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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] The Roadkilll of Ximplifications (Was RE: ZDNet Schema article,a nd hidi
 Ok, but some curmudgeonly thoughts ... Keiretsu requires locally stable vocabularies, but only that of necessity. XML Schemas work fine at the level of exchanging data objects. What do you need to exchange and can you afford interop? Do businesses need the SemanticWeb? Do we? Standards don't always incubate; sometimes they block. In other cases, without a core data standard, there is no market not because the data is complex, but the business rules are and they vary by locale and contract. No one can afford to build the app unless they can customize it and sell it to different customers in the same market for dollar costs that exceed what the perceptions for web-based apps sustain. Complexity isn't the enemy; the perception of cost and its impact on market is. When the Dogs of Marketing sell a customer on the WebAppsAreCheaper bit, the DevelopmentSlaves groan at their oars. It ain't so. I would hope XSD and RDF work together at least as far as intertransformability confers identity or similarity. As for the semantic web, I reserve some doubts. Grand visions are good for rallying effort, creating orgs to direct, etc... But: o MSXML 4.0 is on the street with XSD support. XSD wins the first round of practical ubiquitous support. o XML Schemas are already backed up with practice in XDR, publicly available documents explaining best practices, etc. Books are already in the hoppers if not on the shelves. o XSLT is a heckuva harder to apply than XML Schemas and so far, people are figuring it out. o Feedback from serious minds on the notion of the semantic web suggests the infrastructure won't be there for ten years, maybe 20. We'd have to debate infrastructure but if that is a given, by the time that passes, the situation with the semantic web will be as it was for SGML and XML: when the requirements and the technology converge, it is time for new faces, new names, freshly scrubbed ideas, and so forth. So it might happen but not for the current inventors/investors. o Metadata may be more expensive to create and maintain than content. Hired a semiologist or ontologist lately? o Content has to last long enough to recoup costs and profit. This means a lifecycle that includes maintenance and upgrade. Sustainment: we have to be able to afford to own content. That is why the kudzu of HTML will never go away. o Vocabularies imposed from above are not as stable as those emergent from contract requirements. Money talks but better than that, it schedules. Companies don't join the United Nations. They sell systems to other companies. Sometimes, they sell them to the UN members, but that market isn't as big as it used to be. The local surfer doesn't buy SWs: he subscribes to services. What will be the cost of maintaining semantically-aligned services and who will pay it? So far, the ISPs, the telcos, etc. and they have to pass that on to the customer who benefits by having a cell phone that can tell a microwave to ask the refrigerator about the best temperature to cook a pizza? So the basic semantic web application is a well-done pizza? Huh? They used to be $10 and were delivered hot in thirty minutes or less. Now because a cellphone doesn't have the power to validate a form entry and I can't hit the chiclets, I get pizza that's soggy and the refrigerator won't take it back or even give me a frikkin' coupon!! And for this, all of the best minds in computer science slaved to build the SW!!!!! Some deal... ;-) Don't Bogart the future. What may appear to be one system lasts as long as it takes the weather to change the temperature of the road surface. Then the illusion fades in the rear view mirror among the road kill of never-ending Ximplifications. Len http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti. Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h -----Original Message----- From: Tony Presti [mailto:apresti@b...] I remember those G3 and G4 spec issues when attempting imagery integration for Xray film.... And you are correct, Len - the issue IS XML approach with RDF schema. XML and associated schemata approaches can only work within limited domain constructs for semantic applications. The addition of RDF schemata to XML apps seems to hold much more promise for reduction of computational intensity in large-scale or (dare I say it?) unbounded semantic web knowledge assembly. 
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