ontolog-forum
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [ontolog-forum] Fwd: Breaking news: GoodRelations now fully integrat

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Paul Tyson <phtyson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2012 13:03:41 -0600
Message-id: <1352660621.5880.19.camel@tristan>
John,    (01)

On Sun, 2012-11-11 at 12:49 -0500, John F Sowa wrote:
> Kingsley,
> 
> The term 'work with' has a wide range of possible interpretations.
> 
> JFS
> >> Recommendation:  Schema.org is the wave of the future. Any work on
> >> formal ontologies and the Semantic Web should embrace and build on
> >> the simple versions specified in Schema.org.  I recommend that the
> >> W3C should work with Schema.org to make it an integral part of the
> >> SW strategy.
> 
> KI
> > Recommendation has been long accepted. The W3C does work with Schema.org
> 
> Many SemWebbers claim to "work with" relational databases.  By that,
> they mean translating data from an RDB to a set of RDF triples and
> using SPARQL.  That is not what I meant.  The main point of my note
> is the final phrase: "make it an *integral* part of the SW strategy."
> 
> The announcement that Schema.org adopted GoodRelations was signed
> by R. V. Guha, whose previous work included
> 
>   1. Serving as the associate director of Cyc and co-authoring
>      the Lenat & Guha book on Cyc, which was published in 1990.
> 
>   2. Developing the theory and implementation of microtheories
>      as a method of modularizing the Cyc ontology.  This was
>      the topic of his PhD dissertation (1991), for which
>      John McCarthy and Ed Feigenbaum served as advisers.
> 
>   3. Defining RDF (with Tim Bray as the XML expert) and defining
>      the logic base (LBase) for RDF in collaboration with Pat Hayes.
> 
> That is an impressive list of credentials.  Guha made major
> contributions to Cyc, which was and still is the world's largest
> formal ontology.   But he also recognized that CycL was far too
> complex for most IT professionals.  That's why he chose a much
> simpler notation for RDF.
> 
> But even RDF and OWL have become far too complex.  Schema.org uses
> JSON notation instead of RDF, and it uses Microdata as the primary
> notation for linking web pages to JSON.  They also allow RDFa to be
> used, but they don't support all the features of RDFa, RDF, or OWL.
> For political reasons, they don't say that RDF and OWL are legacy
> systems, but that is the implication of everything they're doing.
> 
> Future directions for both Schema.org and the Semantic Web:
> 
>   1. Continue to use JSON as the primary notation for typed N-tuples.
>      It is upward compatible with both RDF and with relational DBs,
>      and it has bindings to the data structures of every major
>      programming language.  See http://json.org .
> 
>   2. Re-evaluate the proposal by Tim Berners-Lee in Feb 2000, which
>      emphasized diversity, heterogeneity, and interoperability.  Those
>      three terms, which were omitted from the final DAML report of 2006,
>      are essential for the future directions of Schema.org and the SW.
>      See http://www.w3.org/2000/01/sw/DevelopmentProposal .
> 
>   3. Recognize that RDBs are *not* going away, and nobody will *ever*
>      translate a mission-critical DB to any other form.  Emphasize full
>      interoperability of SPARQL and SQL *without* translation.  Many
>      implementations already support both notations for queries.
> 
>   4. Adopt a more general version of logic as the semantic foundation
>      for *all* logic-based tools used with either Schema.org or the SW.
>      In 2000, Tim B-L proposed the Semantic Web Logic Language (SWeLL)
>      as a superset of propositional logic, first-order logic, and
>      higher order logic.  But the final DAML report of 2006 claimed
>      that SWeLL was renamed OWL.  That tactic led the SW to reject FOL
>      for queries (as in SQL) and to reject more expressive logics for
>      rule-based languages.  That was a major blunder.
> 
> To avoid embarrassment, the SW does not have to admit that they made
> a blunder.  They can just shift the emphasis to the notations used
> by Schema.org as the primary interface to application programs.
> 
> The SW can continue to support their current tools, but they should let
> programmers choose which notations they prefer.  Programmers were never
> enthusiastic about the SW tools, and Schema.org looks like a winner.
>     (02)

1. Well, I'm a (sometime) programmer, and I'm enthusiastic about SW
specs and prospects. Tool support is spotty, but some are excellent.    (03)

2. Am I missing something about schema.org that inspires your repeated
panegyrics? From the schema.org home page:
  "This site provides a collection of schemas, i.e., html tags, that
webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major
search providers.    (04)

>From the schema.org Documentation/"Getting Started" page:
  "Schema.org provides a collection of shared vocabularies webmasters
can use to mark up their pages in ways that can be understood by the
major search engines: Google, Microsoft, Yandex and Yahoo!"    (05)

And from the schema.org Documentation/"Data Model" page:
  "The type hierarchy presented on this site is not intended to be a
'global ontology' of the world. It only covers the types of entities for
which we (Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google and Yandex), think we can provide
some special treatment for, through our search engines, in the near
future."    (06)

I work in the aerospace and defense industry. How does schema.org help
me? How does their "ontologies for dummies" approach point the way to
improving my industry's IT effectiveness? If you want schema.org to take
the future away from W3C Semantic Web, they will need to make a better
case for it. Their stated goals seem much more modest.    (07)

3. I searched all the schema.org documentation pages for "json", and
found no matches. I used the site-specific google search for "json" and
found some blogs and mailings that mentioned it. But if it is the
centerpiece of some big new approach to semantics on the web, they are
not advertising it as such.    (08)

Regards,
--Paul    (09)



_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/  
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/  
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/ 
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J    (010)

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>