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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Issues with XML and Semantic Web ?
 Peter and Michael are right. Even if you have the technology to be shared for creating ontologies, the inherently local nature of meaning indicates that bottom up approaches are likely to dominate. XML is successful precisely because it only constrains what is usefully sharable (mainly, syntax), and then utility drops off proportional to the size of the community of interest. As to the syntax, XMLers like/tolerate XML and benefit from the sharable tools. Otherwise, there is a near universal loathing of its verbosity particularly in some AI and ontology circles. John Sowa lets fly about once a week on that topic. I'm not an expert on the OWL/DAML, so no comments on the complexity. len -----Original Message----- From: Peter Hunsberger [mailto:peter.hunsberger@g...] Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 9:14 AM To: Garfield Cc: xml-dev@l... Subject: Re: Issues with XML and Semantic Web ? On Tue, 9 Nov 2004 17:05:19 +0530, Garfield <xmlstar@g...> wrote: > Hi All, > > I apologize if this is not the target audience for this query. But if > any of you feel that this is a question that is worth answering, do > take a peek. > I was running this long philosophical thought on the future of the > Semantic Web and all the excitement that surrounds it. If the question is philosophical and concerns the Web (in any form) this is probably the best place I can imagine to ask it. If you're looking for practical advice you may have to spend a lot of time reading between the lines... > Between all > this excitement, well, I just had a few questions on the following. > 1) What are the significant open issues with the Semantic Web ? The discussion here two (three?) weeks ago on "After XQuery, are we done?" touched on many of the questions you ask here. A side issue that must be solved is "naming" vs. "pointing". Michael Kay's question as to why does one have to use any pointers at all to tell an application that <postcode> means something hit's to the heart of the problem. One either has to have root Ontologies and a long chain of discovery (local knowldge domain caches would help), or pointers (in the abstract sense, read URL if you want to get into that debate). Pointers become domain specific or a maintenance issue. > 2) Is the choice of XML as the syntactic representation of the data > model a long term "right option" ? Yes, for people who want to use XML.... ;-) I can't really answer this one other than to note that syntax seems to be the least of the problems. > 3) Your thoughts on the Complexity of the current ontology expression > languages like OWL, DAML+OIL etc. As I said, syntax seems to be the least of the problems. The problem is complex, the solutions will be complex, but every time I start diving into any of this my head spins. There's got to be a better way... > 4) Your thoughts on the adaptability curve for the Ontologies across > Enterprises for the next couple of years and beyond. I agree with Michaels comments, in particular the bit about the bottom up approach being applicable. The other thing I'll note is that the Government has a vested interest in driving much of this. One can think of an Ontology infrastructure as being the Web equivalent of the federal interstate system. It's a problem that needs to be solved on the national scale and there is economic benefit as well as all the indirect social (security, medical, you name it) benefit. However, the idea of the government being in charge of how universal knowledge discovery is done scares the heck out of me, some form of public oversight with real clout is needed. -- Peter Hunsberger ----------------------------------------------------------------- The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org> The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription manager: <http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/index.php> 
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