{"id":799,"date":"2010-06-08T15:32:57","date_gmt":"2010-06-08T14:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/?p=799"},"modified":"2010-06-08T15:32:57","modified_gmt":"2010-06-08T14:32:57","slug":"sort-linked-data-avoiding-a-%e2%80%98break-of-gauge%e2%80%99-in-your-web-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/2010\/06\/sort-linked-data-avoiding-a-%e2%80%98break-of-gauge%e2%80%99-in-your-web-content\/","title":{"rendered":"SORT &#8211; Linked Data: avoiding a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBreak of Gauge\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in your web content"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tom Heath from Talis&#8230; slides at \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/tomheath.com\/slides\/2010-06-manchester-inked-data-avoiding-breaks-of-gauge-in-your-web-content.pdf\">http:\/\/tomheath.com\/slides\/2010-06-manchester-inked-data-avoiding-breaks-of-gauge-in-your-web-content.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tom using his journey to work (Bristol -&gt; Birmingham) as analogy &#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>25 minute walk to the station<\/li>\n<li>Train Bristol Temple Meads -&gt; Birmingham New Street<\/li>\n<li>Train to Birmingham New Street -&gt; Birmingham International<\/li>\n<li>Bike from Birmingham International to Talis offices<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Rail network allows this to happen. However, if we look back to 1800s &#8211; same journey would have taken around 4 days before rail link was built (Birmingham to Gloucester railway &#8211; see <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Birmingham_and_Gloucester_Railway\">http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Birmingham_and_Gloucester_Railway<\/a>). However, even when rail link was built, had to change at Gloucester to get train to Bristol because the track Bristol-&gt;Gloucester was a different gauge to Gloucester-&gt;Birmingham.<\/p>\n<p>The situation for data in HE is currently like the picture before the national rail network was developed &#8211; lots of isolated nodes of data. While possible to do custom links between various datasets &#8211; it is difficult to answer questions that might require links across many datasets.<\/p>\n<p>At the moment we might be able to mashup data from several sources &#8211; but it costs us each time we do it (as with changing trains at Gloucester). Linked Data makes it possible to combine the data without this &#8216;each time&#8217; cost.<\/p>\n<p>Tom&#8217;s &#8216;take home&#8217; messages:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Building physical networks adds value to the places which are connected &#8211; the Birmingham&lt;-&gt;Bristol railway was built for a reason not arbitrarily &#8211; allowed transport of goods from a port to inland city<\/li>\n<li>Buidling virtual networks adds value to the tings whih are connected<\/li>\n<li>Linked Data enables us to build a network or &#8216;Web&#8217; of data sets<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>How?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>No need for a &#8216;Big Bang&#8217; &#8211; exploit existing infrastructure; build a backbone<\/li>\n<li>Costs? &#8211; As for any infrastructure investment; Bootstrapping cost vs cost savings and value of things that wouldn&#8217;t otherwise get done<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Q &amp; A<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Q: (David Flanders) Are there some examples that people can look at for guidance<\/p>\n<p>A: Biggest example &#8211; data.gov.uk &#8211; example of infrastructure that allows devolved ownership of URIs &#8211; which separates out the URI namespace from Department names etc. &#8211; lots of really good practice. See also Jeni Tennison&#8217;s blog &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jenitennison.com\/blog\/\">http:\/\/www.jenitennison.com\/blog\/<\/a>. If the UK Government can do it &#8211; any University can do the same.<\/p>\n<p>Q: (Mike Ellis) Conceptually great, but reality it is too hard &#8211; better to do what you can?<\/p>\n<p>A: Don&#8217;t agree \ud83d\ude42 Anyone can get the idea of a network of things connected &#8211; just draw a spider diagram and you&#8217;ve got the idea. The technical challenge is new &#8211; but there are always technical challenges &#8211; we all need to learn new things to deal with this &#8211; but whatever happens next this will be true<\/p>\n<p>Q: (Peter Burnhill) Machine readable is key. In the past we got hung up on &#8216;channels&#8217; as opposed to data models. Need to move to the place where publication of schemas is a great thing to do.<\/p>\n<p>A: Agree. Any institution publishing ontologies or vocabularies that is then reused &#8211; gets &#8216;credit&#8217; by reuse of their URIs &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Q: (David Kay) I&#8217;m with Mike &#8211; this is closer to solving the &#8216;authority file&#8217; problem rather than data model problem. If we&#8217;ve continually failed to solve this problem aren&#8217;t we bound to fail with this attempt as well?<\/p>\n<p>A: Need to stop thinking of a &#8216;authority&#8217; answer &#8211; may have lots answers &#8211; and may be contradictory. But this is what will allow you to scale &#8211; you will use the one that is most useful to you.<\/p>\n<p>Q: (Liz Lyon) Just to mention &#8216;Concept Web Alliance&#8217; in Bioinformatics is looking at describing concepts using RDF\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/conceptweblog.wordpress.com\/\">http:\/\/conceptweblog.wordpress.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tom Heath from Talis&#8230; slides at \u00a0http:\/\/tomheath.com\/slides\/2010-06-manchester-inked-data-avoiding-breaks-of-gauge-in-your-web-content.pdf Tom using his journey to work (Bristol -&gt; Birmingham) as analogy &#8230; 25 minute walk to the station Train Bristol Temple Meads -&gt; Birmingham New Street Train to Birmingham New Street -&gt; Birmingham International Bike from Birmingham International to Talis offices The Rail network allows this to happen. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46],"class_list":["post-799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-sort2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":807,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799\/revisions\/807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}