Re: Developers don't use the Semantic Web because they shouldn't

Hello Adrian,

even without trying to understand what you wrote I know it's a sales pitch
for your product - because you've done it so often over the past years :-)

You should keep your advertisements off the lists or they might ban you.

Regards,

Michael Brunnbauer

On Fri, Nov 23, 2018 at 08:29:14AM -0800, Adrian Walker wrote:
>  Michael,
> 
> There is a drastic simplifcation.  One can just use RDF as relational
> triples and apply Apt-Blair-Walker [1] or similar semantics, as in the
> examples [2].  That  makes things easier for SQL programmers (of which
> there are many!).  It also moves institutional boundary crossings into the
> application layer, where they can be more easily be explained.
> 
>                                   Cheers,  Adrian
> 
> [1]  Towards a Theory of Declarative Knowledge,  K. Apt, H. Blair and A.
> Walker). In: Foundations of
> Deductive Databases and Logic Programming, J. Minker (Ed.), Morgan Kaufman
> 1988.
> 
> [2]  www.executable-english.com/demo_agents/RDFQueryLangComparison1.agent
> 
> Adrian Walker
> Executable English LLC
> San Jose, CA, USA
> 860 830 2085
> https://www.executable-english.com
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Nov 23, 2018 at 2:17 AM Michael Brunnbauer <brunni@netestate.de>
> wrote:
> 
> >
> > hi
> >
> > +1 to everything Adam said.
> >
> > Triples (EAV) are a well known antipattern in the world of relational
> > databases. The situations where they actually make sense are rare. It would
> > be a mistake to pitch RDF to the average developer without some big caveats.
> >
> > Computers and Internet used to be fun. But suddenly people are doing
> > serious stuff with them. Very serious stuff. Meanwhile the people enabling
> > all this continue piling layer after layer on the tower in their game of
> > Jenga. Recent events have shown that even the lowest layer of that tower
> > cannot be trusted.
> >
> > RDF is deceptively simple. You start with a simple idea and end up with a
> > complex mess. Or as they say about EAV: "It gives you enough rope to hang
> > yourself". I don't think this will be popular in the world of tomorrow -
> > when the tower has fallen.
> >
> > Or maybe I'm just getting old :-) Bruce Schneier thinks along the same
> > lines - but then he is old too.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Michael Brunnbauer
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 22, 2018 at 11:17:16AM -0500, ajs6f wrote:
> > > I've expressed this opinion before in other venues, and it's gone over
> > like a lead balloon, so why not again? :grin:
> > >
> > > The "middle third" of developers don't generally use SemWeb technologies
> > for the same reason that the "upper third" and "lower third" don't; they
> > have no reason whatsoever to do so.
> > >
> > > SemWeb technologies show their strength when crossing boundaries
> > (between disciplines, between organizations, even between technical stacks
> > or individual data sources). Most developers don't do that for a living.
> > They work within relatively tightly-focussed areas, like building a single
> > app for mobile phones that works off a single API, or a website that caters
> > to one organization's users, or a management system for one business unit.
> > RDF tooling delivers no value to such teams and costs a fortune compared
> > with simpler approaches. Why would they use it? They shouldn't!
> > >
> > > On this view, technical changes like bnodes for predicates or better
> > support for list constructs aren't to the purpose. (Whether or not they are
> > good ideas on other grounds is a different question, of course.) But to my
> > eye this view does disclose (at least) two potential avenues towards real
> > change:
> > >
> > > ??? I know of little OLAP work that is currently done with open semantic
> > technologies, although OLAP frequently brings together multiple sources of
> > data and the kinds of queries that people use for that work could benefit
> > enormously from semantic lifting. It seems to me that that could change, if
> > the perception of poor performance and intractable constructions changed.
> > (I'm not making any argument about the _actual_ performance of semantic web
> > tooling, which is of course a complex question that I have rarely heard
> > discussed usefully without specific examples. The perception, however, is
> > pretty clearly pretty awful.) This could mean work to clarify and publicize
> > the real potential for performance, and to improve it.
> > >
> > > ??? I believe that semantic technologies might really benefit so-called
> > "data lake" approaches in which data is quickly ingested and indexed
> > without normalization and then transformations are applied more-or-less
> > dynamically to query or process different sections of data together. Again,
> > the common factor is the need to bring together disparate data sources and
> > the immediate obstacle (or at least, _an_ immediate obstacle) is perceived
> > performance.
> > >
> > > To be clear, I'm in no way opposed to technical improvements! (If
> > nothing else, as a committer for Apache Jena, I'm excited to make our own
> > work easier and to make it easier to involve and excite others.) And as
> > someone who (substantially) makes his living applying linked data ideas for
> > cultural heritage and scientific research, I want these ideas to spread
> > widely!
> > >
> > > I see some pretty hopeful developments, like technologies that make it
> > easer to use semantic tech in "big data" settings be they open [1] or as a
> > service [2] or the beginnings of work on using the power of statistical
> > methods for semantic lifting [3].
> > >
> > > All is all, my claim is that working to get a great bulk of developers
> > using semantic tech may not the right problem to work on. Working to get
> > the much smaller number of developers with really on-point needs using (or
> > able to use) semantic tech  is a better task, and one for which this
> > community is truly fitted.
> > >
> > > ---
> > > Adam Soroka
> > > Research Computing : Office of the CIO : the Smithsonian Institution
> > >
> > > [1] http://sansa-stack.net/
> > > [2] https://aws.amazon.com/neptune/
> > > [3]
> > http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/content/machine-learning-internet-things-semantic-enhanced-approach-1
> >
> > --
> > ++  Michael Brunnbauer
> > ++  netEstate GmbH
> > ++  Geisenhausener Straße 11a
> > ++  81379 München
> > ++  Tel +49 89 32 19 77 80
> > ++  Fax +49 89 32 19 77 89
> > ++  E-Mail brunni@netestate.de
> > ++  https://www.netestate.de/
> > ++
> > ++  Sitz: München, HRB Nr.142452 (Handelsregister B München)
> > ++  USt-IdNr. DE221033342
> > ++  Geschäftsführer: Michael Brunnbauer, Franz Brunnbauer
> > ++  Prokurist: Dipl. Kfm. (Univ.) Markus Hendel
> >

-- 
++  Michael Brunnbauer
++  netEstate GmbH
++  Geisenhausener Straße 11a
++  81379 München
++  Tel +49 89 32 19 77 80
++  Fax +49 89 32 19 77 89 
++  E-Mail brunni@netestate.de
++  https://www.netestate.de/
++
++  Sitz: München, HRB Nr.142452 (Handelsregister B München)
++  USt-IdNr. DE221033342
++  Geschäftsführer: Michael Brunnbauer, Franz Brunnbauer
++  Prokurist: Dipl. Kfm. (Univ.) Markus Hendel