Rating: 
Summary: Clear explanations and examples
Review: "Practical RDF" provides useful and detailed discussions of many important aspects of RDF including; vocabulary, ontology, schema, development tools and applications. Starting in chapter one with an introduction to the Semantic Web, Shelley Power quickly moves on to developing RDF triplet and graphs models in chapter two. She presents elementary examples that offer an easy starting ramp for novices to RDF. Vocabulary, ontology and schema are well developed. In later chapters, the more difficult concepts of reification, collections and containers are discussed, but the presentation is less satisfying due to the unstable nature of their W3C status.Several chapters were devoted to the key RDF tool makers, which were well represented and discussed including; HP's Jena, RDFGateway, Semaview and SMORE. Illustrative applications for most tools were provided. The writing style was comfortable and relaxed making the material cohesive and enjoyable. This is the first comprehensive book on RDF that reduces some of its more abstract mathematics to practical examples. The book paves the way for more demanding topics such as Web Ontology Language and the Semantic Web.
Rating: 
Summary: A good intro to RDF concepts
Review: Although I had heard a lot about RDF, I really have never been properly exposed to it. I had seen RDF used in RSS 1.0, but it was the more recent used of RDF by the creative commons for their licensing metadata that got me curious enough to want to learn more. So, I purchased this book in the hopes of learning more about RDF. The first 6 chapters cover the basics of RDF. The book does a good job of introducing RDF basics, but I do feel the book ramped up a bit too quickly. I'll definitely have to re-read soem of those chapters to make sure I really understand the concepts. The diagrams in these chapters were really good at helping explain the concepts. I only wish there were more of them. Chapters 8-11 cover different RDF libraries and RDF applications. I found these chapters useless. It was interesting to see some of the programming models that I could use do work with RDF, but I bought the book to learn about RDF, not about perl or python APIs. Chapters 12-15 give good coverage of a number of technologies that use RDF. I found these chapters quite interesting. I felt Chapter 13 on RSS (even though it is limited to the RDF variants of RSS) gave better coverage of RSS than Content Syndication with RSS (which ought to be called "RSS Programming using Perl"). I wish there had been more coverage of the creative commons license and Friend of a friend. At 300 pages, the book was a good length. I wish there had been more of the first and third sections and less of the middle section. I feel I got my money's worth as a complete RDF newbie, but I wonder if the book would provide as much value someone who already has the basics of RDF down. I can't answer that, but I can say that if you want a thorough introduction to RDF concepts, this book is great.
Rating: 
Summary: Not so practical
Review: For a book about 'practical' RDF this book is mainly about theory. The book doesn't get into applications until chapter 10 and it's coverage of the RSS applications is pretty minor. However, there are some good points. The XML examples are highlighted, which makes them very easy to read. The tough subject matter, meta data about meta data, is well covered in-depth. I gave it four stars because it is merely mis-titled. The first ten chapters do a solid job, with excellent graphics, explaining RDF. So if you are looking for an general RDF book, you have probably come to the right place. If you are looking for a book to explain why your blog's RSS doesn't validate, you shouldn't buy into the practical title, or this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Many typos and mediocre writing style ...
Review: I bought this book because I would to have a printed source of information to RDF concepts and syntax. Also, I hoped to see some examples and ideas of RDF applications beyound of the (in)famous Semantic Web.
My expectations were fulfilled only partially.
First, the book was somewhat difficult to read because of typos and discrepancies e.g. between RDF examples and figures of graphs that were generated from them.
Only one application of RDF is shown in good detail through the book: PostCon vocabulary/schema developed by the author herself.
RSS is covered in a separate chapter, but I would not reccomend Practical RDF for somebody who wants to get an introduction to RSS technology - version 2.0 of RSS being not RDF-based is not covered in the book.
I agree with the author that RDF technology has a huge potential, but this declaration is not proved by most of this book's examples.
Tools and applications are only described briefly in getting started guide style - I would rather go google for up-to-date version of the same info.
Also, there is little fun found reading that book. Style is rather dull - not unlike the style I use in this review, but extended to 300+ pages.
