RE: Discussion: OWL-S and Industry Adoption

Josh,

 

You raise a number of interesting issues. I have embedded my views
below.

 

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?

Yes I think it is probably too early, not so much because of the time
required to digest the specifications but rather because of the lack of
experience of applying the formalism to real examples and (crucially)
the fact that there are other emerging technologies in the same area
(see below).

 

Are there not enough concrete examples/documentation for users to
follow, and help expose the benefit of semantically describing a web
service?

More concrete examples would help but the issue is not so much the
benefits of semantically describing a web service but whether OWL-S is
adequate for this task. This is still an open question. SWS /= OWL-S

 

Are the good examples that do exist not given enough publicity, and a
convenient way to search for them?

Not sure this is a key issue.

 

Are there not enough tools to help automate the process of semantically
describing a web service?

More and better tools are certainly required but the interest in SWS is
there, though not in OWL-S specifically (exclusively).

 

Are there other standards or emerging technologies that overlap with
OWL-S, and lessen its importance?

Yes. WSMO (see www.wsmo.org <http://www.wsmo.org/> ) is an important
emerging technology in this area. A recent comparison of OWL-S and WSMO
argued that WSMO had increased "applicability in real domains" (see
paper http://www.uibk.ac.at/~c703225/papers/conceptualcomparison.pdf,
which appeared in ECOSW04
http://www.sigmod.org/sigmod/dblp/db/conf/ecows/ecows2004.html ). From
this, it seems that other technologies (esp. WSMO) need careful
consideration in any standardisation process.

 

Given the current state of play, it is unsurprising that few industrials
have adopted OWL-S. It is too early to make this call. Many large
industrials which I have contact with are, however, very interested in
the notion of semantic web services in general - see, for example, the
SWSI Industrial Partners list at http://www.swsi.org/partners.html. Many
of these organisations will be looking at both WSMO and OWL-S.

 

 

Dr John Davies 
Manager, Next Generation Web Research
BT

e: john.nj.davies@bt.com 
w: www.quizxml.com/people/JohnDavies 
t: +44 1473 609583 
f: +44 1473 609832

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From: public-sws-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:public-sws-ig-request@w3.org]
On Behalf Of joshgrob@comcast.net
Sent: 30 November 2004 06:25
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.  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