Dear John, (01)
thanks for the reply. I have not much to add. I completely agree that
there is a lot left to be done towards maximally useful KR approaches
(for the Web and otherwise). In Oxford, we are getting some really
encouraging feedback about user experiences with OWL, especially in
science applications. But we also know (maybe better than most) that OWL
is not the universal solution of all KRR problems. That's one of the
main driving factors for our research. (02)
Cheers, (03)
Markus (04)
On 16/10/12 15:00, John F Sowa wrote:
> Dear Markus,
>
> Thank you for the comments and clarifications about the SMW.
>
> Before commenting on your comments, I'd like to emphasize that I was not
> criticizing the SMW, its notations, or its methodologies. But I have
> been highly critical of a tendency in formal ontology and the Semantic
> Web to emphasize abstract theory without any evidence of its usefulness.
>
> For myself, I grew up as a mathematician, and I shared the bias toward
> "pure" mathematics. But I also spent 30 years working at IBM, where
> I learned that any technology that becomes successful has to solve
> problems for which paying customers need solutions.
>
>> The above reference guide is not from the creators of SMW nor does
>> it allow any guess about their intentions. It is a technical cheat-sheet
>> that some users found useful. Nevertheless, it might be useful to take
>> such user views into account when arguing for or against certain features.
>
> I agree. I like two-page summaries by and for practitioners.
> They tend to emphasize those features that people actually use.
>
>> At its core, SMW is a collaborative content management system for
>> semi-structured data. It is not an ontology editor or a reasoner,
>> although some people have used it in combination with such tools.
>
> I realize that. The Wikipedia has a huge amount of content, and it
> makes sense to add semantics to a successful content manager. The
> founders of WebPortal.org are large, profitable companies that want
> to increase their profits. Their endorsement of SMW sends a message
> about what they believe is a good foundation for further development.
>
>> Microsoft, Google, et al. needed a content management system. This does
>> not imply that they think that only content management systems should be
>> used in the future. If I add a Common Logic export to SMW tomorrow, this
>> won't mean that Microsoft suddenly endorses CL just because they run
>> this site.
>
> Yes. But note R. V. Guha, who is now working at Google. He had been
> the associate director of Cyc, which developed the largest formal
> ontology on the planet. Later, he worked with Tim Bray to develop RDF,
> and he is now working on Schema.org. Each step on that career path
> is a major simplification of the one before.
>
> I believe that kind of simplification is essential for developing tools
> that people will actually use. But I also believe that we need very
> powerful tools to support the automated and semi-automated tools that
> are necessary to connect the Semantic Web with mainstream IT.
>
> The reason why I have been critical of RDF and OWL is that they are
> too complex for most users, and they are not sufficiently powerful
> to support those automated and semi-automated tools.
>
>> SQL is a background technology used for primary storage in MediaWiki.
>> The data/ontology model of SMW is not based on SQL, neither in terms
>> of data structures nor in terms of datatypes or query language.
>
> I realize that. My only point is that a semantic foundation suitable
> for integrating everything should be sufficiently general to support
> mainstream IT, SQL, the current Semantic Web languages, and the work
> on formal ontologies.
>
> The Semantic Web Logic Language (SWeLL) in Tim's proposal of 2000
> had that goal. But the DAML final report of 2006 did not.
>
> John
>
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> (05)
--
Dr. Markus Kroetzsch
Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford
Room 306, Parks Road, OX1 3QD Oxford, United Kingdom
+44 (0)1865 283529 http://korrekt.org/ (06)
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