Why would one use RDF in a Web service definition?

Question

I've been looking at the resources definition of the Change Management module of the OSLC. Why using RDF?

Is this use related to semantic Web services?

Thanks

Answer 1

Put simply because RDF is portable, inter-operable and reusable

Using RDF means the data in your system is intrinsically reusable even by applications which know nothing of your specific data model (i.e. vocabularies and ontologies etc) since they can still process the data and extract information from it.

Also using RDF means you don't tie yourself to a proprietary/application-specific format or to a specific XML schema and you can easily extend your data model or add annotations which are ignored by the main application as you see fit.

Answer 2

Expanding on the OSLC concept —

OSLC aims provide common means of integrating resources through a common architecture using discovery, linked data, and common resource formats.

There are community topics on alignment to the W3c linked data and semantic web.

You can find out more here : http://open-services.net

A good introduction can be found here: http://open-services.net/html/case4oslc.pdf