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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: RDF, the "semantic web",and the nadir of AI (was RE: Realistic propo
 > BTW, if by semantic web they mean Egads! I hope you don't mean the slightest implication that I speak the W3C's words. Look, I don't understand half what TBL says, and except for occasional lapses, I avoid the term "semantic web" because I'm not quite clear of what it, er, means. It looks as if I picked an opportune time to finally catch up with XML-DEV. > "RDF is the key to a proven design pattern, in which we build portal and > intranet-type Web applications by marshalling numerous XML snippets. It > helps us build multi-dimensional structures of object relationships, which > are usually cumbersome and unmanageable using traditional database designs." > - Uche Ogbuji It will be instructive to the rest of the discussion to note that I restrict my claims to "portals and intranet-type applications". Note that these are closed systems. I shall defend my claim in that space. If you wish to migrate the discussion to the open Web, prepare to drop me off because I don't claim to pack that long a water-stick. > per the XML.COM article, then this inference engine approach > could be compared to OLAP systems. I am not sure what the > inference engine approach buys us that walking a recordset > and comparing values to determine actions doesn't. OLAP, Decision Support, Executive Info Systems: all code-words for taking the (admittedly old and hoary) ideas of AI and trying to make it work for the ludicrously structured world of relational databases. Note that I say "AI". I'm not afraid to name names. I, too am a reformed "machine intelligence" bigot, and I know that there is not much of the "I" to be had from "AI". But like it or not, AI in its maturity really stands for knowledge-representation and frame-based systems. Hardly intelligence, as many people here have pointed out, but quite effective stuff when it doesn't over-promise. > Full > multi-dimensional (cubes) and query systems are already supported > on internet dbs such as SQLServer2000. Whatever. Relational databases couldn't find another dimension if they were made of super-strings. Uh oh. Here comes Ken North with a Shillelagh: better practice my drunken style. Seriously. The market triumph of RDBMS is nothing more than a grafting of astounding hubris on the really quite modest work of Codd and co. You can't impose a priori structure on even a subset of the real world, and, you certainly can't impose a priori structure on business. Period. As another poster here mentioned, the semi-structured folk have been howling this for years. I'm arguing that they are right. I'm also arguing that RDF (warts and all) is probably the most market-viable means of restoring balance now. I do hope something better comes along, but in the meantime, I as a consultant have been solving real business problems with RDF. > Enlightenment? Multiple means exist. Why use one or the > other particularly if one is still considered a failed > technology, eg, AI, Prolog, etc. Yes, that is something > to compare to markup because one re-emerged and the other > hasn't quite. Why? AI is a failed technology like Gerald Manley Hopkins was a failed poet. Nuff aid. Hopefully someone will come up with a recognized name that drops both the "A" and the "I", but until then, "AI" is an acceptable name for a technology that has made and continues to make important contributions to modern data processing. And oh by the way, all "Object Oriented Development" ever did was kidnap frame-based representation and shove it into a straightjacket. With all the money that ended up flushed down the OO sink, we probably _could_ have had computer systems of something that might be called "intelligence". I don't claim any insight as to whether this would have provided any benefit to businesses. -- Uche Ogbuji Principal Consultant uche.ogbuji@f... +1 303 583 9900 x 101 Fourthought, Inc. http://Fourthought.com 4735 East Walnut St, Ste. C, Boulder, CO 80301-2537, USA Software-engineering, knowledge-management, XML, CORBA, Linux, Python 
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