[Geowanking] RDF vs GML in Open Source vs Google

[Phillip C. Dibner]

Hi all,

On Jul 26, 2005, at 2:11 PM, Chris Holmes wrote:

> Ah ok.  I don't _think_ GML was ever meant to be much more than a
> transport language, at least I only think of it as transport.  To be
> converted to your local gis, or to display on the web, ect.

My impression as well, but it does take time and effort to convey this 
to other communities (as I'm doing now in the biodiversity informatics 
world) who may balk at the notion that their data have to be 
"converted" to a GML model in order to be served via WFS.

and...

> Ok, _this_ makes a lot of sense to me.  And I see what you're saying,
> GML trying to do too much, because it ends up having to, with all the
> different communities, defining all their own domains, and doing so
> with something that wasn't truly designed for the task.  We've recently
> been getting into addressing specific domains with GML, and if RDF is
> really all it's cracked up to be, then I see how it's the superior
> choice.

Could be (and thanks, Chris G., for your pointers to material on RDF - 
I am coming up to speed).  However, at risk of belaboring the obvious 
(and leaving aside for the moment the immense amount of work that has 
gone into the current specification and associated products), GML is at 
least as much (I'd say more) an information model as any particular 
encoding of that model - and one that is very compatible with RDF.   
So, we shouldn't be contrasting RDF with GML so much as considering the 
benefits and liabilities of current (Schema) and potential (e.g., RDF) 
realizations of the model.  In this light, an experiment like the one 
suggested yesterday by Dan Brickley seems a great way to explore the 
question.

Flip



Phillip C. Dibner
Ecosystem Associates
(650) 948-3537
(650) 948-7895 Fax