More Data about Meta Data
So we've got the ball rolling ... It's Meta Data all the way.Let's be "all official" and start off with the W3C - World Wide Web Consortium ... (since they are the officials that set the standards)
What started here:
http://www.w3.org/Metadata/Is the definition of how powerful Meta Data really can be. (I knew it was good for some thing great) -
Deep Breadth - In small Pieces; Here we go -
Now the site above defines Metadata / Meta Data as:
... is machine understandable information for the web
This definition is in the context of the web ... The "web" is a large repository of resources. That is a very formal way of looking at things. As a student not only of an academic institution but also of the web ... I dare say not from the origin but from the days when yahoo, excite, alta vista and then lycos were everyday tools.
The web has grown exponentially; so much so is this hodge podge of information on all things imaginable that locating / searching and creditability have become issues (not to mention accessibility and standardization). The W3C's initiative at sloving what seems to be the problem (we'll talk about this later on in week 11 or 12) is hitting at the source and hitting hard. If you go through the documentation;
Will give you the definition of Meta Data as above and it will take you here;
This Link goes to the W3C's - Resource Description Framework -
They describe the framework adequately as a specification to support the exchange of data online.
This is very simmered down.
Now this document requires some prep reading
http://www.noisebetweenstations.com/personal/essays/metadata_glossary/metadata_glossary.html
This site gives some nice broad definitions of;
- Meta Data
- Ontology
- Semantic Web
- Data Model
- Resource Description Framework
- Topic maps
- XML
So I will put all the above in a some context. The goal of the RDF - Resource Description Framework with respect to Meta Data has now evolved into the Semantic Web( http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/).
The specification links to some outside documents that explain the situation well with examples from the systems in the physical world that we can relate to. (Libraries, Video Stores)
(great link)
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/98/06/rdf.html
extended here
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/01/24/rdf.html
What they are all really getting to is that in the systems we have developed for use by humans and machines so far that deal with data have all been modeled around meta data. The data we use has some generic meanings or fall into categories with which they in turn have meaning or at least reference to each other.
The web is a huge set of data, it's growing everyday, however unlike any of the other systems that we catalog so well the web is mostly non descriptive. It is content with out relationship because it lacks coherent semantics.
Whole purpose of the RDF and the Semantic Web initiative by the W3C is to change this. In the future it is imperative that the web of data mean something. To keep track of the information being generated and the online space being constantly filled we need to catalog and categorize information so that we can make resources relative to eachother.
The RDF is the how... its how they inted to devise what the descriptions (meta data) will look like. This standard abstraction will help interoperability. This is the hope. So if we all describe things using some vocabulary subsets in the same format (using the RDF) then we get a standard that we can apply to each other's data.
According to the articles [Tim Bray] right now we relate resources and located them "the hard way".
A bit from my head
Search engines do what is known as screen scraping; that is they manually and literally go throught the content of resources (the human value/representation) and match the contents to criteria or the contents of other resources to find reference or similarity. This is achieved using complex algorithms and large amounts of resources(hardware and software ... not to mention human to design the algorithms in the first place).
So this was a very disorganized diary. It gets better I hope. Right now its just alot of information swirling around in my head. The important things are;
I think I'll do another degree after this one. So I can do another project. I've not had this much fun since I was 9 and played marbles in primary school.
The web is a huge set of data, it's growing everyday, however unlike any of the other systems that we catalog so well the web is mostly non descriptive. It is content with out relationship because it lacks coherent semantics.
Whole purpose of the RDF and the Semantic Web initiative by the W3C is to change this. In the future it is imperative that the web of data mean something. To keep track of the information being generated and the online space being constantly filled we need to catalog and categorize information so that we can make resources relative to eachother.
The RDF is the how... its how they inted to devise what the descriptions (meta data) will look like. This standard abstraction will help interoperability. This is the hope. So if we all describe things using some vocabulary subsets in the same format (using the RDF) then we get a standard that we can apply to each other's data.
According to the articles [Tim Bray] right now we relate resources and located them "the hard way".
A bit from my head
Search engines do what is known as screen scraping; that is they manually and literally go throught the content of resources (the human value/representation) and match the contents to criteria or the contents of other resources to find reference or similarity. This is achieved using complex algorithms and large amounts of resources(hardware and software ... not to mention human to design the algorithms in the first place).
So this was a very disorganized diary. It gets better I hope. Right now its just alot of information swirling around in my head. The important things are;
- I'm not bored (Yet - hope I've not bored you)
- I'm not confused (Yet - really hope I've not confused you either)
- I'm still having fun. (hope you are too)
I think I'll do another degree after this one. So I can do another project. I've not had this much fun since I was 9 and played marbles in primary school.
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