Leigh Dodds has posted a paper regarding layered data and RDF. Dodds introduces the paper thus: “Two years ago I wrote a short paper about ‘layering’ data but for various reasons never got round to putting it online. The paper tried to capture some of my thinking at the time about the opportunities and approaches for publishing and aggregating data on the web. I’ve finally got around to uploading it and you can read it here. I’ve made a couple of minor tweaks in a few places but I think it stands up well, even given the recent pace of change around data publishing and re-use. I still think the abstraction that it describes is not only useful but necessary to take us forward on the next wave of data publishing.”

Dodds continues, “I see that the RDF Working Group, prompted by Dan Brickley, is now exploring the term. I should acknowledge that I also heard the term ‘layer’ in conjunction with RDF from Dan, but I’ve tried to explore the concept from a number of perspectives. The RDF Working Group may well end up using the term ‘layer’ to mean a ‘named graph’. I’m using the term much more loosely in my paper. In my view an entire dataset could be a layer, as well as some easily identifiable sub-set of it. My usage might therefore be closer to Pat Hayes’s concept of a ‘Surface’, but I’m not sure.”

Read more here.

Image: Courtesy Flickr/ Muffet