xml-dev - Re: RDF, the "semantic web",and the nadir of AI (was RE: Realisticpropos

[Jonathan Borden <jborden@mediaone.net>]

From: Rick JELLIFFE

> If we can give TBL the benefit of the doubt, I think it is possible that
> the "semantic web" means--at least--something.  At a minimum, surely it
> is a web of atoms of information each component of which can be
> universally addressed, and where the arcs between each node (or the node
> itself) has some label, and that if one can trace back along these arcs
> (including schemas to bring the labels into the web too) to well-known
> datums (IYKWIM) then one can do more or less useful things with that
> web.
>
> This is not AI, this is just a big fat database.


    The 'problem' is not that the above is not an extremely useful thing,
but rather that the term 'AI' implies all sorts of fantastic capabilities
which were never delivered. On the other hand, the idea of the semantic
network as a way to represent parsed natural language remains a useful way
to represent parsed natural language. So yes, ultimately a set of RDF
triples formes a big fat database.


>Is dog has a collar; a
> dog is an animal; an animal can have a name; a dog can have a collar, a
> collar can have a name tag; a nametag can have a name: start from the
> dog and do a search of everything connected to it to try to find the
> name.  AI comes into the heuristics in navigating around a database of
> information.
>
> The question is how much the technology we are building actually
> promotes that: an XML Schema is not "semantic" in the kind of sense
> above--it gives information for types not meanings or properties.

   Exactly, this is why we have RDF Schemas (semantic) as distinct from XML
Schemas (syntactic).
Moreover the RDF model is most easily edge labelled while the XML model is
most easily labelled so there can be an impedence mismatch. This has led to
debates regarding how to serialize RDF as XML. For an explanation see:

http://www.openhealth.org/RDF/rdf_Syntax_and_Names.htm


>  This
> is one objection to identifying namespaces and schemas too much: it
> actively prevents a semantic web (in that sense).

Perhaps this is a reasonable argument against associating an XML Schema with
a namespace, but an RDF Schema *is* associated with a namespace FWIW see
http://www.openhealth.org/RDF/QNameToURI.htm

Jonathan Borden
The Open Healthcare Group
http://www.openhealth.org