RSS is a Data Model not an API September 7, 2005
Posted by
indus in : RSS, Search, Web 2.0 , trackback
Just saw Nivi’s post on RSS is an API. Agreed RSS gives you access to a web site’s data just like an API gives you access to a site’s computing power. But, RSS is just the data model which encapsulates the bits and pieces of information in the form of entries, categories, attributes, links, etc. The actual heavy lifting is done by SOAP Lite, HTTP Get/Post and the underlying protocols for moving the RSS documents around. RSS is an important part of the Web 2.0 ecosystem, and it defines the closely-guarded-locked-in-some-RDBMS-content data model in a well-defined dictionary of tags which are understood by any RSS reader/software.
The flexibility of RSS (it’s not just blogs) makes it ideal for content delivery and aggregation in a variety of ways. So much so that there is a website dedicated to tracking the uses of RSS in the government. RSS in the government? Kid-you-not — From delivery of newly granted patents to alerts for hurricane.
Getting a little deeper into technology, I think RSS (or Atom, etc.) are slowly paving the way for advancement in 4GL computing where data stored in RDBMS’ could be accessed/delivered without using SQL Queries. More on RSS and 4GL in a future post.
| 3.3 |
Comments
Sorry comments are closed for this entry