inkdroid › iogdc ramblings

inkdroid › iogdc ramblings: "There was a question about how to make Linked Data relevant to folks whose focus is Enterprise data. In my opinion Linked Data advocates over emphasize the importance of using RDF and SPARQL (standards), and converting all the data over without completely understanding how invasive these solutions are. Not enough is done to show enterprise data folks, who typically think in terms of relational databases, what they can do to put their lovingly crafted and hugged data on the web. Consider a primary key in a database: what does it identify, what relations does that thing have with other things? Why not use that key in constructing a URL for that thing, and link things together using the URLs? Then other people could use your URLs as well in their own data. I think the drumbeat to use SPARQL and triple stores often misses explaining this fundamental baby step that data owners could take. As Derek Willis said (on the 2nd day, when I’m writing this), people want to use your data, but not your database…people want to browse your data using their web browser. Assigning URLs to the important stuff in your databases is the first important step to make with Linked Data."