Distributed meta data objects using RDF

Booz-Allen is helping to design and develop a Crisis Management System to provide collaborative analytical and presentation capabilities. To facilitate the distributed use of content information, content meta data is represented as C++ objects and operated upon using CORBA interfaces. Requiring that such applications implement CORBA interfaces to access meta data objects proved to be a barrier to integrating other applications with the system. Using the XML-based Resource Description Framework (RDF), a representation of the meta data was developed. This representation eases integration difficulties and facilitates more flexible usage of meta data by components and applications. This paper presents the development of a browser-based application used to evaluate the usability of distributed meta data objects represented in RDF. It describes the rationale behind using RDF as the meta data representation. The development of the application has proven the viability of using RDF to represent meta data.