Re: XML vs. RDF

[William Bug]

Thanks for your feedback, John. Please see below for comments. Cheers, Bill On Jul 8, 2006, at 9:16 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Bill, To your point: A lot of the counter arguments to these statements come down to: I) if you try to perform semantically-based  KE/KR/KD with XML-only,   you will have a lot more code to write & maintain YOURSELF - and much   of it will reproduce what you'd get automatically using RDF++.   I would add that not only is a matter of specialized code  for each schema (or collections of schemas), there is also  the supporting theoretical work for the schemas'  specialized reasoner implementations. It's kind of handy  to know that a reasoner will reach a conclusion after a  finite amount of time. There is 15 years of work in  Description Logic to support the algorithms within RDF++  reasoners. For example, one knows that OWL DL reasoners,  e.g., racer, will stop. Exactly!  There are well studied practical implications involved, many of which have been considered over the many years these issues have been under consideration the DL field.  The RDF++ specs and tools developed over the last 8+ years have been informed by this work. Even if some don't care about subsumption (i.e., which  classes are subclasses of others, and which individuals  belong to which classes), I would think that everyone  would care about higher quality. Those who choose XML,  UML, or Relational DBs (for whatever reason) can benefit  from creating an ontological representation of their  information model. This ontology can include defined  classes representing queries. Automated consistency  checking of this ontology greatly increases assurance that  the information model is correct.  At BIRN, we've had to make quite a substantial resource investment providing semantic maps for the dozens of data models across the various BIRN participating projects in order to ensure the BIRN mediator will be able to resolve semantic queries.  This is a brittle and labor intensive process, as many on this have probably learned the hard way.  We've made substantial progress on this task over the past 2 years, and the process is becoming more systematic.  As you say, in doing this, you not only make it possible to map semantically-oriented queries to the constituent, physical RDBMSes, you also inform the local DBAs & domain experts on how best to model their info in the database. jb Bill Bug Senior Analyst/Ontological Engineer Laboratory for Bioimaging  & Anatomical Informatics www.neuroterrain.org Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy Drexel University College of Medicine 2900 Queen Lane Philadelphia, PA    19129 215 991 8430 (ph) 610 457 0443 (mobile) 215 843 9367 (fax) Please Note: I now have a new email - [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email and any accompanying attachments are confidential. This information is intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any review, disclosure, copying, distribution, or use of this email communication by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning this message to the sender and delete all copies. Thank you for your cooperation.