[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: [Fwd: Potential Gap (WAS Re: [owl-s] communicationbetween

• To: "xml-dev@l..." <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: [Fwd: Potential Gap (WAS Re: [owl-s] communicationbetween web services)]
• From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@c...>
• Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 20:40:09 -0400
• In-reply-to: <414F7039.62FF20E1@b...>
• References: <414F7039.62FF20E1@b...>
• User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 (Windows/20040913)

Chiusano Joseph wrote:
> I sent this e-mail over 24 hours ago to the W3C Semantic Web Services
> Interest Group, and I did not receive any pushback (a gentle way of
> saying I did not receive a reply ;). So I'm wondering if that is good or
> bad....

> Here is a scenario:
> ...
> 
> At this point, we need the following to happen:
> 
> (1) The Hotel Reservation Web Service must relay to the Travel Agent Web
> Service the information that is missing, and
> (2) The Travel Agent Web Service needs to obtain that missing
> information from the Travel Agent relational database
> 
> It is #2 above that I perceive as a current gap - i.e. unless the Travel
> Agent relational database is sufficiently "semantically aware" (i.e.
> perhaps it implements an OWL ontology whose classes and properties are
> mapped to the database tables/fields respectively), there is no
> efficient and accurate way that the required information can be obtained
> from the Travel Agent relational database.
> </Scenario>
> 

This seems to be no different from any other data integration problem. 
In general, it is impossible to automatically map from one database 
schema to another, because most databases do not/cannot contain enough 
explicit schema and ontology information to do so.  In many if not most 
cases, people will have to create the mapping, or at least to adjust an 
automatically-obtained mapping.  If not a map, then a wrapper to make 
the database respond like, say, and rdf database.

This is one reason I have never believed in the practicality of fully 
automated service composition (or fully automated web service discovery, 
for that matter, and for similar reasons).  But if you say that the 
agents are only to operate within known domains, the mappings or 
wrappers could be prepared in advance, just as is done today.

Cheers,

Tom P
-- 
Thomas B. Passin
Explorer's Guide to the Semantic Web (Manning Books)
http://www.manning.com/catalog/view.php?book=passin

• References:
  • [Fwd: Potential Gap (WAS Re: [owl-s] communication between web services)]
    • From: "Chiusano Joseph" <chiusano_joseph@b...>

• Prev by Date: [Fwd: Potential Gap (WAS Re: [owl-s] communication between web services)]
• Next by Date: [webcast] XQuery, pluggable or selectable indexing for XML documents, SQL Server 2005
• Previous by thread: [Fwd: Potential Gap (WAS Re: [owl-s] communication between web services)]
• Next by thread: [webcast] XQuery, pluggable or selectable indexing for XML documents, SQL Server 2005
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread