Semantic Web tools, etc..

Hi Sateesh,

On Wed, May 22, 2002 at 10:11:32AM -0600, Narahari, Sateesh wrote:
> Do you mean Jena, instead of Jema? What is Zakim?. can you pls give a
> reference?

Zakim is the tool we use on IRC.

http://www.w3.org/2001/12/zakim-irc-bot.html

Jema is a tool in early development that was presented at the tech
plenary in February.  It manages attendance, quorum, etc.. via IRC.
I can't find an URL for it.  I believe Brian McBride owns it.

I'm sure that if the Semantic Web activity had more resources, it could
demonstrate to the Web Services activity what the Semantic Web can do
for it.

> How about answering some basic questions?.
> 
>  1. What is semantic web? ( To a non researcher )

RDF is an assertion language, allowing you to say things about
resources, such as "This purchase order requires authorization by
Mr. Foo", "This message is part of this transaction", etc..

The Semantic Web is the result of deploying RDF on the Web.

>  2. What can semantic web do? 

It enables software to "browse the Web".  By doing this, many tasks that
currently require a human-and-a-browser, can be replaced with some
software that invokes HTTP methods.

>  3. What value can semantic web add to web services?.

Hopefully by my answer to #2, you might see that the Semantic Web can
do many (most? all?) of the things that Web services profess to be
able to do.  And it does them in a Web architecture friendly manner
(lots of URIs, HTTP GET for safe operations, etc..).

> 4. What can RDF do
> that can't be reasonably done by other XML related, well accepted standards.

There are no other existing standards that do what RDF can do.  XML
Schema might be the closest thing, but it only allows you to make
assertions about syntactic structure, e.g. "This element can contain
these attributes".  XML Schema is not very general compared to RDF.
RDF can describe XML Schema, but XML Schema can not describe RDF.

SAML also has an assertion language built in that is specific to
security assertions, which is a shame.  Once again, RDF can describe
SAML, but SAML cannot describe RDF.

Also, RDF is well accepted.  It is a W3C Recommendation, and there
exists *many* independant, interoperable implementations of RDF
processors.

>  5. What major software vendors see the value of SW ?.

Sorry, I don't know.  You'll have to ask them.

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

Received on Wednesday, 22 May 2002 12:52:42 UTC