Re: Business Presentation

Hi Jeff,

I have read through the document on the wiki page and, as we agreed, I 
try to start some discussions here...

All in all, I like the approach taken by the document very much. So I 
would say I have some comments and questions within that framework...

- You list Microsoft as a possible partner in 'Partnering choice'. I am 
not sure that is really true. A few weeks ago, when Lee Feigenbaum and I 
were busy collecting SPARQL testimonials, we stumbled across some MS 
usage of Semantic Web[1]. I then contacted them to see if (1) they would 
accept to submit a Semantic Web use case and (2) whether they would 
accept to provide us with a SPARQL testimonial. The response was a clear 
'no' on both accounts. Because this document will be a W3C document, 
eventually, we should be careful of our relationships with members. Ie, 
it is probably wise not to quote them then:-(

- I _know_ that was not your intention, but we should be careful about 
the style: reading your piece gives a somewhat negative image of XML... 
(and also RDB...). It may be that my Franco-Hungarian English dialect 
misunderstands you, actually. But, as W3C is also XML (and 2008 will 
include a series of events around the 10 years of XML...), we should 
avoid creating the wrong impression

- W3C does not control SOA specifications. It has done _some_ but, as 
you clearly know, other institutions have done lots of WS-* (and the 
contacts with those were not always, shall we say, 100% peaceful:-). 
Funnily enough, it somehow does not transpire from the text that, well, 
W3C _does_ control the SW specifications!:-)

- The last section (ENABLING FOUNDATION) makes use of the term 
'metadata' pretty often. I think that W3C has a little bit burned its 
finger with this terms, which contributed to lot of issues around the 
SW. The combination of 'metadata' and RDF/XML gave a fairly one-sided 
image of the SW technologies, and we still bear the consequences. As a 
result, in the last few years we tried not to emphasize the term 
metadata (after all, one person's metadata is another person's data, ie, 
the borderlines are fuzzy...) and put the emphasis more on data 
integration. I wonder whether we could slightly rephrase that section 
along those lines.

- This actually touches on a more general issue. I fully understand and 
agree that the paper does not want to go into technical details. 
However, somewhere at the start, it may be worth putting a stake on the 
ground and somehow emphasize that the SW's goal is really on data 
integration. It is there between the lines, your line of arguments uses 
that, but for a slightly outside users some of the statements there may 
not be clear without that. The SWEO group has put some general 
statements on the top of the SW Activity home page[3] (critique 
welcome!:-), and it may be worth taking over something like that at the 
start.

(- By the way, I think Jim Hendler's code was 'a little ontology goes a 
long way', not 'a little RDF goes a long way':-)

I am sure there will be other comments, but I have to run to a meeting. 
I thought this would be useful in starting up the discussion

Ivan



[1] 
http://blogs.msdn.com/imm/archive/2007/11/21/creating-and-extending-owl-ontologies-in-imm.aspx
[2] http://esw.w3.org/topic/SemanticWebTools
[3] http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

Susie M Stephens wrote:
> 
> Jeff Pollock is taking the lead on creating a business presentation on the
> Semantic Web. He is starting this process by writing a document that
> collects his thoughts. Please could you take a look at the document, and
> provide any feedback that you may have by January 22. The document is
> posted to the SWEO Wiki [1], so you can directly make edits.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Susie
> 
> [1] http://esw.w3.org/topic/SweoIG/TaskForces/BusinessPresentation
> 

-- 

Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
PGP Key: http://www.ivan-herman.net/pgpkey.html
FOAF: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf.rdf