| 85 | 91 | MDW: This really depends on whether or not you intend to publish your database as a SPARQL endpoint. The poll that Pierre and I took over the past couple of days suggests that only 5 data providers (within Tweet-shot of us) currently provide SQL access to their data resources. IMO this does not bode well for having data providers set-up SPARQL endpoints!! (why would they open themselves to a new, unfamiliar technology when they don't open themselves to a well-known, tested, secure, and highly powerful technology???) We have tried to make a compelling argument that exposing resources via SADI Web Services gives you the best of both worlds - a highly-granular control over what data you expose, how you expose it, and over the distribution of large numbers of requests over your compute-resources; yet our SHARE client helps make it *appear* that the entire world is one big SPARQL endpoint (on steroids, since you can SPARQL data that doesn't even exist until you ask the question!) My opinion (biased!) is that SADI Web Services are a better way to expose RDF data compared to SPARQL endpoints. Moreover, it doesn't require you to change your existing data infrastructure in any way - you don't need to have a triple-store to expose your data as triples via SADI. With a Web Service-based exposure, you can migrate your data gradually/modularly, a few properties at a time, rather than attempting to move your entire database to the Semantic Web in one shot... and gain experience as you go! Given that it is currently not (natively) possible to SPARQL query over multiple endpoints, you aren't losing anything by going the SADI route either. Finally, '''all''' of your resources (both database and analytical tools) are exposed in exactly the same way, meaning that they are all accessed by clients in exactly the same way, simplifying client design :-) |
