- From: Brian Manley <manleyr@telcordia.com>
- Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 17:44:18 -0500
- To: "Frank Manola" <fmanola@acm.org>
- Cc: <www-rdf-interest@w3.org>
Hi Frank, "how do you define a 'non semantic web application'" This is a hard question. I think I know a semweb app when I see it, but I'm not sure how to define it. I think ( perhaps naively ) of semweb applications as those that either produce or consume RDF metadata relating to web-accessible resources. RSS aggregators, browsers, etc. fall into this category. On the other hand, a non semweb application doesn't really concern itself with whether or not the resource it's describing is a web-accessible resource or not. It could be a web page about rocks, or an actual, physical rock. My limited googling and research seems to indicate that the semweb community itself is a bit fuzzy on the question too. True? Brian -----Original Message----- From: Frank Manola [mailto:fmanola@acm.org] Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 4:38 PM To: Brian Manley Cc: www-rdf-interest@w3.org Subject: Re: Non SemWeb uses of RDF Hi Brian-- Some possibly not very helpful comments: I think collecting the information you're after (and keeping that information updated) would be a useful activity in the context of this group, since it's the sort of question I've heard a lot (and I imagine others on the list have too). However, when I've tried to answer this sort of question in the past, I've always had to ask a couple of questions myself (just to make sure we're talking the same language), namely: (a) how do you define a "non semantic web application" (or alternatively, how do you define a "semantic web application")? (b) how do you define a "business application"? To illustrate why I think those questions are relevant (and it would be helpful to have some common understanding), Section 6.5 of the RDF Primer describes an RDF-based language used by the electric power industry in the US to exchange power system models (for purposes of managing flow in the electricity grid). I don't know that I'd describe that as a "semantic web application", since I doubt that any of those descriptions ever appear on the web (at least I've never found any), even though it uses RDF, a "semantic web language" (does that make it a "semantic web application"?). On the other hand, electric power generation is certainly a business (so are the places where lots of the bioinformatics work is being applied), but lots of people wouldn't think of those sorts of "back room" technology applications as being "business applications" either. As another example, I've also run across an RDF-based spec to enable the exchange of real estate investment information (see http://www.dataconsortium.org/index.html), although I don't know how much these specs are being used. Real estate is certainly a business, but once again it's not clear this type of information will necessarily appear on the web, and lots of people wouldn't think of this kind of "technical" spec as being a "business application". So what is? General ledger? HR? CRM? At the same time, there's clearly lots of activity in practically every area that anyone would accept as a "business application" in trying to apply straight XML (some of these groups also define equivalent RDF Schemas, e.g. some of the OASIS groups in various areas). And I think that a lot of that information (together with information in relational databases) will eventually wind up being, in effect, interpreted as RDF (or, if you prefer, as simple statements about various objects or resources using something like URIs for disambiguation) when larger-scale merging of information from those various languages becomes necessary, whether that information is literally expressed in RDF or not. When this will happen is, as you'd expect, quite literally a "business decision", and it depends a lot on the assessment in individual application domains of when the cost/benefit analysis of applying these technologies becomes (or at least appears!) favorable. It isn't going to happen all at once, or at the same rate in all application areas. I look forward myself to seeing other replies. --Frank Brian Manley wrote: > All, > > I'm fairly new to RDF, and I'm curious to learn the level to which RDF is being adopted in non semantic web related applications. I find references to its use in bioinformatics, library science, knowledge management and other areas. But what I'm not seeing is much use of RDF in business applications (enterprise or SMB) , consumer-focused applications ( PIMs, personal collection management, etc ) or even systems integration products. > > If it is being used, can you site some examples? If it's not being used much outside of the SW movement, why do you think that is? > > Any insight would be appreciated. > > Regards, > Brian > > > > >
Received on Friday, 17 December 2004 22:42:22 UTC