Re: Choreography and the Semantic Web

Please see below.

Cheers,

Christopher Ferris
Architect, Emerging e-business Industry Architecture
email: chrisfer@us.ibm.com
phone: +1 508 234 3624

Mark Baker <distobj@acm.org> wrote on 08/12/2002 11:01:34 AM:

> On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 09:45:38AM -0400, Christopher B Ferris wrote:
> > 
> > Mark, 
> > 
> > And there is much that SOAP/WSDL do that RDF doesn't. 
> 
> Yes, but very little of it is necessary when you don't have a priori
> knowledge of the type of service you're interacting with, as the Web
> presumes.

I won't even bother to comment on this but to say of course it is, it's
just displaced.

> 
> SOAP/WSDL, in common use, presupposes that when the code is written,
> it knows the difference between a thermometer and a television.  REST
> does not.

REST has nothing to do with it. SOAP itself doesn't know the difference 
between
a television and a thermometer. Neither do WSDL or XML Schema. It is the
application which "knows" the difference, whether the semantics are baked 
into the code or inferred at runtime. 

> 
> > There is NOTHING that prevents one from using RDF in the context of 
Web 
> > services technologies (e.g. carrying RDF graphs in the SOAP header or
> > body, 
> > extending WSDL with RDF, or even representing a WSDL description using 

> > RDF), or not as one sees fit. 
> 
> There's nothing that *prevents* RDF from being used with SOAP/WSDL, but
> as I said, the earlier form of binding with SOAP/WSDL makes RDF
> unnecessary (note, this is a *bad* thing 8-).

To which earlier form of binding are you referring? Note there is a 
distinct
difference between being unnecessary and [ex|pre]cluded. Are you 
suggesting that
use of RDF is/was at anytime [ex|pre]cluded? I believe that for some,
the fact that RDF was/is unnecessary is considered to be a "good 
thing(tm)". For 
others, the fact that RDF is or could be supported is a "good thing(tm)".
Providing for both approaches is a "good thing(tm)". Excluding either 
would
be a mistake.

This is the balance we seek.

> 
> MB
> --
> Mark Baker, CTO, Idokorro Mobile (formerly Planetfred)
> Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.               distobj@acm.org
> http://www.markbaker.ca        http://www.idokorro.com