Rating:
Summary: Verbose
Review: I found the prose of this book tedious and in the way of the material. Normally I appreciate O'Reilly books because I actually sit down and read them, away from the computer, but in this case the prose does nothing to illuminate the material. For example, in the first chapter, which provides an overview of the technology (independent of its XML implementation), the author talks about a particular tool for graphically representing an RDF graph. But (1) the tool is never really introduced -- why should it be in this chapter? and (2) she writes as if the graphical views of the tool are somehow literally the RDF graphs, which are mathematical constructs. In short, the author has done none of the important work of getting to the essence of RDF and presenting it in a logical and convincing manner. The thinking behind RDF is complicated and subtle, in spite of the superficial simplicity of the technology. What I expected was a book that would provide some real explanation, rather than an exhaustive and wordy review of all the concepts in series. This is not the book.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but....
Review: Normally, I like O'Reilly books. I've probably bought over 50 of them over the years. This one, however, is not up to their usual standards. While the subject, RDF, is interesting and I feel that the pace and content of the book are good. I find that there are so many typographical errors in the book - at least in the copy that I have - that it takes more effort to figure out what it is that the author means, as opposed to what the text is actually saying, than it's worth. There are places where the text contains contradictions, there are places where the examples are incorrect, and there are places where the information presented is downright wrong. I do not feel that the fault is solely the author's, nor do I feel that the fault lies solely with O'Reilly's editors. But what could have been a good, informative book has been brought low by a lack of proofreading. If you're really interested in RDF, you may well do better by going to the W3C web site and reading the specifications there than by reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: Best introduction to RDF, RDFS, and OWL available
Review: RDF and its allied technologies (RDFs, OWL, etc.) have been evolving in fits and starts for the past several years, but the dust finally seems to be settling in RDF Land, so, months ago, when I learned that O'Reilly was going to be publishing an RDF book, I was cautiously hopeful. The very few books on the subject that had been published were sorely lacking. For the most part, the available online tutorials were sketchy at best and many seemed to have been obsoleted by developments within the W3C working groups handling the several relevant Recommendations. Although it wouldn't have taken much for Practical RDF to come out ahead of the competition, I'm happy to say that Practical RDF is far and above the best RDF/RDFS/OWL book available. It left me wanting more, wishing that the author had developed more demo RDF vocabularies and shifted the extensive (and quite good) survey of RDF software tools and utilities to the book's website, but what's there is pure gold.
Rating:
Summary: A very good book for a niche RDF audience
Review: The book "Practical RDF" is a very good way to get familiar with the elite, lesser known but powerful Resource Derscription Framework. The subject of the book is high tech, and it helps (or rather it is required) if you have a very good understanding of XML. The first chapter itself is very awe-inspiring and gives you a glimpse of things to come. The author presents this awesome technology with comfort, but the book still remains a little dificult to understand. Mozilla example is well illustrated. The second half of the book is much easier to understand and presnts various commercial, non-commercial applications of RDF. In a nutshell, a very good book for a niche audience.
Rating:
Summary: Outdated
Review: The Book is about the old version of Jena.
Rating:
Summary: Tech review missing
Review: There's a lot of information in this book, and there's really no alternative source for much of it. The RDF spec kept changing while this book was being written, which accounts for how some of the inconsistencies and inaccuracies got into the text.
However, it wasn't proofreading that should have caught these problems but the technical reviewers. They flat fell down on the job. On page 20, for instance, the text says that "in all instances of RDF graphs I've seen, [the direction of the arrows] is from right to left." Right below it, and in all the graphs in the book and in all RDF graphs that _I_ have seen, they point from left to right.
Or on page 41, the text says "a blank node is represented by an oval (it is a resource)" and in all the book's figures, blank nodes are represented by rectangles. Many other such maddening inconsistencies occur between the text and the figures and examples, which frustrates someone trying to learn what's going on.
Every writer gets some things wrong, and it's up to the publisher and its tech review to catch and correct them. Powers may have written uninspiredly and slipped up in her revising, but it's O'Reilly and the four people who provided technical review that is more at fault for the problems.
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