RE: Discussion: OWL-S and Industry Adoption

Hi. I subscribed today to the list. I am working in a EU-funded project (
<http://www.eu-domain.eu.com/> http://www.eu-domain.eu.com) in which we
expect to use some semantic web services technologies, besides semantic
search. And I can talk about the issues we have with adoption of SWS
technologies.

(If you prefer replies by using ">" quotes instead of by appending the
replied message at the end, tell me so)

For one thing, as you said, the "syntactic web services" layer is not yet
complete, being a lot WS-* activity out there and many non-semantic issues
still to solve about orchestration, transactions, etc. So it is not so
strange that semantics is delayed. 

Besides, this kind of automated, intelligent, magic bullet things sparkle
quite skepticism in the market, given the usual over-hype of technologies
and products, and they need of convincent proofs to be believed.

Also, I do not doubt that the industry players (Sun, Microsoft, IBM not
counting Alphaworks, etc) will be in some moment needing the kind of
automatic integration that semantic web services promises, but I really am
not sure whether they will implement it by using W3C semantics (RDF, OWL,
eventually OWL-S) or by other means, less bound to logic computing, like
they did e.g. with WSDL and UDDI. There is a great divide among the industry
and the university, and they are devoted to different and parallel tasks in
the web services area.

Besides, OWL-S is not yet an standard, and in effect the WSMO activity makes
one doubt about which one to choose: OWL-S iss much closer to W3C, but WSMO
seems to have more papers, experiences and examples available. But at any
rate, being both of them so funded in logic computing is somewhat of a
barrier at least for me.

Precisely I am now reviewing the OWL-S specification, along with the WSMO
one, to see which one could suit us better. But I am also thinking on
alternate (i.e. more procedural/OO) ways of doing the kind of integration we
need (more like a corporate-internal one, instead of an Internet-open one).

In fact there are a number of things both from OWL-S and WSMO that I either
do not understand or about which I see no point, and yet other things that I
feel are missing. I hope to be able to clear some of them through this
forum.

Regards
--
Javier Cámara (jcamara@softwareag.es <mailto:jcamara@softwareag.es> )
Software Architect, Software AG España, S.A.
Ronda de la Luna, 22; 28760 Tres Cantos (Spain)
+34 91 807 9400, fax +34 91 807 9447

-----Mensaje original-----
De: public-sws-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:public-sws-ig-request@w3.org] En
nombre de Chiusano Joseph
Enviado el: miércoles 1 de diciembre de 2004 3:30
Para: joshgrob@comcast.net; public-sws-ig@w3.org
Asunto: RE: Discussion: OWL-S and Industry Adoption


From: public-sws-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:public-sws-ig-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of joshgrob@comcast.net
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 1:25 AM
To: public-sws-ig@w3.org
Subject: Discussion: OWL-S and Industry Adoption
 
Last week I attended a semantic web seminar hosted by Eric Miller, who is a
Semantic Web Activity Lead for the W3C, and we started to discuss the future
of  OWL-S and why it seemed that the industry (chiefly commercial interests)
have been slow to adopt semantic web services.   

 
[COMMENT] Part of the reason could be that industry is still in the process
of adopting Web Services from the core perspective (SOAP and WSDL).
 
Kind Regards,
Joseph Chiusano
Booz Allen Hamilton
Strategy and Technology Consultants to the World 
 
 By "slow" we were comparing how OWL-S does not seem to have the same
transition from more of a research/academic initiative to more commercial
implemenations as seen with RDF and OWL.  As such we figured it would be
best to open up a discussion as to why this is, and how to spur the
transition as well as to allow people to comment freely on OWL-S.  Here is a
list a questions and statements that may help jumpstart the conversation:

 
This OWL-S standard is still a W3C submission.  Is it still to early to
discuss the viability of OWL-S before it becomes a recommendation?  Perhaps
many are still trying to digest the specifications?
 
Are there not enough concrete examples/documentation for users to follow,
and help expose the benefit of semantically describing a web service?
 
Are the good examples that do exist not given enough publicity, and a
convenient way to search for them?
 
Are there not enough tools to help automate the process of semantically
describing a web service?
 
Are there other standards or emerging technologies that overlap with OWL-S,
and lessen its importance?
 
 
These are just a few questions to start on, but please feel free to comment
on any aspect of this topic.  The goal is to create some excitement, and
realization of the importance of OWL-S.  Thanks for your time, and thoughts
 
Josh Grob
BBN Technologies
Software Engineer
10 Moulton Street
Cambridge, MA 02138