Alex James has just written an interesting piece titled: Who Controls Your Model, that sets the stage for introducing the concept of "Self Describing Data". To cut a long story short, RDF is one example of a mechanism that facilitates the assembly/construction of self-describing databases (built around a Concrete Conceptual Model) that allows instance data to be serialized using open serialization formats such as: XML, N3, Turtle, TriX.

Rich Internet Applications ultimately enable intelligent processing of self-describing databases originating from data servers as demonstrated by these examples:

  1. My Dynamic Data Web Start Page
  2. Chris Bizer Data Space
  3. Our RDF Browser (just enter a Web URI e.g http://sites.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/suhl/bizer/foaf.rdf or http://www.openlinksw.com and then drill down; not Grandma's unobtrusive Data Web Navigator, but headed in that direction..)