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SemWeb again

• To: Dare Obasanjo <dareo@m...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: SemWeb again
• From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>
• Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 09:33:29 -0700
• References: <8BD7226E07DDFF49AF5EF4030ACE0B7E05C69A0C@r...>

Dare Obasanjo wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> PS: It saddens me that intelligent people are wasting cycles
> pontificating on the pie in the sky that is the semantic
> too-fantastic-to-ever-be-real web instead of applying themselves to
> solve problems that exist today in ways that benefit the average user
> and the average developer.

I don't know who this was directed at, because I am not a semantic web
guru, but rather just a lowly XML developer. Nevertheless, here's what I
know about the SemWeb:

 * intelligent people believe it can work

 * many people tell me that they are *already* using RDF and topic maps
to solve real business problems

 * if you strip away all of the pie in the sky stuff, RDF is a
serialization format for strongly typed information graphs -- that seems
useful to me.

 * the Web was pie-in-the-sky and too-fantastic-to-ever-be-real in its
day

Given these facts, I have recently tended to give the SemWeb the benefit
of the doubt. It is probably in the same state SGML was before XML. It
needs a simplification and some killer apps. Nevertheless, one does not
need it to justify a URI-centric view of the Internet information space.

On the other hand, I also gave SOAP the benefit of the doubt for many
months until I dug into the specification and was presented with an
alternative. ;)

 Paul Prescod

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: SemWeb again
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
  • Are Xalan extensions a standard feature on XSLT processors?
    • From: Márcio Fernando Keller <marcio@a...>

• References:
  • RE: What does SOAP really add?
    • From: "Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@m...>

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