>CDSI WG,
>
> Jim Hendler (the Semantic Web guru)
>provided the below comments to the attached
>paper.
>
> We'll soon resolve all his technical
>comments, but let's first address his bottom
>line (found in last message):
>
> "I think the bottom line is that
>I buy your argument if you were saying current
> technology defined as DL
>reasoners manipulating OWL assertions, but
>that's not
> what the Semantic Web is all
>about, and the URI-based reference mechanism
> coupled with the standard for KR
>and other aspects is aimed exactly at
>scalability."
>
>Request: Let's more than one of us try to
>explain what he refers to as "URI-based
>reference mechanism coupled with the standard
>for KR." (01)
OK, here's my take on that. (02)
First, "standard for KR". I think all that Jim
means is, the SWeb is intended to use whatever is
the best available KR mechanism that can be
adopted as a 'standard', ie which a wide enough
spectrum of users can be persuaded to agree to
use. No such choice will be free from
controversy. OWL wasn't and isn't free from
controversy, and nobody even knows if a large
enough community can ever be brought to consensus
on an acceptable Rule language. But assuming that
some WG can get its job completed, and produces a
useful notation, then that can be used on the
SWeb. There are plenty of potential candidates
which are way more expressive than OWL readily
available. So it would be a mistake to identify
the SWeb vision with OWL or DL technology in
particular. OWL-DL is just the first in what one
hopes will be an evolving series of KR standards
which will provide the infrastructure of the
SWeb. Perhaps the next one will be more like
Python+Prolog on steroids. Or it may be a
breakthrough in CL reasoners using the guarded
fragment, who knows? The decision is as much
political as technical, or even subject to whims
of intellectual fashion. (03)
"URI-based reference mechanism" is more
interesting. This is one of the few things that
really is new and different about the SWeb: it is
part of the Web, and subject to Web conventions
and protocols. It isn't *just* applied ontology
engineering. So, every SWeb ontology is required
to use names drawn from a (literally) global set
of names. The scope of these names is the entire
Web. There are no 'locally scoped' or 'private'
names on the Sweb. So if your ontology uses a
name for a concept, my ontology can use it too.
Anyone can 'say' anything about everyone else's
concepts, on the Sweb. This is a whole new game,
which nobody has played before. A can introduce a
concept called A:thingie1 and B can introduce
B:thingie2, and C can then, entirely
independently and without asking for A or B's
permission, assert that (say) A:thingie1 is the
same as B:thingie2. A and B may disagree: tough
tittie, they can't stop C from making the
assertion. C can say things about A's ontology,
in fact, such as assert that it is all BS. The
globality of the namespace has a whole range of
consequences which we are only beginning to
explore. And being URIs (actually IRIs these
days) , these names can also be used as
identifiers which *access* things on the Web.
Whether these accessed things should be the
referents of the names is currently controversial
(I think not, in general), but that they access
*something* is not even remotely at issue. So
SWeb concept names have a whole new
dimensionality to them, which is (or at any rate
can be) orthogonal to their use as referring
names. In particular, it allows ontologies to
"address" other ontologies (a pale version of
which is the OWL:imports primitive, but one can
do a lot more than this), which obviously has
many potential applications relevant to scaling. (04)
Hope this helps. (05)
BTW, I entirely agree with Jim's optimism. I
think people are way too scared of
inconsistencies. Lets wait and see what problems
actually crop up before trying to solve or avoid
ones that we only worry about rather than
actually find. (06)
Pat (07)
>
>Jim Schoening
>U.S. Army C-E LCMC CIO/G6 Office
>Voice: DSN 992-5812 or (732) 532-5812
>Fax: DSN 992-7551 or (732) 532-7551
>Email: James.Schoening@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------
> At 5:35 PM -0500 1/29/07, Jim Hendler wrote [to Jim Schoening]:
>
>>James - Interesting paper, fwiw, I couldn't disagree more. You
>>make the mistake, which is common and being pushed by a number of
>>strong players <<snip>>, of assuming that only with some kind of common
>>semantic model can data be integrated - problem is the same argument
>>you use as to why this is so (the scaling arguments) were very similar
>>to the arguments made on why the WWW wouldn't work a decade or so ago.
>>Think of it this way - if I coudl create a set of local mappings across
>>a wide array of linked (but not all linked) data sources then I could
>>indeed do cross domain integration - not with full fidelity - but
>>that's where your mistake lies - when I ask Google to find things, I
>>don't care if it finds all and only the right thing - I want it to take
>>me closer to a correct starting point for exploration, and I don't
>>demand (or in fact want) 100%
>>precision or recall. I don't have time for details,
>> <<snip>>
>> -JH
>
>-------------------
>
>At 10:33 AM -0500 1/30/07, Jim Hendler wrote [to SICoP]:
>
>
>>I guess I should mention here something I told the author separately -
>>I don't agree with many of the conclusions of this paper, and think
>>there are some flaws - I don't have time for a detailed response - but
>>let me point out that if you made this same argument by analogy for
>>hypertext systems (lack of standards, disagreement in worlds views,
>>different technologies) then you could clearly demonstrate that a world
>>wide web of billions of documents linked to each other to be used in
>>multiple contexts would be impossible (how would you find anything??) -
>>the analogy isn't perfect, and there are some valid points made in the
>>paper - but it buys way too heavily into the assumption that no
>>integration can take place without complete (and consistent) semantic
>>agreement - and that's the part I cannot agree with, that doesn't
>>appear to be true in practice, and that has been being used by many
>>critics from the traditional ontology space (where that assumption is
>>made) to argue that you can't do data integration at a large scale with
>>the approaches we're exploring. I've said this many
>>times in many contexts - Tim Berners-Lee (who never listened to those
>>skeptics who explained why the Web wouldn't work) and Eric Miller and I
>>addressed this issue in some degree in the paper at [1] ad of course
>>I've written and talked a lot about this. So before you all throw out
>>the baby with the bathtub, I thought I would mention that there are
>>contradicting views
>> -Jim H
>>p.s. Actually, probably the best argument I made as to why we couldn't
>>ever succeed with any kind of "everyone must agree" (standard upper
>>ontology) approach was in the original brief to the Director where I
>>convinced DARPA to invest in the DAML program - so this isn't
>>something new, and those who've heard me at the Semantic Web in E-gov
>>conferences have heard this argument.
>>
>>[1] http://www.w3.org/2002/07/swint
>
>------------------------
>
>
>
>At 1:12 PM -0500 1/30/07, Jim Hendler wrote [to Jim Schoening]:
>
>basically same thing basic argument as I put on
>the list, but a little stronger in my comments
>on upper ontology... Sorry to weigh in so
>strong, but I think you really missed a lot of
>the point of the Sem Web technologies and how
>they were designed precisely to provide the
>capabilities you say they don't. I certainly
>don't think they are the be-all and end-all, but
>they move us much further than you give them
>credit for - part of the problem is you
>completely miss the key aspect of these
>languages as opposed to previous AI languages,
>which is the URI basis - they are "webized" in a
>deep and important way - the linking of concepts
>(where ontologies can link to concepts in
>others) provides a
>mechanism you've largely missed. I realize I
>had the opportunity to weigh in to some of this
>stuff in SICOP, but I've had the debate with Leo
>and others ongoing for the past 6 years and they
>still haven't gotten it and I get tired of
>having the same arguments over and over. The
>good news is the large players are beginning to
>get it (not only Oracle and IBM in DB systems,
>but MS and others are starting to use RDF DBs
>because they need the flexibility and the
>linking) so I've given up on arguing in closed
>circles - I still write articles and give plenty
>of talks
> the key is, like the web, learning to live
>with inconsistency and ambiguity, rather than
>claiming you can't do integration in its
>presence.
><<snip>>
>
> -JH
>-------------------------------
>
>At 12:08 AM 1/31/07, Jim Hendler wrote [to SICoP]:
>
>The goal of that paper is to claim (and later
>papers have more details) that the current
>technology is exactly aimed at achieving
>interoperability at the semantic level at a Web
>Scale, which certainly subsumes large enterprises
>with many domains. I've published several
>papers on this ranging from vision papers like
>the Scientific American article and the agents
>on the semantic web (google scholar for Semantic
>Web finds these) and more technical ones - our
>technical papers are at
>http://www.mindswap.org/papers.
>
>There's obviously no way to prove that ?X can be
>done with current technology, what I'm arguing
>against is your equally unprovable contention
>that it can't. What I do believe is your
>arguments ignore significant aspects of current
>technology (esp. the Semantic Web work) that
>take it much further towards what you are
>claiming it cannot achieve than you seem to
>think. I don't have time to recap all the
>arguments here, but I think the bottom line is
>that I buy your argument if you were saying
>current technology defined as DL reasoners
>manipulating OWL assertions, but that's not what
>the Semantic Web is all about, and the URI-based
>reference mechanism coupled with the standard
>for KR and other aspects is aimed exactly at
>scalability.
>
>I don't have time for a long email discussion on
>this right now, I simpl wanted to remind the
>forum that there is argument with your
>contention, and that not everyone agrees (both
>of which are self evident arguments).
>I leave it to the readers of your paper to think
>about these issues - that's all.
> -Jim H.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Attachment converted: betelguese2:Data
>Interoperability#E3CF6.doc (WDBN/«IC») (000E3CF6)
>
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