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Publishing JSON-LD for Developers

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Re: Publishing JSON-LD for Developers

#51

Post by lolive »

lolive wrote: post #50
lolive wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, to be fair, I would say that JSON-LD could solve the problem of sending typed data through the wire once we have typed-contracts between server and client (for example when everybody switches from JS+REST to TS+Swagger). Imho, JSON-LD is a piece of crap (because it is based on JSON, that is flawed by design). So I would definitely promote the usage of RDF/N3 (and its N3.parse()) as the way to go when you need to…

Here is a small primer that i wrote on HN about N3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14476070 (as you can see, nothing very complex :)

Oh, and for your information, N3 has always had a reification syntax. For example:

{ [ x:firstname "Ora" ] dc:wrote [ dc:title "Moby Dick" ] } a n3:falsehood .

PS: yep, there are blank nodes here. PPS: very few parsers take this into account, I agree. But I am pretty sure N3.parse() does.

Re: Publishing JSON-LD for Developers

#52

Post by rspeer »

otakucode wrote: post #27

Blah. Some people just won't be happy until JSON turns into the debacle XML turned into. It's a special kind of brain problem to see a simple straightforward thing and to only consider how one might bolt on arbitrary complexity.

You must have misunderstood something. JSON is a data format. JSON-LD is a use of that data format.

Your complaint is as if you looked at the Sublime Text configuration file, which is in JSON, and said "I liked JSON better when you didn't have to configure anything".

JSON-LD isn't designed to replace JSON, it's designed to replace all the awkward formats for RDF.

Re: Publishing JSON-LD for Developers

#53

Post by rspeer »

athenot wrote: post #15

I guess I don't understand the purpose. If a high degree of formalization, typing and namespacing is required, why not use full-blown XML with namespaces and schemas?

Because XML is a much worse match for everyone's data model than JSON is.

Data structures aren't marked-up text. And that one time that XML was supposed to be used for marked-up text (XHTML), it wasn't even good at that either.

Re: Publishing JSON-LD for Developers

#54

Post by rspeer »

I recently wrote about the use of JSON-LD in ConceptNet: http://blog.conceptnet.io/posts/2018/conceptnet-and-json-ld/

Seeing some knee-jerk negativity in other replies, I should emphasize: nobody is under any obligation to use JSON-LD just because you use JSON! It's not an upgrade to JSON, it's an upgrade to RDF.

Re: Publishing JSON-LD for Developers

#55

Post by lolive »

jerf wrote: post #23
talltimtom wrote: post #21

Only slightly related bit does anyone have a good current take on how to get going on using RDF for something of value? I recently got interested through a colleague showing off his pet rdf setup, but the more I read the more I am just confused with the platora of dead/abandoned and renamed projects, different standards and tons of different shorter versions like this one. It really feels like everything on the topic…

RDF is a zombie format. It isn't entirely "dead" but after some wildly ambitious promises, it hasn't lived up to any of them, and it seems only a few "true believers" are still working with it. This being a world of seven billion people, a few "true believers" can still be a few thousand people, but it's just not a technology I can say is vibrant, alive, or worth spending much time with. The core problem is that it s…

All the questions that the Semantic Web asked itself are reemerging with GraphQL. (exposing the DB schema, querying over the web, returning results based on a structure). The JS script kiddies are just scratching the surface today, but they will eventually have exactly the same questions. (data delivery, data reuse, data semantics, data exposure). They still worship plain JSON. But they will (have to) evolve. The Semantic Web has solved all those questions already, but in the most obscure manner.

PS: and yes, a graph database is a good start to open your mind.

Re: Publishing JSON-LD for Developers

#56

Post by dogweather »

igravious wrote: post #47
dogweather wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a quick example. Put this in a Rails template: ...and you'll see this in the HTML: { "@context": "http://schema.org", "@type": "WebSite", "name": "Texas Public Law", "url": "https://texas.public.law" } This DRY's up my code - I just encode the right way of forming JSON-LD and the correct objects and attributes in one place, the library. (That JSON-LD is from my live site, https://texas.public.law ) Details: Fi…

Thanks for the in-depth explanation. Sounds really great. I'll add it to my Ruby RDF toolkit. What do you think of Spira https://github.com/ruby-rdf/spira , does it complement what you are doing in any way?

That's pretty cool! But yeah, I don't have any RDF data sources. I parse lots of plain text and PDFs, and import some databases directly.

And for generating the website metadata, that info is coming from the Rails models.

