I recommend this 87-page paper "Towards a Semantic Web for Culture" by Kim
H. Veltman which can be accessed at:
The so-called "Semantic Web" in nature is "logical Web", the result is even
XML people cannot understand RDF/WL due to those logics and the way of RDF
presentation. That's why this technology is not well accepted and deployed.
That's why I said here before, the more complex the system, the less the
user. It's the same to developing semantic Web services.
Message
From: Dan Brickley
To: drew.mcdermott (AT) yale (DOT) edu
Cc: public-sws-ig (AT) w3 (DOT) org
Sent: 11/21/05 10:57 AM
Subject: Re: we have with respect to the draft charters (i.e., RE:
[fwd] Draft charters for work on Semantics for WS)
Drew McDermott wrote:

>
>>[jeff (AT) inf (DOT) ed.ac.uk]
>>
>>BTW, why is it said that "the current WSDL standard operates at the
>>syntactic level"? What is any more semantic about the things that
>>are labelled "semantic"?
>
>>
>
>By old and well established usage, "semantic" means "complex,
>expressive, insightful, ours," contrasted with "syntactic," which
>means "simple, weak, error-prone, theirs."
>
>It would be nice to avoid this term completely, but then we'd have to
>change the name "Semantic Web."
Heh, I'm sympathetic We could always go back to talking about a
'Resource Description Framework', ie a framework for describing
things. But too late there I think; although the original idea was an
incrementally extended framework, most folks now see RDF==triples, too
limiting a concept to be the overall umbrella term for this effort.
cheers,
Dan

Nov 21, 2005, at 11:04 AM, Shi, Xuan wrote:
[snip]
The so-called "Semantic Web" in nature is "logical Web", the result is
even
XML people cannot understand RDF/WL due to those logics and the way
of RDF
presentation. That's why this technology is not well accepted and
deployed.
That's why I said here before, the more complex the system, the less
the
user. It's the same to developing semantic Web services.

Uh

I don't see how this sort of "critique" is any more substantive or
helpful than overwrought hype. Your first sentence is pretty much a
non-sequitur. But anyway.

I'm *always* suspicious of facile explanations of why a certain
technology is accepted or not. There are a lot of complex,
non-technical factors involved.

(By way of refutation to your bromide about complexity and users, I'll
point out that XML schema is definitely more complex than WL (by many
measures, including computational complexity) and more widely used. So,
eh.)

Cheers,
Bijan.

Quoting Bijan Parsia <bparsia (AT) isr (DOT) umd.edu>:

(By way of refutation to your bromide about complexity and users, I'll
point out that XML schema is definitely more complex than WL (by many
measures, including computational complexity) and more widely used. So,
eh.)

I'm not convinced that that is true in practice. Yes, XML Schemas
include the datatypes, and are tricky anyway in parts, so if someone
to learn all of XML Schemas and all of WL, Schemas might well be more
complex.

But with WL, you'll also have to learn a some RDF,
and usually RDF/XML, and perhaps even XML Schema datatypes.

Anyway, I had to learn a fair amount about both a while back
(I wrote some software that turns Java class definitions into
XML Schemas, Relax NG schemas, or WL ontologies), and learning
enough to do that (plus a bit more) was about equally hard for
XML Schemas and WL. (Relax NG easily won against both.)

(A nice thing about this as an example is that it corresponds
to learning enough for a wide range of "data" uses for the
schemas or ontologies.)

But I was doing something somewhat tricky with schemas.
If I'd put a few restrictions on my XML instead, I could
have learned enough less so that it would have been
noticeably easier than the WL.

The point is that, for many purposes, learning enough of
XML Sxchemas will be easier than learning enough WL.
-- Jeff

Nov 21, 2005, at 7:21 PM, jeff (AT) inf (DOT) ed.ac.uk wrote:

Quoting Bijan Parsia <bparsia (AT) isr (DOT) umd.edu>:
>
>(By way of refutation to your bromide about complexity and users, I'll
>point out that XML schema is definitely more complex than WL (by many
>measures, including computational complexity) and more widely used.
>So,
>eh.)
>
I'm not convinced that that is true in practice.

Sigh. Note the point about "by many measures" and the point about
*computational* complexity (XML Schema is undecidable; WL DL is
NExpTime; it may never matter or it might be that most actual XML
Schemas allow linear conformance checking). course, if there is a
sweet spot, then that can explain why something "more complex" is used.
But that's exactly a nuance that matters.

[snip]

The point is that, for many purposes, learning enough of
XML Sxchemas will be easier than learning enough WL.

