RE: Semantics of WSDL vs. semantics of service

It seems you all just ignore the title of this thread as "Semantics of WSDL
vs. semantics of service" and Bijan just could not answer my question to him
as why do I need to care about how many bindings he
has for one operation? Or, why do I need to understand the semantics of his
WSDL document?

Given a simple example, we are all the consumers or service requesters of
certain electricity company. Do we need to care about the infrastructure and
the framework of the electricity company before we consume such service? Do
we need to care about how many bindings the electricity company has, and,
how they switch to any other bindings to maintain its operations to support
the service it provides? Definitely not!

As service providers, can we give more consideration for our service
requesters? We can consume the electricity in the same interoperable
appraoch because every plug and receptacle are all standardized. In that
way, the service requesters do not need to care about your complex
infrastructure, framework, logics, etc. People access "Web" services in the
same situation.

So, please encapsulte all troubles into your server side development.
Service requesters only need one standardized receptacle so that they can
use any interoperable plug to consume the service with little question. They
don't need to know how many bindings you have to maintain your single
operation. We are service providers, not trouble makers.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bijan Parsia
To: Jacek Kopecky
Cc: Carine Bournez; public-sws-ig@w3.org; Battle, Steven
Sent: 3/20/06 8:09 AM
Subject: Re: Semantics of WSDL vs. semantics of service


On Mar 20, 2006, at 5:39 AM, Jacek Kopecky wrote:

> Hi Steve,
>
> while the charter does not directly support embedded semantic
> annotations, I think the issue is still open and up for discussion by
> the WG.

I went back and looked and the Scope section is a bit broken (as 
evidenced by Steve's quote):

"""The Semantic Annotations for WSDL Working Group is chartered to 
define one or more properties of WSDL 2.0 components to point to 
additional semantics to concepts represented by those components, e.g. 
interface, operation, endpoint. Additionally, the Working Group may 
define annotations to the schema structure to point to external 
semantics.""""

"point to additional semantics to concepts" just doesn't parse. 
Additional semantics *for* concepts represented?

I confess to hating the term "external semantics". C'mon.

> I for one see some use cases where embedding the annotations would be
> useful, and I can see at least two ways of embedding them: put a whole
> semantic description

I go back to a fight I had in SWSL. What's a *non* semantic description?

>  document somewhere in the WSDL document (like we
> put schemas in the <types> section) and then the annotations will
point
> into the document; or put the full annotations themselves on the spot,
> instead of referring to them.

How are the "semantics" to be realized? Via some sort of statement 
(e.g., axioms in some formalism). So let's say I have a set of concept 
and property names, but no further axiomization. And I want to say of 
some operation that is has at least one P relation to a C. Now since 
there *is* no other axiom, this characterized the terms entirely (thus 
far). May I inline that? It seems like I should be able to. 
Alternatively, I could require that I always coin a name for these 
intermediate expressions (but why?).

(Note that originally I interpreted the discussion as requiring *all 
parts* of the annotation to be outside the WSDL document, a la OWL-S. 
There are reasonable reasons for doing this (including supporting third 
party and alternative annotations seamlessly. Technically, I guess this 
is not ruled out by the current charter since the concrete syntax of 
the component properties could be or be required to be in a separate 
document.

> While the second option can be seen as out of scope as defined in the
> charter, at least the first option should be available to us. 8-)

I find the Out of Scope more disturbing:

"""discuss expression of Web services constraints and capabilities, 
including precondition and effect."""

Why? And how can this be at all narrowed? I mean, from the scope, " 
could have different meanings: calculation of tax on a product, 
calculation of income tax, etc. " Aren't these expressions of 
capabilities? (I recognize that constraints and capabilties are a term 
of art standing for "policy", but still.)

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Monday, 20 March 2006 14:57:39 UTC