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1.4 Some Uses of RDF/XMLThe first time I saw RDF/XML was when it was used to define the table of contents (TOC) structures within Mozilla, when Mozilla was first being implemented. Since then, I've been both surprised and pleased at how many implementations of RDF and RDF/XML exist. One of the primary users of RDF/XML is the W3C itself, in its effort to define a Web Ontology Language based on RDF/XML. Being primarily a data person and not a specialist in markup, I wasn't familiar with some of the concepts associated with RDF when I first started exploring its use and meaning. For instance, there were references to ontology again and again, and since my previous exposure to this word had to do with biology, I was a bit baffled. However, ontology in the sense of RDF and the Semantic Web is, according to dictionary.com, "An explicit formal specification of how to represent the objects, concepts and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of interest and the relationships that hold among them." As mentioned previously, RDF provides a structure that allows us to make assertions using XML (and other serialization techniques). However, there is an interest in taking this further and expanding on it, by creating just such an ontology based on the RDF model, in the interest of supporting more advanced agent-based technologies. An early effort toward this is the DARPA Agent Markup Language program, or DAML. The first implementation of DAML, DAML+OIL, is tightly integrated with RDF. A new effort at the W3C, the Web Ontology Working Group, is working on creating a Web Ontology Language (OWL) derived from DAML+OIL and based in RDF/XML. The following quote from the OWL Use Cases and Requirements document, one of many the Ontology Working Group is creating, defines the relationship between XML, RDF/XML, and OWL:
Drawing analogies from other existing data schemes, if RDF and the relational data model were comparable, then RDF/XML is also comparable to the existing relational databases, and OWL would be comparable to the business domain applications such as PeopleSoft and SAP. Both PeopleSoft and SAP make use of existing data storage mechanisms to store the data and the relational data model to ensure that the data is stored and managed consistently and validly; the products then add an extra level of business logic based on patterns that occur and reoccur within traditional business processes. This added business logic could be plugged into a company's existing infrastructure without the company having to build its own functionality to implement the logic directly. OWL does something similar except that it builds in the ability to define commonly reoccurring inferential rules that facilitate how data is queried within an RDF/XML document or store. Based on this added capability, and returning to the RDF/XML example in the last section, instead of being limited to queries about a specific movement based on a specific resource, we could query on movements that occurred because the document was moved to a new domain, rather than because the document was just moved about within a specific domain. Additional information can then allow us to determine that the document was moved because it was transferred to a different owner, allowing us to infer information about a transaction between two organizations even if this "transactional" information isn't stored directly within elements. In other words, the rules help us discover new information that isn't necessarily stored directly within the RDF/XML.
Another very common use of RDF/XML is in a version of RSS called RSS 1.0 or RDF/RSS. The meaning of the RSS abbreviation has changed over the years, but the basic premise behind it is to provide an XML-formatted feed consisting of an abstract of content and a link to a document containing the full content. When Netscape originally created the first implementation of an RSS specification, RSS stood for RDF Site Summary, and the plan was to use RDF/XML. When the company released, instead, a non-RDF XML version of the specification, RSS stood for Rich Site Summary. Recently, there has been increased activity with RSS, and two paths are emerging: one considers RSS to stand for Really Simple Syndication, a simple XML solution (promoted as RSS 2.0 by Dave Winer at Userland), and one returns RSS to its original roots of RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.0 by the RSS 1.0 Development group). RSS feeds, as they are called, are small, brief introductions to recently released news articles or weblog postings (weblogs are frequently updated journals that may include links to other stories, comments, and so on). These feeds are picked up by aggregators, which format the feeds into human consumable forms (e.g., as web pages or audio notices). RSS files normally contain only the most recent feeds, newer items replacing older ones. Given the transitory nature of RSS feeds as I just described them, it is difficult to justify the use of RDF for RSS. If RDF's purpose is to record assertions about resources that can be discovered and possibly merged with other assertions to form a more complete picture of the resource, then that implies some form of permanence to this data, that the data hangs around long enough to be discovered. If the data has a life span of only a minute, hour, or day, its use within a larger overall "semantic web" tends to be dubious, at best. However, the data contained in the RSS feeds—article title, author, date, subject, excerpt, and so on—is a very rich source of information about the resource, be it article or weblog posting, information that isn't easily scraped from the web page or pulled in from the HTML meta tags. Additionally, though the purpose of the RSS feed is transitory in nature, there's no reason tools can't access this data and store it in a more permanent form for mergence with other data. For instance, I've long been amazed that search tools don't use RSS feeds rather than the HTML pages themselves for discovering information. Based on these latter views of RSS, there is, indeed, a strong justification for building RSS within an RDF framework—to enhance the discovery of the assertions contained within the XML. The original purpose of RSS might be transitory, but there's nothing to stop others from pulling the data into more permanent storage if they so choose or to use the data for other purposes. I'll cover the issue of RSS in more detail in Chapter 13, but for now the point to focus on is that when to use RDF isn't always obvious. The key to knowing when to make extra effort necessary to overlay an RDF model on the data isn't necessarily based on the original purpose for the data or even the transitory nature of the data—but on the data itself. If the data is of interest, descriptive, and not easily discovered by any other means, little RDF alarms should be ringing in our minds. As stated earlier, if RDF isn't a replacement for some technologies, it is an opportunity for new ones. In particular, Mozilla, my favorite open source browser, uses RDF extensively within its architecture, for such things as managing table of contents structures. RDF's natural ability to organize XML data into easily accessible data statements made it a natural choice for the Mozilla architects. Chapter 14 explores how RDF/XML is used within the Mozilla architecture, in addition to its use in other open source and noncommercial applications such as MIT's DSpace, a tool and technology to track intellectual property, and FOAF, a toolkit for describing the connections between people. Chapter 15 follows with a closer look at the commercial use of RDF, taking a look at OSA's Chandler, Plugged In Software's Tucana Knowledge Store, Siderean Software's Seamark, the Intellidimension RDF Gateway, and how Adobe is incorporating RDF data into its products.  |
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