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A New Data Model for the Web

Posted by timothy on from the data's-no-model dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Adam Bosworth delivered what could be considered a seminal lecture (mp3) at the last MySQL conference about a new data model for the web, why the plain HTML web succeeded, and why XQuery or the Semantic web are failures. He is emphatic that RSS 2.0/Atom are the next big thing and represent the new data model for the web. The audio is rather long at forty plus minutes and there are a few places where the talk has been covered."

2 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not really by MoonFog · · Score: 3, Informative

    Semantic web is perhaps best described as a framework. I totally agree that it's a pointless comparison. RDF/RDFS and OWL build upon XML so it would make more sense to say that RSS could be a building block for further extensions on the semantic web using for example OWL to represent data.

    One of the reasons it appears to move along so slowly now is that the research is handling a lot of issues and as van Harmelen has said, they're afraid to enter the same pitfalls as the research in artificial intelligence where there has been a lot of buzz, but not many concrete results. That's not to say that there aren't any issues with the semantic web, but it's still coming along. OWL is being extended with OWL-S and OWL-QL and the issues of security and privacy are being looked at. Besides, even though ontologies are a new development on the web, they are nothing new overall, something I guess AI researches can testify to.

    Recommended book for those who want to extend your knowledge on SW A Semantic Web Primer

  2. SQL Is Not Relational ( & incorrect citation) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
    SQL was/is a industry attempt at a language for relational databases. Codd (father of relational database theory) criticized weaknesses in the SQL implementation. Do not make the mistake of thinking "SQL = Relational".

    The language Tutorial-D in the article you refer to is yet another language for relational databases! Darwen and Date are critics of SQL implementations; they are NOT critics of the relational database as you imply. They are instead the strongest relational database proponents.

    Indeed the relational model is the only model with logically provable underpinnings. In ON DOCUMENT- VS. DATA-BASES Chris Date explains:

    Types are things we can talk about. Relations are sets of statements that we can utter about those things. What can you do without the latter? The problem of OO is that they have just types, no relations.

    And about "document databases" (this would include HTML & XML):

    A document mixes data with layout (presentation). Databases deal with the former, intentionally leaving the latter to applications. Furthermore, the structure of the document is not such that it lends itself to the kind of inferences that are made from databases. What is the atomicity, selectivity, and correctness for a document base?