Internet Alchemy

While tinkering with some ideas for describing small businesses in a
FOAF-like way it struck me that the most interesting formats are ones
that promote linkage. FOAF has the knows predicate, but how could you
link businesses together. One intriguing way is to describe what a
business has and what it needs, e.g. this company has ‘engines’
and needs ‘nuts and bolts’ and ‘lubricating oil’.

It might also be fun to use it with FOAF. I might need ‘books written
by Jack Vance’ and have ‘Eminem cds’ that I’m willing to dispose of.

The vocabulary is simple. It has two predicates: wants and has. For a
contrived example, in my FOAF I might add:

<foaf:Person>
  <foaf:name>Ian Davis</foaf:name>
  <barter:wants>
    <wn:Job />
  </barter:wants>
  <barter:has>
    <wn:Skill  rdf:resource="urn:skills:programming:perl">
  </barter:has>
</foaf:Person>

For a business I might write:

<Business>
  <name>Hackitt n Run</name>
  <barter:has>
    <wn:Job />
  </barter:has>
  <barter:needs>
    <foaf:Person>
      <barter:has>
       <wn:Skill
         rdf:resource="urn:skills:programming:perl">
      </barter:has>
    </foaf:Person>
  </barter:needs>
</Business>

The barter vocabulary might open up some interesting network
applications, perhaps finding chains of barterers etc.

Note: I sent this to the rdfweb-dev mailing list