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Re: [ontolog-forum] Semantic Web shortcomings [was Re: ANN: GoodRelation

To: <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <mmaximilien@xxxxxxxxx>
From: "Duane Nickull" <dnickull@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2008 09:21:41 -0700
Message-id: <63C6921B571CC740BF472C356B1291E40267E03F@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
I find this statement widely open to interpretation and suboptimal.  It's 
almost as bad as some definitions of artificial intelligence. What does it 
really mean for a machine to read or understand a page?  Machines have been 
able to read pages forever (this is the basis of the first iteration ob the 
web).  The metrics of "more effectively crawling etc" are surely subjective, as 
is the notion of intelligence. Calling it Web 3.0 is a dumd idea IMO.
    (01)

Feh!!!!
    (02)

Duane
Aus mein Blackberry/from my Blackberry
    (03)

----- Original Message -----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
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To: [ontolog-forum] <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; mmaximilien@xxxxxxxxx 
<mmaximilien@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wed Aug 13 09:01:53 2008
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Semantic Web shortcomings [was Re: ANN: 
GoodRelations - The Web Ontology for E-Commerce]
    (04)


Hello All,
    (05)

I figured that before opinions go in many different directions, I’d post the 
vision of Semantic Web, as described by the man that envisioned it, Tim 
Bernars-Lee.
    (06)

Semantic Web (or what many consider Web 3.0) is summarized as a place where 
machines can read Web pages, very much the same way humans read web pages 
(processing data and information, interpreting context, and creating 
knowledge). Semantic Web is a place where search engines and software agents 
can more effectively crawl, index, understand, and interact with the Web and 
find, manipulate and understand what we're looking for. It's based on, at a 
minimum, a set of evolving paradigms and standards, such as the Relationship 
Descriptive Format (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (WOL but many times 
referred to as "OWL"). Fundamentally, it implies that the web, itself, will act 
as an endless database that is linked by many systems that know how to leverage 
this structure and interact with each other.
    (07)

You can find a very good article about it in Scientific American at: 
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-semantic-web 
    (08)

I hope you find this useful.
    (09)

My Best,
    (010)

Frank
    (011)



On 8/13/08 6:10 AM, "Александр Шкотин" <alex.shkotin@xxxxxxxxx> 
wrote:
    (012)



        Dear Max,
    (013)

        thank you for very interesting article,
        but IMHO SemWeb is not about software engineering. It is about 
knowledge engineering.
        So it is not for programmers at all. 
        And roughly say - it's forbidden for programmer to create ontology, as 
we just get another piece of code;)
        that what we really have now in many cases:)
    (014)

        Best regards,
    (015)

        Alex
    (016)



        2008/8/13 Michael Maximilien <mmaximilien@xxxxxxxxx>
    (017)


                Dear John et al.,
    (018)

                As a long time passive casual reader of this list and having 
even
                participated in some ONTOLOG sessions in the past (circa 2005), 
I
                first want to say that I always appreciate your posts.  They 
are
                always clear and full of wisdom.
    (019)

                I found this one to be particular thoughtful, pragmatic, and to 
the
                point.  Like you, I too am also of the opinion that the 
Semantic Web
                community has made a series of mistakes at the architecture, 
design,
                and implementation as well as business level, which are likely 
to
                prevent it (and associated technologies) from ever going 
mainstream on
                the Web.
    (020)

                As a new researcher and observer of what goes on related to the 
Web in
                Silicon Valley, I was quickly brought down to earth in 2004 
when I
                tried to sell and show early efforts and research in Semantic 
Web.
    (021)

                Upon a deeper (though casual) analysis of the reality in the 
valley
                and going back to my software engineering roots, I came to the
                realization, like you, that Semantic Web technologies and 
artifacts
                are simply not meshing well with Web technologies.  However, 
unlike
                your excellent DB-focused analysis, mine was around Software
                Engineering and in particular the lack of agility in Semantic 
Web
                tools and technologies.
    (022)

                Web developers want quick and malleable results that they can 
quickly
                show to their stakeholders.  The reason is simply that with the
                Internet, software cycles are shorter and shorter.  To stay in
                business, companies and developers must show completely working
                systems soon, otherwise clients move on.  Agility is paramount.
                Frameworks like Ruby on Rails, PHP/Zend, and Python/Django have 
gained
                wide acceptance and popularity in recent months (past 36 months 
or so)
                primarily due to their uncanny ability to get you up and 
running on
                the Web in a matter of hours, not days.  You simply need an 
idea, a
                relational database, and a server, and a few hours of 
programming.
    (023)

                Indeed many of the mushrooming Facebook applications and other 
hot Web
                2.0 and 2.x applications are now done in these frameworks over
                weekends here in the valley...  With cloud computing, the 
database and
                the servers requirements are themselves becoming commodities 
that you
                can pay for by the hour---only increasing the pressures to have 
quick
                and agile development.
    (024)

                Semantic Web, and various aspects of initial versions of Web 
services
                for that matter, required heavy tooling or 'big up front 
designs"
                which are antithesis to the core virtues of the Web.  That with 
the
                fact that they mostly ignored the staying power and value of 
the
                relational data model, made them unknown and heavy to 
developers.  The
                return on such huge up front investment to use Semantic Web 
tools is
                simply too big to justify the minimal returns...
    (025)

