RE: Web services and the Semantic Web

Mark,

I have to point out that failure is relative ;-).  How many implementations
of the Semantic Web are out there?!?

To say that Web services need to be improved, is fine.  No argument.  I also
have read a good deal of Roy Fielding's thesis, and I am among those who
believe Web services need to be adapted better to the Web, and that they
need to be based on Roy's definition of Web architecture as much as
possible.

Just because I work for the leading CORBA company does not mean I am trying
to reinvent CORBA over the Web.  However if we are looking for successful
precedent for a Web services reference architecture, the OMG work is not a
bad source.  You might say CORBA has failed; but again failure is a relative
term.  Many, many companies are successfully using CORBA in mission critical
applications.  CORBA did fail to gain the acceptance rate of Windows, but it
has gained wider adoption than DCE for example.

My view is that we need to develop a Web services reference architecture
based on adapting distributed computing concepts to the Web architecture --
the Web is there, and we are not going to change it.  What's your view in
this area?

I am just saying let's continue down the path of using XML to describe Web
services since this has been a relative success.  Until or unless we can
come up with a compelling reason to change direction, that is.  Otherwise
our purpose should be to improve the rate of success Web services have
already achieved.

Eric

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Baker [mailto:distobj@acm.org]
Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2002 1:36 PM
To: Eric Newcomer
Cc: www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: Re: Web services and the Semantic Web


On Sun, May 26, 2002 at 01:04:33PM -0400, Eric Newcomer wrote:
> The ontology problem I was referring to was the Shoe Standards.org
> reference, by which the Web can understand what is a shoe, what is a shoe
> ordering service, etc.

Software can't "understand" what a shoe is, unless it was programmed to
know (as much as any piece of software can "know" anything).  But if I
can relate something I'm telling a piece of software, to something that
it already knows, then I'm ahead in the game.  That's all I'm talking
about.

>  I agree the Web is very powerful, but I still do not
> understand the compelling reason to change something proven to work in
favor
> of something that remains theoretical

What are you saying is proven to work?  Web services?  Why do you think
they're proven to work?  People tried for years (and are still trying)
to deploy CORBA on the Internet.  They have failed every time.  There
are good technological reasons why they failed too.  From what I've seen,
people are trying to reinvent CORBA (and like architectures) with Web
services.

Web services are also failing on the Internet.  See xmethods.net.
Only ~140 services, despite XML-RPC being out there for four years,
and SOAP 1.1 being out there for ~3.5.

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

Received on Sunday, 26 May 2002 13:48:53 UTC