RE: Discussion: OWL-S and Industry Adoption

From: public-sws-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:public-sws-ig-request@w3.org]
On Behalf Of joshgrob@comcast.net
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 1:25 AM
To: public-sws-ig@w3.org
Subject: Discussion: OWL-S and Industry Adoption
 
Last week I attended a semantic web seminar hosted by Eric Miller, who
is a Semantic Web Activity Lead for the W3C, and we started to discuss
the future of  OWL-S and why it seemed that the industry (chiefly
commercial interests) have been slow to adopt semantic web services.   
 
[COMMENT] Part of the reason could be that industry is still in the
process of adopting Web Services from the core perspective (SOAP and
WSDL).
 
Kind Regards,
Joseph Chiusano
Booz Allen Hamilton
Strategy and Technology Consultants to the World 
 
 By "slow" we were comparing how OWL-S does not seem to have the same
transition from more of a research/academic initiative to more
commercial implemenations as seen with RDF and OWL.  As such we figured
it would be best to open up a discussion as to why this is, and how to
spur the transition as well as to allow people to comment freely on
OWL-S.  Here is a list a questions and statements that may help
jumpstart the conversation:

	 
	This OWL-S standard is still a W3C submission.  Is it still to
early to discuss the viability of OWL-S before it becomes a
recommendation?  Perhaps many are still trying to digest the
specifications?
	 
	Are there not enough concrete examples/documentation for users
to follow, and help expose the benefit of semantically describing a web
service?
	 
	Are the good examples that do exist not given enough publicity,
and a convenient way to search for them?
	 
	Are there not enough tools to help automate the process of
semantically describing a web service?
	 
	Are there other standards or emerging technologies that overlap
with OWL-S, and lessen its importance?
	 
	 
	These are just a few questions to start on, but please feel free
to comment on any aspect of this topic.  The goal is to create some
excitement, and realization of the importance of OWL-S.  Thanks for your
time, and thoughts
	 
	Josh Grob
	BBN Technologies
	Software Engineer
	10 Moulton Street
	Cambridge, MA 02138