On 11/11/12 23:22, Rupert Westenthaler wrote:
Hi all ,
On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 4:47 PM, Reto Bachmann-Gmür <r...@apache.org> wrote:
- clerezza.rdf graudates as commons.rdf: a modular java/scala
implementation of rdf related APIs, usable with and without OSGi
For me this immediately raises the question: Why should the Clerezza
API become commons.rdf if 90+% (just a guess) of the Java RDF stuff is
based on Jena and Sesame? Creating an Apache commons project based on
an RDF API that is only used by a very low percentage of all Java RDF
applications is not feasible. Generally I see not much room for a
commons RDF project as long as there is not a commonly agreed RDF API
for Java.
Very good point.
There is a finite and bounded supply of energy of people to work on such
a thing and to make it work for the communities that use it. For all
of us, work on A means less work on B.
An "RDF API" for applications needs to be more than RDF. A SPARQL engine
is not simply abstracted from the storage by some "list(s,p,o)" API
call. It will die at scale, where scale here includes in-memory usage.
My personal opinion is that wrapper APIs are not the way to go - they
end up as a new API in themselves and the fact they are backed by
different systems is really an implementation detail. They end up
having design opinions and gradually require more and more maintenace as
the add more and more.
API bridges are better (mapping one API to another - we are really
talking about a small number of APIs, not 10s) as they expose the
advantages of each system.
The ideal is a set of interfaces systems can agree on. I'm going to be
contributing to the interfacization of the Graph API in Jena - if you
have thoughts, send email to a list.
Andy
PS See the work being done by Stephen Allen on coarse grained APIs:
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/jena-dev/201206.mbox/%3CCAPTxtVOMMWxfk2%2B4ciCExUBZyxsDKvuO0QshXF8uKhaD8txXjA%40mail.gmail.com%3E
