Re: [ANN] A pragmatic implementation of the Semantic Web

On 08/04/2008, ALT Mobile DEV <dev@altmobile.com> wrote:
>
>
> Hi Dan,


...

[Zaid] You eschew discourse by discouraging others to investigate. I tell
> you that we've solved some of the fundamental challenges of the SemWeb and
> you turn a blind eye and refuse to look. I tell you that we are in sync with
> TimBL's updated suggestions for a SemWeb implementation and you cover your
> ears.



While I generally agree with Dan's comments, I wasn't discouraged to
investigate. I had a look around your site, skimmed some docs and followed
the download link: XML Studio. The application failed on startup, so I
emailed your support address.

The docs on your site had a similar tone to your intro mail - "we've fixed
these problems" - but there was little explanation of the perceived problems
or fixes. There seemed to be a big emphasis on (HTML) document metadata,
certainly an important part of semweb activities, but not the whole story, a
lot of the material we're dealing with is plain old-fashioned data. There
was also a fair bit about client-side mashups, and around the Web 2.0 world
they are things that can be very useful and go some way to suggest the
potential of Semantic Web technologies (and if the relevant standards are
used, mashups generally become trivial because you don't need to build a new
interface for every single API).

I'm a little confused by your talk about "alternate [commercial]
implementation of the SemWeb vision". Given that the Semantic Web is a
(data-oriented) extension of the existing (doc-oriented) Web, does this mean
you've made an alternate implementation of the Web itself..? :-)

Anyhow I'll investigate further when I receive some advice on the problem
with the application.

Cheers,
Danny.

-- 
http://dannyayers.com
~
http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/this_weeks_semantic_web/