Re: Test of Independent Invention: RDF

On 3 May 2015 at 04:38, Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 3:53 AM, Melvin Carvalho
> <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 29 April 2015 at 03:11, Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> Not convinced. From my conversations with engineers there like Mischa
> >> Tuffield, I believe the answer is "yes" it could have been done
> >> without the Semantic Web and *the part of the company Experian
> >> bought*, i.e. the honeypot for identity fraud,  the main part of the
> >> business was done out without RDF. Thus, Experian is not maintaining
> >> the RDF infrastructure (at least 4store).
> >>
> >> So, I still haven't seen RDF used in any start-ups that have succeeded
> >> yet. I suspect there is probably some ones that *will* succeed in the
> >> healthcare space. However, in general there are major flaws in the
> >> entire Semantic Web concept ("follow your nose" URIs lead to
> >> accidental denial of service attacks, basic CS tells us graphs will
> >> always be slower than hash tables, etc.) that will likely prevent it
> >> from ever occupying the place XML or JSON has IMHO. That being said,
> >> it will likely to continue to be useful in niche markets involving
> >> data merger with dynamic schemas
> >
> >
> > Couldnt every statement you made above about the web of data, be applied
> to
> > the web of documents, and be contrary to experience?
>
> Melvin - which is why Google exists. The reason why Semantic Web stuff
> doesn't scale in most real-world apps would be that you would
> basically need a Google-style infrastructure. Yet search over Linked
> Data seems to have stopped working (Sindice) and I haven't heard of
> real-world caching. But for a non-SemWeb example of "follow-your-nose"
> failing hard, when W3C made XML processors think the XML DTD had to be
> retrieved from w3.org, the server basically couldn't handle this
> well-meaning DOS attack :) However, I do think the DOS attack
> problem/caching/searching are very solvable.
>

Yes, good point re: caching, I think these problems are soluble too.
Caching wasnt a realistic proposition previously, but new we have
localStorage and indexDB, or in memory stores.  With devices now starting
to have desktop power, we're probably 1000 times more capable of caching
then even a few years ago.

It's a pity that sindice was sunset, but there's still room for a semantic
search engine, imho, knowledge graph being an interesting example


>
> Another  reason why Semantic Web stuff doesn't actually scale is basic
> computer science and so isn't likely solvable -  and the reason we are
> seeing JSON take off (rather than RDF) as the lingua franca of the
> Web: array-values pairs map well to hash tables and what programming
> languages actually do. I would be shocked if graph DBs (see travelling
> salesman problem) ever got nearly as fast as hash tables (O(1) vs NP
> complete), so thus in general I think as a core technology the main
> problem with moving to RDF is a huge performance loss.
>

I've luckily not yet run into performance issues, but I suspect these
concerns could be mitigated with fast key/value stores.  I would think
there's a lot of solutions, such as indexing, reducing search time back to
O(1).


>
> Also, it would be useful if Semantic Web people really thought through
> decentralization. URIs are not decentralized, they are rented from
> ICANN, which runs a number of quite centralized name-servers. Yes,
> once you buy one you can mint infinite URIs, but that's pretty far
> from decentralized - and TimBL has said as much: "We could
> decentralize everything but this"
>

Do you mean HTTP URIs are not decentralized?  Because you can use other
schemes too.  Would love to see the context of the timbl, quote.

He did say that DNS was the achilles heal of the web, but so far to date,
it's been pretty well managed to get us to 3 billion people.

I find your comment interesting because I personally considered
decentralization as one of the value propositions of the sem web.  The sum
of the parts being greater than the whole.


