Re: comments on the SW FAQ

Ivan, here are some long-overdue comments on the FAQ.

> > Q: What are the major building blocks of the Semantic Web?
> >
> > We think that it would be good to mention (and link to) the specific
> > technology standards in this answer.
> >
> >
>
> Let us discuss that. When I wrote this, I tried to avoid diving into to
> too much technical details on this answer. There are other sections
> where more specific links are added, but I tried to keep to stay in
> generality at that point. What do you think?

We think it would be good to mention the names of the technologies so that
readers have something to search for when they go to do more research. We
agree that the description should be high-level and not too technically
detailed.

> > Similarly, we'd like to see a question that notes that Semantic Web
> > technologies are useful outside of the Web. The very first question
hints
> > at this when it talks about data integration, etc., but since a
tremendous
> > amount of early adoption is in enterprises and not necessarily on the
Web,
> > we think it would be good to acknowledge this...
> >
>
> That is controversial, I am not sure how to formulate this. Lots of
> people would consider that a 'misuse' of the SW technologies, because
> the 'Web' aspect is missing. Can you help writing this down somehow?

Thoughts on the following?

Q: Is it possible to use Semantic Web technologies outside of a Web
application?

A: Yes, the Semantic Web standards can be used to model, query, and reason
with data for any application, not just Web applications. Non-Web
applications can still enjoy the benefits of the Semantic Web because they
can use the simple and expressive data model, leverage existing tools and
libraries, and share and merge data more easily when the need arises. Even
non-Web applications, however, should pay close attention to the URIs that
are assigned to resources in the data; depending on the nature of the data
developers should consider ensuring the resolvability of the URIs.

> > Q: Where is the “Web” in the Semantic Web?
> >
> > We don't think this question fits the answer very well. The answer
starts
> > off about URIs (so maybe the question should be "How does the Semantic
Web
> > leverage URIs?") and then in the 2nd paragraph talks about the
> > decentralized nature of RDF assertions (which seems to be a separate
> > question). Also, perhaps this can be combined with the earlier question

> > about the relationship between the current Web and the Semantic Web.
> >
> >
>
> Hm. I respectfully disagree, though the formulation might be lousy. The
> type of question I get is what differentiates the SW from, say, a
> traditional knowledge representation technology? What is the core piece
> in the technology puzzle which makes it really a citizen on the Web?
> And, in my view, that is where the URI-s come in, and play a fundamental
> role in RDF. And that aspect makes the second paragraph's content also
> possible.
>
> Can we try to find a better formulation through this?

This explanation makes better sense now. Will think about it more, but I
think this question is ok.

Wing & Lee

Received on Wednesday, 18 April 2007 13:38:35 UTC