RE: Web Services versus Semantic Web Services. -- "babelization"

David,

I completely agree with your view. The situation is even worse with the
use of "application schemas". I have participated to a number of
testbeds related to geospatial web services (within OGC). OGC uses XML
schema to express vocabulary (mostly based on Geographic Markup Language
GML). GML is trying to mimic RDF using XML schema. Every user can define
its own schema (called application schema) by substituing some of base
schemas of GML. This makes the implementation of clients very complex
because the semantic of the tags still need to be hardcoded (as well as
inferencing). This is defeating the interoperability goal. I think it is
urgent that W3C defines a framework to bind XML schema to RDF in a
standard way. XML schemas are there  and will remain. I think we need to
find a way to describe the semantic of complex types defined in XML
schema either by extending XML schema (some xx:semantic attribute
pointing to RDF type ) or by using a standard adjunct document (such MDL
Meaning Definition language). Is there any activity around this issue
within W3C ?

Best regards
 
Stephane Fellah
Senior Software Engineer
 
PCI Geomatics
490, Boulevard St Joseph
Hull, Quebec
Canada J8Y 3Y7
Tel: 1 819 770 0022 Ext. 223
Fax 1 819 770 0098
Visit our web site:  www.pcigeomatics.com
 


-----Original Message-----
From: David Booth [mailto:dbooth@w3.org] 
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2003 12:55 PM
To: public-sws-ig@w3.org
Cc: Stephane Fellah
Subject: Re: Web Services versus Semantic Web Services. --
"babelization"



>Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 17:22:13 -0400
>From: "Stephane Fellah" <fellah@pcigeomatics.com>
>. . .
>The current trend in web services arena defines the web services using 
>different standards based on XML schemas (UDDI, ebXML,WSDL, SOAP, 
>SAML,XXX,XXXX...). IMHO, the huge number of XML schemas to deal with, 
>makes the integration of existing web services very hard, costly, very
>brittle and hard to evolve. . . .

And those standards are just the tip of the iceberg when you consider
that 
*each* WSDL document typically defines yet another XML schema.  In
essence, 
each WSDL document defines a little "language" for interacting with that

particular Web service.

FYI, I've been referring to this proliferation of languages as 
"babelization"[1].

1. http://www.w3.org/2003/Talks/0929-semweb-dbooth/slide16-0.html


-- 
David Booth
W3C Fellow / Hewlett-Packard
Telephone: +1.617.253.1273

Received on Monday, 27 October 2003 13:59:10 UTC