DataPortability and SIOC
Chris Saad
I thought we should start a new thread over here to discuss SIOC and
how it fits into the broader picture of DataPortability.
Let's start with the very basic principals.
Let's assume that using the DataPortability reference design (for
example) I am able to find a user's YADIS/XRDS information, and from
there identify the services/data containers they use, and from their
use oAuth to log into those services, and from there use some sort of
standardized WRFS query API to retrieve personal data from that user's
account.
What does SIOC give me in this picture that I don't have already?
Perhaps there is some overlap (and that's ok - maybe some of us need
to adjust the picture).
This is the goal of DP - not work out how this all fits together to
form a complete picture and write down the reference design - so this
is a very worthy discussion.
Look forward to your input.
Chris
Chris Saad
John Breslin
Thanks for creating this discussion, I hope it will be useful.
I've been reading up on YADIS [1] / XRDS [2] / WRFS [3] to make sure
that I can get an idea of their potential, as I am not au fait with them
I'm sad to say.
So as I understand, you use YADIS to discover an identity, and get an
XRDS document back indicating which identities they prefer to use and
what services those identities are on. Then you can use WRFS to find out
what containers those identities hold on those services.
SIOC [4] is one representation method for describing the content of the
containers and the items, and the structure / connections therein.
For example, on the DP wiki there's an illustration [5] by Josh
Patterson showing how a WRFS prototype workspace could use YADIS+WRFS to
get URIs for an identity's associated data containers so that
applications can access the data in those containers represented in a
format like SIOC or FOAF (for containers of posted items or people
respectively). As Alexandre Passant mentioned earlier, FOAF and SIOC
are being used in his application to export linked data from Flickr
accounts [6]. SIOC data is also being produced from various personal
blogging platforms and microblogging accounts [7].
But SIOC isn't just for personal containers of data. I think another
issue for the DataPortability workgroup is whether methods can be used
to port not just personal sets of data but communities of data. SIOC
was initially intended to provide a way to describe the content from
online communities, like mailing lists, message boards, etc. It was
soon used for people's blogs (since the post+reply structure is very
similar to community discussions; it's just that the first poster is
usually one person in blogs), and more recently for other personal sets
of Web 2.0-type content items. But if I run a community site, and I
decide I want to port my group from one place to another, SIOC can be
used to fully describe the structure (and content if combined with other
vocabluaries) of most communities. We have various exporters in place;
importers are the next step (a first demonstrator for WordPress has been
produced [8]).
What do others think? I know SIOC is just one representation format of
course, microformats can be used and Eran Globen has shown how SIOC-type
structures can be represented using microformats [9] as well.
Thanks,
John.
--
[1] http://yadis.org/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yadis#Yadis_capability_document
[3] http://cowbell.floe.tv/WRFS_11_20_2007.html
[4] http://sioc-project.org
[5] http://dataportability.pbwiki.com/WRFS%20Prototype%20Workspace
[6]
http://apassant.net/blog/2007/12/18/rdf-export-of-flickr-profiles-with-foaf-and-sioc/
[7] http://rdfs.org/sioc/applications
[8] http://wiki.sioc-project.org/w/SIOC_Import_Plugin
[9]
http://web.archive.org/web/20061103031603/http://hellonline.com/blog/?p=91