From: Stefan Decker (stefan@db.stanford.edu)
Date: 01/10/01
Peter, I'am puzzled that people think they can better deal with XML than RDF - I guess it's because XML seems to be closer to the usual EBNF style of language representation and definition. The reusability factor of RDF tools is higher than that XML tools. Once you start to make XML a bit more generic and thus enhance the reusability factor of tools (e.g. by introducing IDs to XML elements to always be able to reference things you once have defined) you end up with something like RDF - but you have to go to the painful experience of modifying XML and dealing with syntax trees (and maybe XSLT). CU, Stefan >As a modest proposal, how about building on XML itself? It has a data >model. We could specify DAML+OIL directly on top of XML. (Hmm, this is >starting to look a lot like what was done with OIL.) > >Perhaps the biggest problem that I have with RDF is that I don't see what >good it provides over XML, and I certainly don't see that its benefits >outweigh its drawbacks. I even don't understand what problem it is trying >to solve. Of course, this makes it rather hard to provide a ``fixed'' >version of RDF. > >However, I am willing to live with RDF, and even to not complain (much), as >I to understand that RDF exists, and (perhaps) something that exists is >better than something that doesn't exist. I just would like to have some >understanding of the role RDF is supposed to play, particularly over a >direct layering on XML.
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