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Re: [ontolog-forum] Webby objects

To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2012 18:01:47 -0500
Message-id: <50A968DB.6070007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On 11/18/12 10:56 AM, John F Sowa wrote:
> Kingsley,
>
> I've been highly critical of developments in the official W3C
> recommendations that pretend that the rest of the world is going
> to adopt their proposals as the universal direction for the future.
>
> But I have been supportive of practical developments and commercial
> products, such as yours, which recognize reality.  My criticisms
> of the DAML project are not about the products that were produced
> -- RDF, RDFS, OWL, and SPARQL -- but about the much more promising
> products and directions that were killed, ignored, or deprecated.
>
> JFS
>>> But the SPARQL people keep saying that they "interoperate" with SQL
>>> because they can convert an RDB to a bunch of triples.  The people
>>> with triple stores who make a profit support SQL -- because that's
>>> what the programmers ask for.
> KI
>> No this isn't the claim. There are two orthogonal initiatives on this front:
>>
>> 1. R2RML -- a syntax for mapping relational database hosted data to RDF
>>     model based entity relationship graphs
>>
>> 2. SPARQL -- an intensional query language for query RDF model based
>>     entity relationship graphs (which includes transient or materialized
>>     views of relational DBMS hosted data; ditto other RDF and non data 
>sources) .
>>
>> Today, as I've demonstrated many times [3], you can make transient and
>> materialized RDF views over ODBC or JDBC accessible relational database
>> hosted data [1]. In addition, you now have the ability to query the same
>> data intensionally (via SPARQL) and extensionally (via SQL).
> That's useful.  I have no complaints about developing useful tools.
>
> But the distinction between intensional and extensional representations
> and queries was a hot topic in the DB world in the 1970s.  The ANSI-
> SPARC report in 1978 had three parts:
>
>    1. Conceptual schema:  the ontology of a domain independent of any
>       particular representation.  They used the word 'intensional', but
>       they didn't use the word 'ontology', which didn't become popular
>       until much later.
>
>    2. Data schema:  the formats of the extensional representation of the
>       data in tables (relational), networks (CODASYL DBTG), or trees with
>       cross links (IBM's IMS, for example).  It was agreed that the same
>       extensional information could be automatically translated to and
>       from any of the data formats while preserving the intensions.
>
>    3. Application schema:  the formats of application programs that
>       accessed the data.  Any program with any preferred internal
>       formats would be able to access information (extensional or
>       intensional) in any data format with exactly the same requests.
>
> This was published as an ANSI technical report in 1978, but it never
> became a standard -- largely because of the vendors who had vested
> interests in locking users into their proprietary formats.  The small
> vendors wanted to make migration easy, but the biggest vendors (whom
> I shall not name) most definitely did not want to make migration easy.
>
> There were repeated attempts by ISO to develop a universal, logic-based
> standard for the conceptual schema, but they also ended up as technical
> reports -- the two most notable in 1987 and 1999.
>
> My original enthusiasm for the Semantic Web is that it might finally
> break through the stagnation by emphasizing logic and ontology rather
> than proprietary data formats.
>
> Tim B-L's proposal of 2000 looked like a new conceptual schema.  He
> cited the latest research of the 1990s.  But the DAML project just
> produced a warmed over YADM -- Yet Another Data Model.  There was not
> a single innovation that used any ideas that had not been published
> in the 1970s.
>
> If anyone claims that DAML produced any innovations, please let me
> know.  I believe that I can find a citation before 1980 for each.
>
> John
>   
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>
>    (01)

No disagreement with your response :-)    (02)

--     (03)

Regards,    (04)

Kingsley Idehen 
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
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