RSS provides a mechanism by which web-sites can publish 'headline' or 'update' information in a way that can be disseminated, filtered and combined electronically. Users usually subscribe to an RSS Syndication Feed by registering it with a feed reader or aggregator, which combine information from multiple feeds, and display compact summary information that enables subscribers to see if there is anything on a site that they would like to follow-up.

RSS then provides an ideal way for web-sites to inform interested parties of headlines, new content, and provide bulletins, etc, without them having to re-visit, and check the site's contents on a regular basis.

Most RSS feeds are essentially just simple lists of items with brief descriptions and links to associated web-pages. A key feature of these lists is that they are intended to be machine-interpretable, so that (unlike a simple html list, for example), it is possible to perform quite sophisticated selection and filtering, based on their contained meta-data.

RSS Formats and Standards

One feature of RSS feeds that can cause confusion is the fact that there are several formats in existence, and their origins are less formal than many other web standards. The two main versions of interest are RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0. The RSS 1.0 variant uses the RDF embedded meta-data model, whilst RSS 2.0 is simpler, and does not. The RSS 1.0 acronym is usually held to mean: 'RDF Site Summary', whilst RSS 2.0 is taken to mean: 'Really Simple Syndication'.

Fortunately, for the vast majority of end-users, these differences are completely hidden by the tools that are used for subscribing to and viewing feeds. These tools can usually process all of the established feed formats, and present a consistent user-view for them all.

The feed format that we publish is RSS 1.0, which uses the RDF descriptor model.

What is RDF?

RDF stands for: the Resource Description Framework; this is a W3C standard for descriptive meta-data, i.e. data about data, which enables various kinds of useful information to be associated with data and resources. This meta-data is machine-interpretable, and so can be used, for example, to search, filter and organise information according to the various encoded criteria. RDF is also a key low-level element of the semantic web.

RDF is used by RSS 1.0 as the mechanism for encoding meta-data about the entities that the feed describes. In the present case, RDF is used to provide summarised information and updates about this web site.

For more information about RDF, see the introductory presentation on RDF in our: on line Presentations Area.

RSS Feed Readers and Aggregators

There are many different feed readers and aggregators now available. For example, we use 'RSS FeedReader'. This is available for download free from the feedreader web-site.

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