[microformats-discuss] microformats vs. plain XML formats

[Danny Ayers]

On 7/13/05, Tantek Çelik <tantek at cs.stanford.edu> wrote:

> Microformats are a very similar evolutionary reaction to the prescribed
> methods of generic XML or RDF.

If you're talking about the use of the RDF/XML format, then I'd
probably have to agree. But the RDF model solves at least one problem
that isn't addressed by generic XML or microformats, how to integrate
data from different sources and different domains in a useful fashion.

Ok, it's largely out of scope for any purpose-specific XML, or for doc
publication. But it is something needed to take the Web beyond being
just a document repository (without an index). Many Web systems are
backed by SQL databases, but there's an impedance mismatch between
their relational model and that of the Web. You can't directly mix
data from one SQL store with that of another. On the other hand, the
graph-shaped, URI-based relational model of RDF has been designed with
the (Semantic) Web in mind, and just that kind of mixing. It's long
timescale stuff, but most of the groundwork's been done and
deployments are starting to happen.

You know I couldn't leave that one unchallenged ;-)

Cheers,
Danny.

-- 

http://dannyayers.com