>
> That being said, I agree with Juan - in specialized cases involving
> data merger and a natural graph structure, Linked Data makes tons of
> sense. I think the domain of health care is likely to work out in real
> companies, and likely social network analysis for the
> military-industrial-surveillance complex. Can't think of too many
> other domains where it makes tons of sense off the top of my head, but
> would be happy to hear more and hope to see many SemWeb related
> start-ups make the next million bucks.
>

I think we learnt 10-15 years ago that successful web apps need

1) users
2) persistence - ie the ability to read and write e.g. blogs / social
networks / ecommerce

Startups involved with semantic web apps simply dont have either of these
two, at least not that I've seen.  The two I have noted (garlk and
openlink) that do, have been (I think) multi million dollar companies.

The web is an A2A technology (anything to anything).  The web of data
simply takes that to a new level.  You raise some excellent points
regarding performance, but we hopefully now have the tools to solve them.

I think Im more optimistic than you.  IMHO, a competent startup of 2-6
people writing apps that involve users, and that are interactive, would be
almost guaranteed to be multi million dollar in 2 years.  Time will tell!


>
>
>    cheers,
>       harry
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> And as a source of academic papers :)
> >>
> >>
> >> On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 8:58 PM, Bob DuCharme <bob@snee.com> wrote:
> >> > I never said that they were purchased "due to RDF." Sampo asked about
> "a
> >> > company or consortium out there which has made 1-10 million bucks
> >> > applying
> >> > technology, which couldn't have been without the Semantic Web." Garlik
> >> > applied this technology and made a million bucks, so they were an
> >> > obvious
> >> > answer to Sampo's question.
> >> >
> >> > Could they have done it without RDF technology? See what their CTO
> Steve
> >> > Harris said at
> >> >
> >> >
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9159168/triple-stores-vs-relational-databases
> .
> >> >
> >> > Bob
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On 4/28/2015 5:51 PM, Harry Halpin wrote:
> >> >
> >> > On Apr 28, 2015 9:59 AM, "Bob DuCharme" <bob@snee.com> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> On 4/27/2015 5:08 PM, Sampo Syreeni wrote:
> >> >>>
> >> >>> All of this Semantic Web stuff has existed for a while now. One
> would
> >> >>> expect that there is a company or consortium out there which has
> made
> >> >>> 1-10
> >> >>> million bucks applying technology, which couldn't have been without
> >> >>> the
> >> >>> Semantic Web.
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> If you're looking for a dramatic success story in which one company
> is
> >> >> 100% about semantic web technology and then makes a million dollars,
> >> >> here's
> >> >> one: http://www.dataversity.net/experian-acquires-garlik-ltd/
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > Bob, they were not purchased due to RDF. Their triplestore and use of
> >> > RDF
> >> > was at best support for their main project  They were purchased
> because
> >> > they
> >> > would use honeypots to identify identity fraud. It's possible they
> used
> >> > RDF
> >> > to help combat identity fraud, but they were not purchased because of
> >> > RDF.
> >> > That's like saying a social networking company was purchased because
> >> > they
> >> > were using this thing called a SQL database :)
> >> >
> >> > That being said, there's more investment in RDF than there used to be.
> >> > Has
> >> > the technology hit a home-run like XML and taken over the industry?
> >> >
> >> > The honest answer is "no, not yet." And XML is rapidly being eroded by
> >> > JSON
> >> > and Javascript. Who knows what will be next?
> >> >
> >> >    cheers,
> >> >          harry
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >> Companies such as TopQuadrant, Franz, and Cambridge Semantics are
> doing
> >> >> just fine, and more importantly, their customers are doing quite well
> >> >> using
> >> >> this technology. I think the more interesting thing to look at is the
> >> >> number
> >> >> of well-known companies that while not devoting themselves 100% to
> this
> >> >> technology, are still getting more and more work done with it:
> >> >>
> http://www.snee.com/bobdc.blog/2014/05/experience-in-sparql-a-plus.html
> >> >>
> >> >> It's been interesting to see different divisions of Bloomberg joining
> >> >> these ranks lately.
> >> >>
> >> >> Bob DuCharme
> >> >> @bobdc
> >> >> snee.com/bobdc.blog
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >
> >>
> >
>