I’ve been mulling over this for a while, and seeing as I am home sick (can’t you tell from the rush of posts?) I’m going to give it a go. This definitely comes with a health warning as it goes way beyond what I know much about at any technical level. This is therefore handwaving of the highest order. But I haven’t come across anyone else floating the same ideas so I will have a shot at explaning my thoughts.
The Semantic Web, RDF, and XML are all the product of …

‘No data model survives contact with reality’ – Me, Cosener’s House Workshop 29 February 2008
This flippant comment was in response to (I think) Paolo Missier asking me ‘what the data model is’ for our experiments. We were talking about how we might automate various parts of the blog system but the point I was making was that we can’t have a data model with any degree of specificity because we very quickly find the situation where they don’t fit. However, having spent some time thinking about machine readability and the …

There were lots of helpful comments on my previous post as well as some commiseration from Peter Murray-Rust. Also Jean-Claude Bradley’s group is starting to face some similar issues with the combi-Ugi project ramping up. All in the week that the Science Commons Open Data protocol is launched. I just wanted to bring out a few quick points:
The ease with which new data types can be incorporated into UsefulChem, such as the recent incorporation of a crystal structure (see also JC’s Blog Post), shows the flexibility and ease provided by …