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> At 18:31 17/04/2003 -0600, Uche Ogbuji wrote:
>
> >These are just what I call anchors of authority in my writings and
> >presentations. In the Sun project where we're putting this stuff to work,
> >it's all about authority, and this authority comes directly from the
> >organizational hierarchy. It works when someone can mandate an ontological
> >framework. On there Web there is no hierarchy, so it seems that there are
> >too
> >many undecidable problems of human nature.
> >
> >Or is saying this the same thing as saying "Hypertext will never scale
> >globally" in the mid 80s? I guess time will tell.
>
> Another way of asking it is,
> what's the motivation for 'most' of us to agree to something as being
> reasonable (though not perfect)?
The motivation is to make it easier for us to take advantage of network
effects. IOW, the exact same motivation we have for using any standard, such
as XML or HTML.
Or am I misunderstanding the question?
> If it really helps us to do something easier/quicker then it may be
> sufficient.
> Perhaps XML falls into this class of solution?
Does it? Some say it does. Some say it's a waste of time. I imagine those
in the latter camp just avoid it. Isn't this how everything works?
> If one of Rogers ontologies could hit the 80/20 on some web based topic
> then what's needed to entice many users into using it?
I'd guess awareness and tools.
> Paul implied (I think) that typical document based XML (e.g. an XML web
> page)
> is hard pushed to make use of an ontology since it needed rdf based 'stuff'.
I don't understand the question/comment. First of all, RDF is not required to
build an ontology. I prefer it, but it's just an option. In fact, if you and
I sit down together and agree on what Quid, Quod and Cuius are, and how they
relate to each other, and we can actually remember the agreement with some
consistency, then we have an ontology in our heads.
Secondly, you can exctract RDF perfectly well from plain old XML. We at
Fourthought do this *all* the time in our practice because we don't expect
everyone to churn out RDF/XML. We built this tool into 4Suite. It's really
not rocket science.
<head>
<title>A lo cubano</title>
<meta name="author" content="Orishas"/>
</head>
is mirrored into the RDF database as
ftss:///musica/a-lo-cubano.xhtml dc:title "A lo cubano"
ftss:///musica/a-lo-cubano.xhtml dc:creator "Orishas"
Courtesy of Dublin core, I have a very solid and respectable ontology, and one
that is understood by a *huge* number of tools.
Easy enough, as I see it.
> So what's the high uptake app that makes use of a really-useful ontology?
If you're asking about the open Web, I'm the wrong person to prognosticate
killer apps (not my line). In closed systems, what drives adoption of
ontologies is the need to minimize the efficiencies from semantic mismatch
between one application and another.
--
Uche Ogbuji Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net http://4Suite.org http://fourthought.com
Gems From the [Python/XML] Archives - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/04/09/py-xm
l.html
Introducing N-Triples - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-thi
nk17/index.html
Use internal references in XML vocabularies - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerw
orks/xml/library/x-tipvocab.html
EXSLT by example - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-exslt.html
The worry about program wizards - http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=7238
Use rdf:about and rdf:ID effectively in RDF/XML - http://www-106.ibm.com/develo
perworks/xml/library/x-tiprdfai.html
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