Re: [xdi] Beating the RDF drum

[Fen Labalme <fen@idcommons.org>]

Hi Gabe -

Good to have another fan of RDF on the list!  Here's part of a note I recently 
sent to some Identity Commons developers regarding one very low impact way to 
get XRI and link contracts into the RDF/FOAF (Friend of a Friend) community:

=============
FOAF uses the mbox field as a primary key.  Here's a super-simple FOAF record:

<foaf:Person>
   <foaf:name>Fen Labalme</foaf:name>
   <foaf:mbox rdf:resource="mailto:fen@idcommons.net"; />
   <foaf:nick >fen</foaf:nick>
   <foaf:workplacehomepage rdf:resource="http://fen.net/"; />
   <foaf:depiction
     rdf:resource="http://www.fen.net/images/fen_200306_114x160.jpg"; />
   <foaf:knows>
     <foaf:Person>
       <foaf:mbox rdf:resource="mailto:owen@idcommons.net"; />
       <foaf:name>Owen Davis</foaf:name>
     </foaf:Person>
   </foaf:knows>
</foaf:Person>

Note that one thing being done to increase security is to us the SHA1 hash of 
the email address instead of the actual email address, so that connections can 
still be made without giving away a person's actual email address.  But this 
is only one level of indirection, as anyone who has a large address book (I 
have about 500 technology folk in my address book - I'm sure Marc Canter and 
Joi Ito have many more!) can easily map the SHA1 hashes to actual email addresses.

Other keys can be used by various aggregators and bots, but imagine if instead 
of putting all this data out publicly, the "mailto:"; schema in the mbox field 
was replaced with "xri:" and pointed to an e-name, access to which was 
governed by a personal e-broker.  This requires ZERO modification to the FOAF 
protocol while immediately offering the full capabilities of XRI/XDI/Data 
Brokers and Link Contracts (which, admittedly, doesn't really exist except in 
theory, yet).

But it's a compelling story!
=============

Fen

Wachob, Gabe wrote:
> This is a pretty good article describing the RDF technologies to an XML-focused audience. 
> 
> http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/57/
> 
> Feel free to ask me questions about RDF (off list unless they are generally relevant), as I think understanding RDF, even if its not used, is pretty important for discussing XDI architecture. 
> 
> 	-Gabe
> 
>  
> __________________________________________________ 
> gwachob@visa.com
> Chief Systems Architect
> Technology Strategies and Standards
> Visa International 
> Phone: +1.650.432.3696   Fax: +1.650.554.6817
>