DJ Adams on RDF in RSS

DJ takes some time out to investigate how RSS 1.0 uses RDF.

In other words, the RDF in RSS is there to identify resources (the nodes) and to describe properties of or relationships between them (the arcs). The RDF content of RSS is not large. I think some people might intermingle RDF and namespace content and think "ooh, there's a lot of RDF in RSS". Sure, namespaces are fundamental to RDF, but exist (both here in RSS and elsewhere) independent of it (although if you use namespaces such as the Dublin Core in RDF-enhanced RSS, then you're effectively, and at no extra cost, adding to the data web with the triples that come into being because of how RDF, namespaces, and XML wonderfully work together).

So, there you have it. Just a bit of a brain dump of what I've been learning over the past couple of days. Now that I understand what's going on, I for one would be very disappointed to see RDF go away from RSS. Although there are signs that this may not be the case after all. But that's another story.

Permalink: http://blog.iandavis.com/2002/09/dj-adams-on-rdf-in-rss/

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