In Context

I can’t tell you excited I was a few weeks ago to get my hands on a copy of this book. The title pretty much says how the book is positioned. Being I guess what you’d call a “working ontologist” in the identity space, this was just the book I hoped it would be. You see, I wish I did have the time to attend the semweb-related conferences and invest enough time to become an expert, but I really don’t. In practice all I really can do is read a the few of the OWL and RDF books that I can find, buy the best tools that are out there (e.g. TopQuadrant), subscribe to the semweb IRC, and learn by making mistakes. The existing books are either out of date, poorly written or both. The problem with being self-taught is that I’m never quite sure that there isn’t some best practice that I’m not aware of. Here’s an example. In the last 18 months I’d been hearing more an more about SKOS. Being new, it isn’t covered in the existing books, so I sort of have to figure out for myself if it’s useful. It’s a lot more fun instead to read about it as presented by Dean and Jim. I have a lot of respect for both of them, and I was very eager to learn what I could from them. I appreciated the very practical sidebars, e.g. about the common misconceptions that OOP folks have with RDF, because I’ve struggled with these same issues myself. The book was rigorous enough to make me confident that I’m on the straight and narrow, without every lapsing into unnecessary formalism. I have recommended this book to the Higgins team, and highly recommend it to anyone.