Re: Web services and the Semantic Web

On Sun, May 26, 2002 at 01:04:33PM -0400, Eric Newcomer wrote:
> The ontology problem I was referring to was the Shoe Standards.org
> reference, by which the Web can understand what is a shoe, what is a shoe
> ordering service, etc.

Software can't "understand" what a shoe is, unless it was programmed to
know (as much as any piece of software can "know" anything).  But if I
can relate something I'm telling a piece of software, to something that
it already knows, then I'm ahead in the game.  That's all I'm talking
about.

>  I agree the Web is very powerful, but I still do not
> understand the compelling reason to change something proven to work in favor
> of something that remains theoretical

What are you saying is proven to work?  Web services?  Why do you think
they're proven to work?  People tried for years (and are still trying)
to deploy CORBA on the Internet.  They have failed every time.  There
are good technological reasons why they failed too.  From what I've seen,
people are trying to reinvent CORBA (and like architectures) with Web
services.

Web services are also failing on the Internet.  See xmethods.net.
Only ~140 services, despite XML-RPC being out there for four years,
and SOAP 1.1 being out there for ~3.5.

MB
-- 
Mark Baker, CTO, Idokorro Mobile (formerly Planetfred)
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.               distobj@acm.org
http://www.markbaker.ca        http://www.idokorro.com

Received on Sunday, 26 May 2002 13:27:12 UTC