sviluppatori indipendenti, rafforzando nello stesso tempo il proprio controllo sullo standard partorito dal World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

“È un abominio per qualunque programmatore il fatto che ogni possibile modo per convertire un oggetto in un file XML (e viceversa) appartenga ad una sola società”, ha detto a ZDNet UK uno sviluppatore di Debian Linux che si fa chiamare Wookey.
“Microsoft oggi potrebbe chiedere denaro a chiunque voglia salvare un oggetto di programmazione sotto forma di file XML, o addirittura impedirgli di farlo”.

Sembra quasi uno scherzo da quanto sia generico questo brevetto e quanto sia gia’ utilizzato e sia fondamentale: per quelli che vogliono ecco il link all’ufficio brevetti americano per guardare con i propri occhi di che si tratta:

-> XML serialization and deserialization

Questo e’ l’abstract:

An object instance is serialized to a serial format, such as an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) document, based on a mapping between an arbitrary annotated source code file and a schema. The arbitrary annotated source code contains at least one programming type that describes a shape of an object instance and the schema describes a format of a document having a serial format. The mapping defines a correspondence between the shape of the object instance and the format of the document having the serial format.
Subsequently, an object instance is converted to the serial format by converting public properties, public fields and method parameters of the object instance to a document having the serial format based on the mapping. Once the mapping is defined, an XML document can also be converted to an object instance based on the mapping.

Per vedere le reazioni suscitate in giro per la Rete ecco qualche link:

-> Microsoft Patents Under Fire

The patenting strategy employed by Microsoft has come under fire as of late as many professionals have expressed ‘anger’ at a recent patent granted to Microsoft for converting objects into XML. Several commentators have noted that this continues a trend of what is perceived to be a lack of general knowledge about how information technology works exhibited by the U.S. Patent Office.

-> Prior art needed: Microsoft patents XML Serialisation
Persino un dipendente MS ne e’ scioccato:

I can’t believe that there isn’t prior art for this…

E qui la cosa interessante e’ che viene messa in discussione ancora una volta la professionalita’ dell’Ufficio Brevetti americano:

-> Microsoft defends its patents

XML was born as a particular format for data storage. A programming object is made up of data. Where is the patentable ‘innovation’ in using XML for the purpose it’s born for?” said one reader.

Software developer Roderick Klein laid the blame at the door of the US patent office. "**It just seems people who review patents at patent offices seem to have no skill sets at all when it comes to IT... when you see the incredible amount of crap that gets approved**," said Klein.

Sembra tutto troppo folle per esssere vero,no? Mah…

Commenta e condividi

I have some doubts about how to publish RDF data in a “semantic” site case study…

The better way

I know that now there is a PERFECT way, that is having an RDF backend and using an RDF Server ( as Sesame, Joseki or RAP for PHP enviroments ) with SPARQL as query language…

But in a small contest, instead of using XML Microformats, how we can do?

Example

Consider this case: a wordpress blog with the StructuredBlogging plugin installed… ( like this one )…

We know that this plugin uses a tag script to add in the post meta-info about the post itself… using this XML code:

<script type="application/x-subnode; charset=utf-8"> <subnode alternate-for-id="sbentry_1"> ... </subnode> </script>

More info about this approach at Technical Resources…

The problem is that: there are several ways of including RDF code in a XHTML document, and two are the most important:

• using of tag link rel=”meta” type=”application/rdf+xml” href=”” : it’s valid also for other RDF formats ( N3, nt .. )* using the tag script with the correct type… as above
  A more detailed duscussion is on this page:

-> RDF in HTML: Approaches

But it’s a quite old document, so using one more recent as SKOS working drafts, for example:

-> Quick Guide to Publishing a Thesaurus on the Semantic Web
we can find an interesting paragraph:

Publishing RDF Data

The simplest way to publish RDF data is to create one or more RDF documents containing your data, and publish them on the web via a normal HTTP server.

Note that, although the examples above all use the RDF/XML serialisation syntax (i.e. file format), there are two other alternative syntaxes for RDF: N3/Turtle [N3][Turtle] and N-Triples [N-Triples]. For documents containg RDF data in the RDF/XML format, the ‘content-type’ field in the HTTP header for that document should be ‘application/rdf+xml’.

You can also publish your RDF data on the web via a dedicated RDF server such as Joseki [Joseki] or Sesame [Sesame]. Publishing via an RDF server allows anyone to query the thesaurus over the web via an RDF query language such as SPARQL [SPARQL].

Current practice dictates that if you use HTTP URIs as identifiers for your thesaurus and its concepts, then those URIs should dereference to an RDF description of the thing they identify.

So, if i have a site with all its RDF stuff accessible via HTTP RDF Server and SPARQL, but also with some pages with the tag script with RDF code is it correct ?

So..

The use of RDF Server is a overlap of the others RDF inclusion tecniques or are two way to offer semantic data with different approaches?

I mean, probably the data inserted in the script tag is data just ready, instead for the server we have to make a query… so different usages… are acceptable IMHO.

Having a way to collect data as soon as it’s available is the context of use of the direct inclusion in a web page ( of the RDF data, of course )…
Probably that’s the difference…

As it is said here,

[…]
Neither of the linking (“tag link to the Metadata”) or embedding (“Embed XML RDF Part I: Eschew Validation”, and possibly “Embedding using tag script”) methods can be ruled out, in the author’s opinion.

Linking has the substantial advantage that it is serialization independent, may reduce file sizes when a single set of triples is often referenced (such as contact information), and provides a cascade.

Embedding is useful because it is direct, there are existing implementations to deal with it, plus people will be embedding XML RDF and other languages like it into XHTML for a long time to come.

Commenta e condividi