XTech 2005: XML, the Web and beyond.
The World Wide Web is a database, but it's not tabular and relational, with a defined schema and referential integrity. That's why it works. However, there's no way to run something as simple as an SQL SELECT statement across all the data now becoming available on the web in open formats and via APIs on sites such as Amazon, flickr and del.icio.us.
Without careful designs, data on the web is going to struggle to reach its potential. By applying principles of good website architecture to the process of modeling and deploying data on the web, your information-space stands a better chance of being discovered, queried, reused and built upon.
In this paper, we will demonstrate how careful information modeling and URL design in the relaunch of radio websites at the BBC results in data that's well suited to reuse in the wider web. This work will demonstrate how even a simple webserving architecture based on static files can implement a basic REST API for a website. Web architecture principles such as minimal duplication of information, good quality linking and linkability, consistency and the principle of least surprise are investigated in the context of data design.
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Matt Biddulph
BBC Radio and Music Interactive
Matt is a software engineer in London working on digital radio, interactive TV and web publication systems at the BBC. He specialises in semantic web technologies, content management, and messaging with XML.