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Re: [ontolog-forum] Amazon vs. IBM: Big Blue meets match in battle for t

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Peter Yim <peter.yim@xxxxxxxxx>
From: alexander <alexgarciac@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 14:09:01 +0200
Message-id: <50729EDC-1902-4FEF-BE98-D31C94631347@xxxxxxxxx>
I would like to hear it in an open discussion panel at ontolog from either amazon, microsoft or the like. I often hear about big firmas using sw technology but so far I have not heard ther cments about all of the issues discussed in this kind of forums. 

@peter couldnt we organize an open panel under the ontolog umbrella and invite people for amazon, microsoft, fb etc so tha we can hear it from them ans ask away?

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 24, 2013, at 1:32 PM, Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 7/23/13 8:45 PM, John Bottoms wrote:
Kingsley ,

I have quite a few tools in my work shop. When I start to make something I get the tools that I need for that work. Size matters when it comes to sawing. It helps if I had made the object before, or something similar.

There are quite a few tools out there now that can be used for ontological work. We wouldn't want to duplicate effort. But clearly, as your link points out, the tool needed for a task is entailed from the goal.

There are goals of the SW that have been discussed and some tools exist to help accomplish some of those goals. It seems that there are a number of subgoals, some of which have been met and some of which have not been described succinctly. The scope matters also. Which did you have in mind?

Tools include:

1. middleware for generating fine-grained structured data (endowed with machine-readable entity relationship semantics) from coarse-grained structured data

2. HTTP URIs are also a tool for entity denotation  (naming) that can optionally include resolution document content - this enables the construction of web-like (or webby) structured data delivered as document content

3. SPARQL query editors -- like their SQL counterparts, these enable creation of globally accessible queries while also enabling the sharing of query results and their definitions

4. Browser plugins and extensions -- which enhance existing browsers such that they can be used to create, save, edit, and share web-like structured data (endowed with machine-readable entity relationship semantics).

JohnS:
Yes, I agree those three words, "diversity, heterogeneity, and interoperability" at key but they strike me as features or facets, not goals. I believe we need to state a goal for a tool that has not already been addressed.

1-4 enable non-disruptive exploitation of the technologies that are generally referred to as "the semantic web" stack.

I agree with John about the need to embrace and extend existing solutions using the semantic web technology stack. Unfortunately, this approach isn't the norm and its a large reason why we still have a lot of confusion-driven-inertia swirling around the "semantic web" meme and the technologies that comprise its stack.

To answer John's question precisely, major Web players such as Amazon haven't embraced the stack (in overt ways) because their developers either find the technology confusing or they find it too disruptive to implement bearing in mind existing legacy infrastructure. That said, the likes of Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are increasing their use of these technologies. The same applies to the U.S., UK, and many other countries.

In my eyes, the biggest irony around "the semantic web" is the fact that at its core lies a power collection middlerware -- based on the architecture of the World Wide Web -- that's artificially obscured by poor narratives and overly provincial marketing.


Kingsley 

-John Bottoms
 FirstStar Systems
 Concord, MA USA
On 7/23/2013 7:54 PM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
On 7/23/13 1:00 PM, John F Sowa wrote:
Amazon began life as a bookseller, and they extended their reach to
become a very large retail supplier of almost everything.  But their
service business has grown faster than their retail business:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/21/net-us-amazon-cloud-idUSBRE96K04B20130721

Some excerpts:
After years of being dismissed as a supplier of online computer
services to startups and small businesses, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
beat out International Business Machines this year to snag a $600
million  contract with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Public cloud computing, which AWS pioneered in 2006, lets companies
rent computing power, storage and other services from data centers
shared  with other customers - typically cheaper and more flexible
than maintaining  their own.
Five companies vied for the contract - AWS, IBM, Microsoft, AT&T and
another  unidentified firm, according to a report on the bidding by
the U.S. Government  Accountability Office.
My only knowledge of AWS comes from reading some of their documentation
and some miscellaneous articles about it.  They provide some flexible,
high-speed methods for indexing, finding, and updating anything in
their clouds.

But I noticed that 2006, when AWS started, is also the year when the
DAML project finished its basic tools:  RDF, OWL, and SPARQL.  Amazon
does not use any of those tools.  But I noticed that some people have
stored data that contains RDF links in AWS.

I also noticed that one of the Amazon tools, SimpleDB, is implemented
in Erlang.  That language was designed to support concurrent processing
with multiple threads, especially for use by large telecoms.

AWS probably uses Erlang (or techniques inspired by Erlang) for other
purposes, especially for their method of "autoscaling", which is
"a feature that automatically adds or removes computing power in
response to application use."  For a brief overview of Erlang,
see http://www.erlang.org/faq/introduction.html .

"Auto-scaling is very complex and there are not many cloud providers
that can do it well, but Amazon is great at it," said Kyle Hilgendorf,
a cloud computing analyst at Gartner.
Erlang is an example of the kinds of tools that mainstream developers
are willing to adopt and use for mission-critical applications.  One
more example:  Facebook uses Erlang to support their chat backend.

Why haven't developers found a way to build multi-billion dollar
technology on top of the SW tools?  They might provide some support
for importing data from those tools, but they don't use them as the
foundation for their technology.  Why not?

John
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John,

We really need to establish what 'Tool' means [1] to push this discussion forward, coherently. Once the meaning of 'Tool' is established we still have the thorny issue of what a Semantic Web Tool is,  bearing in mind the aforementioned buzz-phrase is rife with confusion and controversy.

Personally,  I believe the World Wide Web has always been a Web of Semantically interlinked Data. The issue (in my eyes) is that over time the fidelity and machine-readability of the underlying entity relationship semantics are what continue to evolve [2].

I am an extensive (an very early) user of AWS. I use this platform to deploy very sophisticated solutions that leverage various aspects of the Semantic Web technology stack [3]. AWS itself will benefit immensely from Semantic Web technologies once we find a way to reduce the confusion (and provincial tendencies) swirling around this most important aspect of the Web.

Today, when making AWS based EC2 AMIs you will notice that are lacking on the data model front, and this makes automated construction and management of AMI's more difficult than it needs to be. Anyway, we are going to turn this data into Linked Data and then present it back to the folks at Amazon which could shed a lot of light on how these technology provides immediate value to a thorny problem they are grappling with etc..


Links:

[1] http://dbpedia.org/describe/?url=""> -- Description of a Tool

[2] http://bit.ly/10Y9FL1 -- Why I claim the World Wide Web was a Semantic Web (coarse-grained fidelity, on the machine-readability front) from inception (note: click on the links!)

[3] http://bit.ly/Y4aHx9 -- Amazon EC2 AMI for Virtuoso

[4] http://bit.ly/NzIm3t -- G+ note explaining AMI setup.






 
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Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	      
Founder & CEO 
OpenLink Software     
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