RE: [ontac-forum] Re: Semantic Layers (Was Interpretation of RDFreificat

[Lucian_Russell/ESI/CSC <Lucian_Russell/ESI/CSC@xxxxxxx>]

Cory,

A caution from the history of Computer
Science. 

If you argue that we "MUST"
go with RDF despite its flaws, I would like to point out that at least
in one very significant instance that history is not on your side. The
example is also in the same general Computer Science area as RDF. The lesson
is from the "Database Wars" in the early 1970s. 

The CODASYL Network model was proposed
by the Data Base Task Group (1969-1971) as the Standard by the in 1971
– I believe Frank Manola worked on a related CODASYL project, the Data
Description Language and might have more to say. Ted Codd’s relational
model came later to the game, and is recounted in the document “The 1995
SQL Reunion People, Projects, and Politics – Prehistory” (http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-Prehisto.html
)

Don Chamberlin of IBM (http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/people/chamberlin/)
was an early CODASYL advocate. In the above material he recounts the following:

“He (Codd) gave a seminar and
a lot of us went to listen to him. This was as I say a revelation for me
because Codd had a bunch of queries that were fairly complicated queries
and since I'd been studying CODASYL, I could imagine how those queries
would have been represented in CODASYL by programs that were five pages
long that would navigate through this labyrinth of pointers and stuff.
Codd would sort of write them down as one-liners. These would be queries
like, "Find the employees who earn more than their managers."
[laughter] He just whacked them out and you could sort of read them,
and they weren't complicated at all, and I said, "Wow." This
was kind of a conversion experience for me, that I understood what the
relational thing was about after that.”

For those who do not know who Don
Chamberlin, he is considered the co-inventor of SQL; I list a few recognitions:
·        Elected
IBM Fellow, 2003 
·        SIGMOD
Innovations Award, 2003 
·        Dr.
Dobbs Excellence in Programming Award, 2003 
·        Harvey
Mudd College Outstanding Alumni Award, 2003 
·        Elected
to National Academy of Engineering, 1997 
·        Elected
to IBM Academy of Technology, 1997 
·        Elected
ACM Fellow, 1994 
·        ACM
Software System Award for System R, 1989 

What redirected the field away
from the CODASYL model, the "standard" proposed by the group
that was the official guardian of the COBOL language,  was that by
using the relational model and query languages like QUEL and SQL you could
do the work in a one line query statement instead of writing “five
pages” of a computer program.

If there is a better way to represent
anything then it should be explored, and good possibilities should not
be written off merely because the W3C did something different a couple
of years ago. After all, it was only a decade ago that C+ was still "THE"
object-oriented programming language. 

Lucian Russell
___________________________
Lucian Russell, PhD
Sr. Consulting Engineer
Enforcement, Security and Intelligence Division
Computer Sciences Corporation
8613 Lee Highway
Fairfax VA, 22031
Ph: (703)-207-6136
Fax: (703)-645-0511
Cell:(703)-340-5807


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