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It's not really software he's building so much as a factoring or simplification; a compact model that he can look at from any angle; something like a simulator. A provocative aspect of his model is that he's using RDF, which is designed from the ground up to pivot complex objects on shared features. This is one of the rare instances I've seen where RDF is being used as RDF rather than verbose XML, and it might even be a compelling-enough usecase to make the pain of building working software with RDF worthwhile. My one misgiving about focusing on RDF is that most social content engines have humans intimately involved in the pivoting, and it is the social act of performing a pivot that provides the most compelling content. It may be that the point is social pivoting, and better automation as enabled by RDF is a distraction.
- Publish observations or 'stuff' onto a website.
- Categorize it variety of ways.
- Pivot on yours or others observations to discover other related topics or persons.
When there are billions of dollars involved, forget about art, just forget about it.
If you don't need any of the WS-* stack, then fine. Don't require any of it in your WSDL definition. Actually, don't even bother to write a WSDL definition. Just publish a URI. It's up to you. Your service is autonomous. It will still interoperate with any other endpoint that's comfortable interacting with a URI that makes no service warranty. This is why the debate between WS-* and its would-be nemesis REST (ie XML over HTTP without even SOAP let alone any of its WS-* frippery) is a futile distraction. The whole point of SOA is that every participant can set their own rules. In fact, the reason there are so many separate WS-* specifications is that each one is meant to be optional.What's a service warranty, and why would I want to issue one?