[hcls] The future of Semantic Web / Linked Data R&D; translating research into practical applications (was: Updated wiki page for HCLS Knowledge Base)

Hi Mark,

> Moreover, warehousing in and of itself isn't research, nor is it pushing 
> "the state of the art",

I have become a bit weary of this interpretation of 'pushing the state of 
the art' in this context. Looking at the set of standards, datasets, tools, 
practices around RDF/OWL that we now have available, I think that the 
Semantic Web community has made astonishing accomplishments in the last 
decade. These things open up great possibilities that most people outside of 
the community have not even become aware of.
I would be glad to see more researchers in the community directing their 
research  towards APPLYING this existing set of excellent technologies to 
problems in the real world, rather than solely 'pushing the state of the 
art' regarding the underlying technology. This does not mean that there is 
no place for basic research anymore -- there are many important and 
intriguing research questions around usability, the development of 
domain-specific vocabularies / ontologies, the specific needs and 
requirements of certain domains, et cetera.

I also wish that funding agencies would do more towards encouraging the 
translation of results from basic Semantic Web / Linked Data research into 
practical applications. There would be many exciting questions for basic 
research hidden in that research program, and it might help to increase the 
positive impact of our work so far.

> We don't need RDF to make warehouses!

RDF enables us to do many things. Among these things is the possibility to 
aggregate different datasets into a single triplestore, where the datasets 
are integrated ad-hoc by virtue of shared identifiers, taxonomies and 
ontologies. If needed, parts of the triplestore can be exported as RDF, 
integrated with other data, re-purposed et cetera with great ease. This is 
very different from a classical "data warehouse" (as I understand it), where 
a lot of code has to be written and manual integration work has to be done, 
and where it is very difficult to re-purpose, 'mix and mash' data once it is 
inside the warehouse.

> This is why I  am "irked" when I see our own group admitting that 
> RDF-Web-crawling is  "nice", but it's just too much fuss, so we'll 
> capitulate and build a  warehouse anyway.

Again, I think you are introducing a false dichotomy. There is no 
'capitulation' here, nor is it making a choice between two mutually 
exclusive options. We can make both things part of our toolset, and select 
the right tool for each task that we are facing. Furthermore, we are not 
building a 'warehouse', as described above.

Have a nice time in Banff,
Matthias

Received on Wednesday, 14 October 2009 13:56:13 UTC