RE: [xml-dev] Meta-somethingorother (was the semantic web mega-permathread thing)

["Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com>]

For this to work (a) every description of a person must use the same data model & (b) there needs to exist a mapping from your applications data model to that of the unknown schema available somewhere. This seems fairly optimistic to me and highly unlikely in the geenral case in practice. 
 
Semantic Web proponents tend to gloss over these points whenever describing the Semantic Web utopia. 
 
-- 
PITHY WORDS OF WISDOM
There are always two solutions to the problem: yours and the boss's. 

________________________________

From: Mark Baker [mailto:distobj@acm.org]
Sent: Mon 6/14/2004 7:20 AM
To: Elliotte Rusty Harold
Cc: XML Developers List
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Meta-somethingorother (was the semantic web mega-permathread thing)



You also seem to have not considered the value; that a software agent
authored to interact with such a database can do so with any database
with that schema.  So, one programmed to look for descriptions of,
say, people, can do so in any database on the planet.  The alternative,
without the standardized schema, is that such an agent would need to
be upgraded to understand any application-specific schema which
described a person.