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

To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2012 14:45:11 -0500
Message-id: <50A00047.2020402@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On 11/11/12 12:49 PM, 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.    (01)

John,    (02)

I am not in disagreement with the essence of you views i.e., more 
genuine open collaboration as opposed to flawed provincial approaches of 
yore. That said, we should also acknowledge when the W3C takes positive 
steps to address said concerns. In the case of Schema.org,  the 
collaboration is genuine, as you can even see from Guha's own 
acknowledgement of the work done [1][2].    (03)

We aren't there yet, but major strides are being taken in the right 
direction :-)    (04)


Links:    (05)

1. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-vocabs/2012Nov/0017.html
2. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-lod/2012Nov/0011.html .    (06)

Kingsley
>
> John
>   
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>
>    (07)


--     (08)

Regards,    (09)

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    (010)

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