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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: Realist icprop
 If the namespace ID for the schema is bound to the component which implements it via some GUID, then the semantics are bound to the data. Data binding is a straightforward issue for small sets. If the namespace by value or reference attempts to scope too many terms, then the associations get weaker and the components become fragile. MIME works sorta. Somewhere in the back of all this, I suspect, is someone who thinks without sufficient experience, that we really will have a finite set of schemas which will be exhaustive with respect to the domain of the services. That is HTML thinking. For the reasons Gavin pointed out, this typically fails. And by the way, CALS tried it too with MIL-D-28001. No size fits all. Now, if a non-exhaustive set is sufficient because it is recognized that the value chains of services are semi-autonomous (operate with some ecotonal overlap but otherwise, are discrete), then the schema-based systems cohere reasonably well. This is how database systems that interoperate through common APIs, commodity transport protocols, and portable validatible data formats work today. What XML and schemas bring to the party is a somewhat cheaper means to negotiate the bridging documents, once called intermediate file formats. So in effect, some progress (commom means) and therefore, more efficiency in creating the bridges. The Desperate PERL Hacker is able to do the job for which we once needed a C++ network guru. Len Bullard Intergraph Public Safety clbullar@i... http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti. Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h -----Original Message----- From: Rick JELLIFFE [mailto:ricko@g...] Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2000 7:51 AM To: Robin Berjon; xml-dev@l... Subject: Re: RDF, the "semantic web", and the nadir of AI (was RE: Realistic proposals to the W3C?) Robin Berjon wrote: > > At 03:40 18/10/2000 -0400, Gavin Thomas Nicol wrote: > >> I don't know whether or not the semantic web will > >> succeed, but the idea does make some sense. > > > >Please explain it to us all... I've never really grokked it, > >and I used to work in AI... > > I'm not sure it *has* to be looked at from an AI perspective. If we can give TBL the benefit of the doubt, I think it is possible that the "semantic web" means--at least--something. At a minimum, surely it is a web of atoms of information each component of which can be universally addressed, and where the arcs between each node (or the node itself) has some label, and that if one can trace back along these arcs (including schemas to bring the labels into the web too) to well-known datums (IYKWIM) then one can do more or less useful things with that web. This is not AI, this is just a big fat database. Is dog has a collar; a dog is an animal; an animal can have a name; a dog can have a collar, a collar can have a name tag; a nametag can have a name: start from the dog and do a search of everything connected to it to try to find the name. AI comes into the heuristics in navigating around a database of information. The question is how much the technology we are building actually promotes that: an XML Schema is not "semantic" in the kind of sense above--it gives information for types not meanings or properties. This is one objection to identifying namespaces and schemas too much: it actively prevents a semantic web (in that sense.) Cheers Rick 
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