This Page Retired!

(2007-10-30)

Micromodels are a set of simple, open data models built upon existing and widely adopted standards.

Objective: making it cost-effective to record and share knowledge formally, i.e. so that computers can manipulate it.

Developments around blogging and syndication have led to the emergence of Web formats which are closely related to HTML but are designed to carry explicit data. The purpose of this page is to assemble a collection of interoperable data models corresponding to each of these, along with mappings from the formats to the models. Semantic Web languages (RDF and OWL) offer a standard approach. The GRDDL WG is using these as the basis for showing how microformats and RDF can interoperate with GRDDL Micromodels for Use Cases.

This is no way intended to be a comprehensive list of every format/model under the sun, just the ones found round the blogosphere that could (very loosely) be called 'micro' - microformats, SB formats, RSS extensions/modules etc

It seems to me that if you have a notation, and a well-defined transformation from that notation to RDF, then what you've defined is, whatever else it might be, simply a non-RDF/XML notation for RDF.  After all, what's RDF/XML?  It's an XML notation with a defined tranformation from that notation to RDF.  There just happens to be a W3C spec for it.

- Frank Manola

(Comments below)

By Format

Micromodels from HTML formats (microformat style)

Format	Domain	Model	Mapping	Status
DC	Document/Content Metadata	Dublin Core	dc-extract.xsl	usable (Sep 2005 testing status)
XFN	Social Networks	FOAF *	grokXFN.xsl	usable
hCard	People	FOAF	?	?
hCalendar	Calendars and Events	RDF Calendar	glean-hcal.xsl	usable
hReview	Opinions, Ratings and Reviews	RDF Review	hreview2rdfxml.xsl	in progress
relLicense	Licenses	Creative Commons	http://www.w3.org/2003/12/rdf-in-xhtml-xslts/grokCC.xsl	?
relTag	Tags, Keywords, Categories	Tag Ontology	?	?
XOXO	Lists and Outlines	?	?	?
hDOAP	Projects	DOAP	hdoap2doap.xsl	unofficial!
hAtom	Syndication	Atom/OWL?	?	?
?	Media	?	?	?
?	Geographic	?	?	?
Attention.xml	Attention	attention	Attention RDF	?

* it's been noted that XFN mostly maps

Comments

[in response to Manolo quote]

Not necessarily, because the micromodel may not cover all of RDF. -- DavidBooth

-- an RDF/XML document doesn't have to cover all of RDF (note also EmbeddedRdf) -- DannyAyers

RDF/XML is unusable (see The 16 faces of Eve) - this is why MicroFormats are needed.

-- false, RDF/XML is used quite a lot (although microformats can offer a good alternative where appropriate) -- DannyAyers

-- also: It's not fair to compare RDF/XML and microformats as they both serve different use cases (plain data vs annotated text). One should rather compare microformats to RDFa. -- JiriKopsa