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> 3. What benefit does RDF in any format provide to the average web developer? Probably (almost) none, otherwise in its 20 years of existence it would have bee

> 3. What benefit does RDF in any format provide to the average web developer? Probably (almost) none, otherwise in its 20 years of existence it would have been used somewhere. Heck, even Semantic Web scholars actually don't use it for their own personal websites...

jshen 8y ago
It provides a lot of benefits, see my other comment on this thread for a few specific benefits.
- titanix2 8y ago
  I read your post and you rose valid points. I think one problem though is that RDF is a solution searching for a problem to solve. It's clear it was designed from some abstract space instead to be a solution evolving from real use cases. And that's why most people have a hard time understand it, and even more putting it in practice. For example, even basic RDF concepts such as a resource are hard to grasp. You have an IRI, great, but should it be dereferenceable? If yes, what it expected to be returned: a document in various formats or more RDF triples? If not (URN case), what to do with it? All these problematics are not addressed in the spec itself but must be understood before even starting to implement a hello world. There is interesting projects such as DBpedia. Another problem of RDF is social and pertains to its advocates: trying to impose the technology everywhere without taking in account the audience needs nor the limitations of the technology itself is not going to work great. See the suggestions made during this workshop to improve the technology: https://www.w3.org/2009/12/rdf-ws/ https://www.w3.org/2009/12/rdf-ws/ In 9 years (half of its live), nothing was addressed.
  - jshen 8y ago
    I think it solves a real problem. I work at a large company, with many data silos. I’ve had to hire armies of interns to match in merge data over the years because it wasn’t possible to automate the merging of data from different databases. I agree with your other points though, people have a hard time understanding it, and the community hasn’t really shown the value. My hobby project is an effort to show the value, but it’s not ready to share yet. And yes, there’s a lot of confusion things (URI vs URL, dereference or not) that the community hasn’t done a good job articulating a happy path. There’s another you didn’t mention, there’s an impedance mismatch between triples and resources. One is property oriented, and the other entity oriented, and they dont’ always play nice together.
    - titanix2 8y ago
      Of course I don't know every issues but sure I forgot some. Difficulty of making reification for example. Anyway, I will be glad to hear about your project when it's published.
  - lolive 8y ago
    I have always thought RDF and the whole Semantic Web was the technical bricks for a decentralized Knowledge Graph, à la Google KG. I still strongly believe that you cannot go any other diretion if this is your goal. (and honestly, i am still puzzled by the mess of companies internal search engine & their lack of investment in a knowledge graph).

jshen 8y ago

It provides a lot of benefits, see my other comment on this thread for a few specific benefits.

titanix2 8y ago
I read your post and you rose valid points. I think one problem though is that RDF is a solution searching for a problem to solve. It's clear it was designed from some abstract space instead to be a solution evolving from real use cases. And that's why most people have a hard time understand it, and even more putting it in practice. For example, even basic RDF concepts such as a resource are hard to grasp. You have an IRI, great, but should it be dereferenceable? If yes, what it expected to be returned: a document in various formats or more RDF triples? If not (URN case), what to do with it? All these problematics are not addressed in the spec itself but must be understood before even starting to implement a hello world. There is interesting projects such as DBpedia. Another problem of RDF is social and pertains to its advocates: trying to impose the technology everywhere without taking in account the audience needs nor the limitations of the technology itself is not going to work great. See the suggestions made during this workshop to improve the technology: https://www.w3.org/2009/12/rdf-ws/ https://www.w3.org/2009/12/rdf-ws/ In 9 years (half of its live), nothing was addressed.
- jshen 8y ago
  I think it solves a real problem. I work at a large company, with many data silos. I’ve had to hire armies of interns to match in merge data over the years because it wasn’t possible to automate the merging of data from different databases. I agree with your other points though, people have a hard time understanding it, and the community hasn’t really shown the value. My hobby project is an effort to show the value, but it’s not ready to share yet. And yes, there’s a lot of confusion things (URI vs URL, dereference or not) that the community hasn’t done a good job articulating a happy path. There’s another you didn’t mention, there’s an impedance mismatch between triples and resources. One is property oriented, and the other entity oriented, and they dont’ always play nice together.
  - titanix2 8y ago
    Of course I don't know every issues but sure I forgot some. Difficulty of making reification for example. Anyway, I will be glad to hear about your project when it's published.
- lolive 8y ago
  I have always thought RDF and the whole Semantic Web was the technical bricks for a decentralized Knowledge Graph, à la Google KG. I still strongly believe that you cannot go any other diretion if this is your goal. (and honestly, i am still puzzled by the mess of companies internal search engine & their lack of investment in a knowledge graph).