"The phrase Open Social implies portability of personal and
social data. That would be exciting but there are entirely
different protocols underway to deal with those ideas. As some
people have told me tonight, it may have been more accurate to call
this "OpenWidget" - though the press wouldn't have been as good.
We've been waiting for data and identity portability - is this all
we get?"
[Source: Read/Write Web's Commentary & Analysis of
Google's OpenSocial API]
..Perhaps the world will read the terms of use of the API, and
realize this is not an open API; this is a free API, owned and
controlled by one company only: Google. Hopefully, the world will
remember another time when Google offered a free API and then
pulled it. Maybe the world will also take a deeper look and realize
that the functionality is dependent on Google hosted technology,
which has its own terms of service (including adding ads at the
discretion of Google), and that building an OpenSocial application
ties Google into your application, and Google into every social
networking site that buys into the Dream. Hopefully the world will
remember. Unlikely, though, as such memories are typically filtered
in the Great Noise....
[Source: Poignant commentary excerpt from Shelly Power's
Blog (as always)]
The "Semantic Data Web" vision has always been
about "Data & Identity" portability across the Web. Its been
that and more from day one.
In a nutshell, we continue to exhibit varying degrees of
Cognitive Dissonance re the following
realities:
- The Network is the Computer
(Internet/Intranet/Extranet depending on your TCP/IP usage
scenarios)
- The Web is the OS (ditto) and it provides a communications
subsystem (Information BUS) comprised of
-
URIs (pointer system for identifying,
accessing, and manipulating data)
- HTTP based Interprocess (i.e Web Apps are processes when you
discard the HTML UI and interact with the application logic
containers called "Web Services" behind the pages) ultimately hit
data
- Web Data is best Modeled as a Graph (RDF, Containers/Items/Item
Types, Property & Value Pairs associated with something, and
other labels)
- Network are Graphs and vice versa
- Social Networks are graphs where nodes are connected via social
connectors ( [x]--knows-->[y] )
- The Web is a Graph that exposes a People and Data Network (to
the degree we allude to humans not being data containers i.e. just
nodes in a network, otherwise we are talking about a Data
Network)
- Data access and manipulation depends inherently on canonical
Data Access mechanisms such as Data Source Identifiers / Names
(time-tested practice in various DBMS realms)
- Data is forever, it is the basis of Information, and it is
increasing exponentially due to proliferation of Web Services
induced user activities (User Generated Content)
- Survival, Vitality, Longevity, Efficiency, Productivity etc..
are all depend on our ability to process data effectively in a
shrinking time continuum where Data and/or Information overload is
the alternative.
The Data Web is about Presence over Eyeballs due to the
following realities:
- Eyeballs are input devices for a DNA
based processing system (Humans). The aforementioned processing
system can reason very well, but simply cannot effectively process
masses of data or information
- Widgets offer little value long term re. the imminent data and
information overload dilemma, ditto Web pages (however pretty), and
any other Eyeballs-only centric Web Apps
- Computers (machines) are equipped with inorganic (non DNA)
based processing power, they are equipped to process huge volumes
of data and/or information, but they cannot reason
- To be effective in the emerging frontier comprised of a Network
Computer and a Web OS, we need an effective mechanism that makes
best use of the capabilities possessed by humans and machines, by
shifting the focus to creation and interaction with points of "Data
Web Presence" that openly expose "Structured Linked Data".
This is why we need to inject a mesh of Linked Data into the
existing Web. This is what the often misunderstood vision of the
"Semantic Data Web" or "Web of Data" or "Web or Structured Data" is
all about.
As stated earlier (point 10 above), "Data is forever" and there
is only more of it to come! Sociality and associated Social
Networking oriented solutions are at best a spec in the Web's ocean
of data once you comprehend this reality.
Note: I am writing this post as an early implementor of GData
and an implementor of RDF
Linked Data technology and a "Web Purist".
OpenSocial implementation and support across our relevant
product families: Virtuoso (i.e the Sponger Middleware for RDF component),
OpenLink Data Spaces (Data Space Controller /
Services), and the OpenLink Ajaxt Toolkit (i.e OAT Widgets and
Libraries), is a triviality now that the OpenSocial APIs are
public.
The concern I have, and the problem that remains mangled in the
vast realms of Web Architecture incomprehension, is the fact that
GData and GData based APIs cannot deliver Structured Linked Data in
line with the essence of the Web without introducing "lock-in" that
ultimately compromises the "Open Purity" of the Web. Facebook and Google's OpenSocial response to the Facebook
juggernaut (i.e. open variant of the Facebook Activity Dashboard
and Social Network functionality realms, primarily), are at best
icebergs in the ocean we know as the "World Wide Web". The nice and
predictable thing about icebergs is that they ultimately melt into
the larger ocean :-)
On a related note, I had the pleasure of attending the
W3C's RDF
and DBMS Integration Workshop, last week. The event was well
attended by organizations with knowledge, experience, and a vested
interested in addressing the issues associated with exposing none
RDF data (e.g. SQL) as RDF, and the imminence of data and/or
information overload covered in different ways via the following
presentations:
.