Semantic Wave Blog
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March 29, 2004

Application Architectures

There have been several posts about a new old application architecture which uses RDF as the M of MVC. Mike Hogan articulated the concept very well (by way of Leigh Dodds).

Do not model your data as objects...

Its just too rigid, it slows you down, it depresses you when you have to refactor half the model due to some new requirement that does not fit. It feels like you are wading through treacle. Objects are not great for data. Source

I'd answer that it is the language and development style (java in this case) that is causing the rigidity, but this is by design. A development community which wishes for an organized, documented approach to construction will not build in mechanisms for the loose expression of a programmer's intent. Leigh pretty much sums it all up with this note:
btw, if you find that you start extending your object model to allow arbitrary property annotation, and some of those properties are actually pointers to other objects in your graph, then that's probably a sign that you may be better off using an RDF based model. And possibly Python too but I've not explored that angle yet. Source
I'd add that perl can do a pretty tight job with the arbitrary property annotation as well; manipulating perl objects and their data is like working with wet clay.

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Small picture of Jamie Pitts When I talk about the semantic web, I feel a lot like Linus. No, not Linus Torvalds. I meant the other one. - JP


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