Railing at technology or vendor-driven incompatibilities won't really
accomplish much. Even if all those issues were to be addressed/resolved, we
will still be left with silos, albeit silos that might be a bit more
translucent and porous. Nothing gets done without silos, this forum
included. You can substitute the words "focus" or "project" or "domain" or
"enterprise" or "ontology" (or any one of many similar words) for "silo".
They all imply some limited scope, with some local context and associated
frames of reference and perspectives on reality (and often alternate
realities as well). Busting silos won't work. You can only make them more
aware of other silos and more willing to work/interact with those other
silos. No one wants to expose every bit of information about themselves to
everyone else. And the degree of information that they actually are willing
to share depends on the relationship they feel they have with those who will
have access to that information. In other words, silos of varying width and
height, and varying degrees of opacity/permeability - where "silo" is
associated with the nature of the relationship; who is inside or outside the
"silo". (01)
I actually prefer the "lava lamp" metaphor to that of the "silo" metaphor.
All such conceptual entities are more like dynamic blobs in "n-space" that
overlap with each other (like supply chains and countries vice
corporations), merge, and separate (like new specialties/domains or
corporate spin-offs/divestitures). (02)
The key issue is how to represent the scope/permeability of a "silo" in an
"open" and "network-accessible" way so that those "cryptic" database keys
are less "cryptic" and more understandable outside the "silo", at least to
those who are viewed as meriting access to the silo's info/services based on
their relationship to the silo. Not everything will ever be understandable
or accessible to everyone on the network. Let's stop fighting to make it so
and instead start grappling with how to represent scope/frame of
reference/relationship differences among silos in an open,
network-discoverable, and relationship-driven way. By the way, WebID,
S/MIME, and PKI are all very fragmentary attempts in this direction. (03)
Hans (04)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kingsley Idehen
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2013 4:05 PM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Natural Language based SPARQL Generator (05)
On 2/1/13 10:16 AM, Michael Brunnbauer wrote:
> Hello Kingsley,
>
> On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 09:43:31AM -0500, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>> Google, Bing, and others are silos. I am in the business of
>> silo-busting via Web architecture and open standards.
>> I am most interested in a
>> global distributed database (offering equal billing to extensional
>> and intensional functionality) where hyperlinks are super keys that
>> resolve to entity relationship graphs endowed with machine and human
>> comprehensible entity relationship semantics.
> A database that can only be explored via cryptic primary keys is of
> limited use - even if the entities are connected via those keys. (06)
An today you are using DBMS engines with what kinds of keys? Can you
reference a record in Oracle from DB2? (07)
When I speak of super keys I am referring to dbms, operating system, and
application agnostic foreign keys. These keys resolve to descriptors that
describe of their referents. The descriptors are viewable via your browser.
You can use said keys to share data with anyone that has access to a
browser. (08)
Examples: (09)
1. http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_data -- a hyperlink based super key 2. (010)
http://dbpedia.org/resource/describe/?uri=http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked
_data
-- an URL that resolves to a descriptor document endowed with faceted
navigation capability. (011)
Look at the footer or #2 it exposes the same data in a myriad of formats.
You can even use the CSV URL to directly import data into Google
Spreadsheet, Excel, or Open Office. (012)
> This is the reason
> Google has been so successful. (013)
You are missing the point. Google being successful doesn't mean others are
unsuccessful. Google is currently focused on an aspect of the Web i.e., its
Information Space dimension. I and others in the Linked Data realm are
interested in the Web's Data Space dimension. (014)
> The reason that Google is still very successful is that they are
> doing such a good job that a buch of geeks with distributed hash
> tables is not able to beat them. One of the problems those geeks are
> facing is fighting spam in a distributed environment. (015)
An Spam is one of the problems that Linked Data addresses with aplomb, once
the noise settles this will be another pain point that aids Linked Data
appreciation via the fusion of WebID, S/MIME, and PKI [1]. (016)
> Maybe WebID has a future
> there... (017)
Yes, as per my comment above. (018)
Links: (019)
1. https://plus.google.com/s/spam%20idehen%20webid%20linked%20data -- Spam,
WebID, and Linked Data (example of where Google is very useful :-) )
>
> Regards,
>
> Michael Brunnbauer
> (020)
-- (021)
Regards, (022)
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
Google+ Profile: https://plus.google.com/112399767740508618350/about
LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kidehen (023)
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