[DAIS-WG] RDF Specification Motivation Text

[Mario Antonioletti]

Hi,
    Have had a look now and made some changes but I wanted you (and 
others) to see where I had made the changes so I put your text in 
word and did it with change tracking on. Have a look and let me know 
what you think.

Couple of things:

o who is the motivational document targetting? My call would be the
   RDF community and not DAIS/Grid folks - right?
o I think need to make more of the abstraction layer that is going
   to be provided by the RDF ontology spec (and hopefully
   implementation) ... there is still a battle to be had here as to
   what constitutes access and management but can save that one til
   later when Miguel finds that he has time.

Let me know what you think ...

Mario

On Tue, 7 Jul 2009, Steven Lynden wrote:

> Hi,
>
> At the last RDF telcon we decided that it was important to clearly
> define the motivation for the RDF specifications. The text below is  a
> potential addition to the motivational document to do this. Any
> comments/additions welcome, especially about points that might not be
> valid or things that have been missed.
>
> Regards,
>
> Steven.
>
> This document proposes extending the WS-DAI specifications, currently
> including XML and relational realisations, to encompass RDF(S) data
> resources. Standards for accessing databases from programming
> languages (e.g. JDBC, XML:DB etc) have been widely used to save
> programming effort and promote interoperability and the WS-DAI
> specifications bring the same benefits to service-based computing. The
> WS-DAI specifications provide a set of WSDL interfaces for managing,
> querying and describing various properties associated with data
> resources, an important aspect of this approach being that the
> interfaces defined in the WS-DAI specifications can be seamlessly
> combined with those defined by other web service standards that
> concentrate on other areas, for example, security. Although the SPARQL
> query language already has an associated W3C recommendation web
> service-based protocol [SPARQL-Protocol] for executing SPARQL queries,
> the RDF(S)-based WS-DAI specifications described in this document are
> required for the following reasons:
>
> - The WS-DAI specifications set out standard patterns for querying,
> managing and describing various aspects of data resources within the
> context of service-based computing, for example operations exist for
> configuring data resources and describing a data resource's ability to
> support various features such as transactions. In contrast, the SPARQL
> Protocol defines a single query operation and associated fault
> messages but lacks the range of operations, properties and faults
> defined within WS-DAI in order to fully support access to data
> resources in a service-based setting. An RDF(S) realisation of WS-DAI
> is therefore required to provide this support in an RDF(S) setting.
>
> - The SPARQL Protocol's SparqlQuery::query operation is analogous to
> the direct data access query pattern specified by WS-DAI, where the
> entire dataset formed as the result of a query is returned to a client
> within a response message. The WS-DAI specification defines a second
> pattern, indirect data access, where the result of a query is made
> available as a new data resource, i.e. implementing the factory
> pattern. This pattern supports third-party delivery, can be used to
> avoid unnecessary data movement, and allows a client to pull data from
> a data resource rather than have it returned all at once in a single
> response message. This access pattern is important in a wide range of
> scenarios including distributed query processing and providing
> scalable/reliable data access.
>
> - WS-DAI specifications exist for XML and relational data sources, and
> their adoption will result in applications that follow the WS-DAI
> approach to using data resources in a service-based setting. There is
> therefore a need to 'complete' the set of specifications in order to
> complement the XML and relational realisations, enabling applications
> and developers familiar with using WS-DAIR and WS-DAIX to interact
> with RDF(S) data resources using the same approach. Currently, RDF(S)
> data is widely used and its adoption is growing, this means that the
> next logical progression is to concentrate DAIS-WG efforts in this
> area.
>
> -  The SPARQL query language is not the only means by which a client
> may wish to interact with an RDF(S) data resource. The interfaces
> provided by RDF(S) storage systems, for example the Jena Ontology API,
> provide a a range of mechanisms for directly manipulating an ontology.
> As such APIs vary depending on the specific storage system used, for
> example Oracle RDF, Sesame etc., the WS-DAI-RDF(S) Ontology
> specification aims to provide a set of ontology handling primitives
> for interacting with RDF(S) data resources, hiding any syntactic and
> platform-dependent aspects, enabling their use in an open,
> interoperable way.
> --
>  dais-wg mailing list
>  dais-wg at ogf.org
>  http://www.ogf.org/mailman/listinfo/dais-wg
>

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Mario Antonioletti:EPCC,JCMB,The King's Buildings,Edinburgh EH9 3JZ.   |
|Tel:0131 650 5141|mario at epcc.ed.ac.uk|http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/~mario/ |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
-- 
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: lynden-motivation.doc
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 33280 bytes
Desc: 
Url : http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/dais-wg/attachments/20090715/ada85d77/attachment-0001.obj