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Re: [ontolog-forum] If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2011 12:23:11 -0500
Message-id: <4EDE4F7F.70606@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On 12/6/11 12:11 PM, John F. Sowa wrote:
> Schema.org can be viewed as a threat or an opportunity for the
> Semantic Web.  It was founded by a collaboration of Google,
> Microsoft (Bing), and Yahoo! as an alternative to RDF or RDFa
> for tagging web pages.  See http://schema.org/docs/faq.html
>
> With that backing and with the simplicity of the schema.org
> notation, the adoption rate of schema.org has been faster
> than RDFa and much, much faster than RDF/XML.  Some people
> have considered that a threat to the Semantic Web.
>
> But a new web site provides a mapping of the full schema.org
> type hierarchy to JSON and four notations for RDF:  XML,
> N3, Turtle, and NTriples.  See http://schema.rdfs.org/
>
> Of those notations, JSON is the most humanly readable and
> the most computationally efficient.  JSON is the native data
> format of JavaScript, and mappings have been defined to all
> the major programming languages.  See http://www.json.org/
>
> The original RDF/XML was a disaster for humans and for computers.
> It is horribly inefficient for computation, and the native XML
> tools that process it are too slow for critical applications.
> For that reason, its adoption rate has been glacially slow.
>
> The rapid adoption rate of schema.org and the JSON notation
> should be a wake-up call for the Semantic Web.  R. V. Guha,
> the original designer of RDF, said that he "wished" he could
> have used LISP notation for RDF.  The JSON notation is
> essentially LISP with brackets and curly braces.
>
> The schema.rdfs.org web site is useful for showing how the
> Semantic Web tools can interoperate with schema.org.  But
> anybody who compares JSON to the RDF notations will have
> no incentive to adopt any version of RDF.
>
> For these reasons, Schema.org and the JSON notation are the
> wave of the future.  The W3C cannot compete with Google,
> Microsoft, Yahoo!, and other companies that are joining the
> consortium.  (One example is the Russian search company
> Yandex, which is now translating the vocabulary.)
>
> To avoid sinking into irrelevance, the Semantic Web must do
> more than specify a way to migrate from XML notation to JSON.
> Even declaring JSON to be an alternative is not sufficient.
> A modest proposal:
>
>    1. Phase out RDF/XML as the official base for RDF.  There is
>       no need to say that it's "deprecated". A softer term would
>       be IBM's euphemism "functionally stabilized".
>
>    2. Adopt JSON notation as the official base, but define a formal
>       semantics for JSON.  Pat Hayes collaborated with Guha to define
>       the logic base (LBase) for RDF.  Pat also worked on the ISO
>       project for Common Logic (CL) and defined the CL model theory
>       as an upward compatible extension to LBase.  Define the JSON
>       semantics by a mapping to CLIF (Common Logic Interchange Format).
>       CLIF uses a LISP-like notation that has an almost one-to-one
>       mapping from JSON.
>
>    3. Use the CL semantics to define other useful logic languages
>       as extensions to JSON.  One example would be a version of OWL
>       that uses JSON.  Another would be a rule language that uses
>       a Horn-clause subset of CL with a syntax based on JavaScript.
>
>    4. The option of writing N-tuples in JSON can support a direct
>       mapping to and from the tables of a relational database.
>       The rule language could include a version of Datalog to state
>       SQL queries, constraints, and updates.  The types defined by
>       schema.org would be a valuable enhancement to SQL.
>
> Common Logic is very expressive, and it is not necessary for the
> Semantic Web tools to implement theorem provers for the full
> ISO 24707 standard.  However, it would be possible to extend
> the JSON-based notation to support the full CL semantics.
>
> In fact, the W3C could work with ISO to include a JSON-based
> dialect in the next update to the 24707 standard.  A collaboration
> of ISO, W3C, and the major web companies could establish the
> Semantic Web as a solid foundation for mainstream applications.
>
> John
>
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>    (01)

I think it's a wrap then :-)    (02)

Great post!    (03)


--     (04)

Regards,    (05)

Kingsley Idehen 
Founder&  CEO
OpenLink Software
Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Personal Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca handle: @kidehen
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LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kidehen    (06)

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