                Additionally, in my opinion, the Achilles heels of the Semantic 
Web
                was maybe the fact the designers seemingly ignored one of the 
reasons
                of the Web's success.  The simple fact fact that with minimal
                protocols (HTTP and few others) and few up front agreements 
(HTML and
                others) the Web allowed anyone, anywhere to publish and create
                applications...  Yes that leads to a plethora of duplicated 
data and
                semantics, but that's fine as, in the end, it also follows how 
humans
                naturally do things.
    (026)

                Human civilizations has seen various repeated technologies and 
tools
                over centuries.  The Chinese initially invented many 
technologies that
                the west re-invented later on...  and now, vice a versa.  Why 
would a
                wold-wide web be any different?  If as humans we liked having 
one
                meaning and representation for domains, we would all speak 
English,
                Spanish, or Chinese.  We don't and in many way this is a great 
thing
                with lots of benefits, while also creating various drawbacks.
    (027)

                Now, this is not to say that the Web is perfect and that 
efforts to
                add semantics or making the Web more secure are not needed.  It 
simply
                is a reminder that any mainstream changes on the Web needs to 
mesh
                with the core values and design choices that have made the Web 
a
                success.  It's no wonder that REST has surpassed SOAP/WSDL for 
making
                the Web programmable.  REST meshes perfectly with the Web's
                architecture; SOAP in many ways, simply does not...
    (028)

                Ajith Ranabahu (PhD student at Wright State University) and I 
have a
                short paper that summarizes some of this thinking that we 
presented
                last year at ICSC (http://icsc2007.eecs.uci.edu/).  You can 
find a PDF
                here for your perusal:
    (029)

http://maximilien.org/publications/papers/2007/Maximilien+Ranabahu07a.pdf
    (030)

                All in all, I think it's great that every now and then we are 
able to
                be pragmatic about things and realize our mistakes.  I believe 
that
                this shows strength, confidence, and maturity.  I believe many 
aspects
                and promises from Semantic Web technologies need a bit of that
                pragmatic reminder...
    (031)

                Sincerely yours,
    (032)

                E. Michael Maximilien (aka "max")
                http://maximilien.org
                http://blog.maximilien.org
                IBM Research
                San Jose, CA USA
    (033)

                On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 7:01 AM, John F. Sowa 
<sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
                > Martin,
                >
                > Thanks for the pointers to your papers.  I agree with a lot 
of what
                > you say, but my major concern is that there is much, much 
more to say
                > that goes far beyond what the Semantic Web is currently 
doing.  A lot
                > of useful work has been done within the SemWeb paradigm, but 
my major
                > complaint is that it's too provincial.  The foundation was 
established
                > without considering the immense amount of mission-critical 
technology
                > that was already available and very widely used.
                >
                > Relational databases are the most obvious technology that was 
omitted.
                > The world economy runs on RDBs, and nearly every major 
commercial web
                > site is integrated with an RDB.  For smaller sites, the 
standard is
                > LAMP:  Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl, Python, or PHP.
                >
                > When RDF(S) was being designed, the obvious approach was to 
support
                > arbitrary n-tuples.  That would have made it trivial to 
download or
                > upload any or all of an SQL database (or the response from an 
SQL
                > query) to or from RDF n-tuples.  Some people who had a bright 
idea
                > for implementing "triple stores" thought that they could 
implement
                > triples faster than n-tuples.  But that is not only false, it
                > would be hopelessly nearsighted as a design decision, even if 
it
                > had a grain of truth.
                >
                > Another weakness is that the designers ignored the major 
lesson
                > of DB design from the earliest, pre-relational days:  a DB 
without
                > indexing is hopelessly inefficient.  Embedding data in web 
pages
                > is useful for many purposes, but high-speed processing of 
large
                > volumes of data requires downloading and indexing. (Note 
Google.)
                >
                > Another limitation is caused by ignoring existing standards.
                > There is an ISO standard for Prolog, but people are still 
working
                > on an incredibly underpowered version called RuleML.  Many 
major
                > sites routinely download RDF and OWL into Prolog in order to 
get
                > any kind of reasonable performance.  At our company 
(VivoMind),
                > we download and translate RDF and OWL into Prolog faster than
                > most native processors can do just the download.  Then the
                > Prolog version runs circles around the native systems.
                >
                > Prolog is the major language used for immensely large systems
                > that do complex inferences.  As just one example, Experian
                > (one of the three major credit bureaus that check everybody's
                > credit worthiness) uses Prolog for all their complex checks.
                > In fact, they use it so much that they bought the Prologia
                > company, which was founded by Alain Colmerauer, the person
                > who first designed and implemented Prolog.
                >
                > There is much more to say, but it's essential for the 
SemWebbers
                > to recognize that there is an enormous amount of very 
important
                > theory and technology that must be integrated with the Sem 
Web
                > before it can reach the high hopes that people had for it.  
And
                > integration does *not* mean a one-sided mapping of everything
                > outside the Sem Web into XML-based notations.
                >
                > And by the way, I'm pleased that you liked my paper "Fads and
                > Fallacies about Logic."  Jim Hendler was the editor of the
                > journal in which it was published, and Jim liked the paper
                > -- despite the fact that he and I have had many arguments
                > over the years about many things (although we occasionally
                > agree about a few).
                >
                > John
                >
                >
                > 
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    (034)



                --
                max
                http://maximilien.org
                http://blog.maximilien.com
    (035)


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