Re: Publishing JSON-LD for Developers

#57

Post by lolive »

athenot wrote: post #15

I guess I don't understand the purpose. If a high degree of formalization, typing and namespacing is required, why not use full-blown XML with namespaces and schemas?

Everyone is slowly reinventing SOAP :) (Note that RDF can modelize graphs natively, has native support of types, IDs and labels, and has a javascript parsing library, a bit more powerful than JSON.parse()).

Re: Publishing JSON-LD for Developers

#58

Post by lolive »

titanix2 wrote: post #17
rjsw wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of ontologies already defined that someone could use. I'm currently involved in work to map STEP [1] onto RDF/OWL/SKOS and it seems to be working out well. I know that some of my collegues are using JSON-LD as the interchange format for this kind of thing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_10303

It totally depends on what you are doing. You need to take in account if using an ontology will solve any problem at hand. Also you may have an ontological system not build in RDF. At least in what I'm doing, RDF is creating more problems than it solves. Finally there is all the political layer that may go against publishing your data in an open and (web) accessible format and then you need another solution anyway.

To counter the argument of opening data to the outside world, LinkedOpenData has been studied inside companies. I.e opening only inside the walled garden. And guess what? It failed. Simply because companies are not organized so data can "travel" flawlessly. Companies are organized as silos. With boundaries & (implicit) contracts between people, teams, hierarchies. Of course, everyone knows the information is somewhere here or there, but eventually it is a real hard job to get it for real.

Re: Publishing JSON-LD for Developers

#59

Post by lolive »

titanix2 wrote: post #31
jshen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It provides a lot of benefits, see my other comment on this thread for a few specific benefits.

I read your post and you rose valid points. I think one problem though is that RDF is a solution searching for a problem to solve. It's clear it was designed from some abstract space instead to be a solution evolving from real use cases. And that's why most people have a hard time understand it, and even more putting it in practice. For example, even basic RDF concepts such as a resource are hard to grasp. You have a…

I have always thought RDF and the whole Semantic Web was the technical bricks for a decentralized Knowledge Graph, à la Google KG. I still strongly believe that you cannot go any other diretion if this is your goal. (and honestly, i am still puzzled by the mess of companies internal search engine & their lack of investment in a knowledge graph).

Re: Publishing JSON-LD for Developers

#60

Post by titanix2 »

igravious wrote: post #41
titanix2 wrote: post #4

I'm working on language ressources and graphs and in my opinion, RDF is so flawed you shouldn't even bother with it. I will address the topic during a conference in June (email me -- info in my profile -- for follow up or to get my articles if you're interested by the topic). JSON-LD is trying to make RDF sexier (more exactly said, RDF try to pimp itself by using JSON-LD) but as it is just RDF with a new serializatio…

If I were you I would not deliver that paper. Especially if these are the points you are going to be making. > JSON-LD is trying to make RDF sexier (more exactly said, RDF try to pimp itself by using JSON-LD) but as it is just RDF with a new serialization syntax, it share every of its issues. JSON-LD is _only_ a serialization format. Look, here are _nine_ others. https://help.poolparty.biz/doc/developer-guide/general…

I'll reply to you without quoting everything to make it more readable. First, the paper is already accepted and is not about RDF per se. I know about the serialization formats and none of them will fit my needs because the problem lies in the data model, not a concrete syntax. I don't really understand the point you try to make about literals. Mine is that because literals cannot be the origin of an edge, they form sinks. And that's very annoying for building a graph (of strings) because you then need to create proxy nodes for data all the way up.

For annotations, you can read[1]. What I meant however a really simple graph construct: information on edges. In the Neo4j lingo that is called a property[2]. There absence in RDF make it difficult to represent situations such "Paris"---distance:54---"Rennes". I'm visibly not the only one it's itching[5].

Yes you can use URN, be some projects doesn't support them. Check out the linguistics data cloud[3] for an example with such a requirement. Moreover, renting a domain (you can't buy a domain name) may be cheap but why putting this burden on yourself if you can avoid it? Even Microsoft mess up with them[4] for time to time. I read some papers of 2 years old and all the endpoints and links where dead. So yes, if you're not doing a web project, no need for a web format. Sadly this is what is done in my field.

Anyway I'll be curious to see something you built with RDF, if any. I failed to find your work besides two papers that aren't related to the subject.

[1] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.352...

[2] https://graphaware.com/neo4j/2013/10/24/neo4j-qualifying-rel...

[3] http://linguistic-lod.org/

[4] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/06/microsoft_forgets_t...

[5] http://dbooth.org/2010/rdf2/

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