Sure. And the task that XML Schema is generally used for is more
"obvious" and was antecedently desired. I think my point stands. The
point being that just saying "too complex" is rarely a sufficient
explanation.

Cheers,
Bijan.

Quoting Bijan Parsia <bparsia (AT) isr (DOT) umd.edu>:

Nov 21, 2005, at 7:21 PM, jeff (AT) inf (DOT) ed.ac.uk wrote:

Quoting Bijan Parsia <bparsia (AT) isr (DOT) umd.edu>:
>
>(By way of refutation to your bromide about complexity and users, I'll
>point out that XML schema is definitely more complex than WL (by many
>measures, including computational complexity) and more widely used.
>So,
>eh.)
>
I'm not convinced that that is true in practice.

Sigh. Note the point about "by many measures" and the point about
*computational* complexity (XML Schema is undecidable; WL DL is
NExpTime; it may never matter or it might be that most actual XML
Schemas allow linear conformance checking). course, if there is a
sweet spot, then that can explain why something "more complex" is used.
But that's exactly a nuance that matters.

In context, the complexity point was:

even XML people cannot understand RDF/WL due to those logics
and the way of RDF presentation. That's why this technology is
not well accepted and deployed. That's why I said here before,
the more complex the system, the less the user. It's the same
to developing semantic Web services.

For people trying to understand, and making decisions about
adopting, RDF/WL can be significantly more complex in the
ways that most affect their decision.
-- Jeff

Nov 21, 2005, at 10:24 PM, jeff (AT) inf (DOT) ed.ac.uk wrote:

Quoting Bijan Parsia <bparsia (AT) isr (DOT) umd.edu>:
>
>Nov 21, 2005, at 7:21 PM, jeff (AT) inf (DOT) ed.ac.uk wrote:
>>
Quoting Bijan Parsia <bparsia (AT) isr (DOT) umd.edu>:
[snip]

Perhaps we should take this off list.

In context, the complexity point was:

even XML people cannot understand RDF/WL due to those logics
and the way of RDF presentation. That's why this technology is
not well accepted and deployed. That's why I said here before,
the more complex the system, the less the user. It's the same
to developing semantic Web services.

For people trying to understand, and making decisions about
adopting, RDF/WL can be significantly more complex in the
ways that most affect their decision.

But he didn't make this claim. Acutally, he made a muddle of claims (is
it that RDF & WL are a logic, or that they have bad presentation?) So,
there's the claim that it *is* more complex and *why* it is more
complex. Then the simple claim that *any* complexity reduces the number
of users. So I believe you are reading far more into what he wrote.

And complex *for what*? Are we comparing relevantly similar tasks? (For
example.) Perhaps we should look at the relative acceptance of Relax NG
and XML Schema?

I had written a lot more, but it doesn't seem worth it. I stand by my
point that wild-eyed bashing is no more informative than wild-eyed
hype, and that if you are going to talk about the acceptance dimishing
effects of complexity, you have to be fairly sophisticated in your
discussion. Acceptance and adoption are complex things which marketers,
economists and psychologists spend a lot of time failing to accurately
predict. I think we should be humble in our claims.

Cheers,
Bijan.

Quoting Bijan Parsia <bparsia (AT) isr (DOT) umd.edu>:

even XML people cannot understand RDF/WL due to those logics
and the way of RDF presentation. That's why this technology is
not well accepted and deployed. That's why I said here before,
the more complex the system, the less the user. It's the same
to developing semantic Web services.

For people trying to understand, and making decisions about
adopting, RDF/WL can be significantly more complex in the
ways that most affect their decision.

But he didn't make this claim. Acutally, he made a muddle of claims (is
it that RDF & WL are a logic, or that they have bad presentation?)

It was "and", rather than a muddle. :)

So, there's the claim that it *is* more complex and *why* it is more
complex. Then the simple claim that *any* complexity reduces the number
of users. So I believe you are reading far more into what he wrote.

I wasn't trying merely to repeat the original point.

And complex *for what*? Are we comparing relevantly similar tasks? (For
example.) Perhaps we should look at the relative acceptance of Relax NG
and XML Schema?

course there are sometimes other factors which are more important.

I had written a lot more, but it doesn't seem worth it. I stand by my
point that wild-eyed bashing is no more informative than wild-eyed
hype, and that if you are going to talk about the acceptance dimishing
effects of complexity, you have to be fairly sophisticated in your
discussion. Acceptance and adoption are complex things which marketers,
economists and psychologists spend a lot of time failing to accurately
predict. I think we should be humble in our claims.

Those are good points; however, if we end up believing that it's
too hard to tell whether we're making things better or worse,
we're likely to continue on our present course, which seems to
be to make web services increasingly complicated and complex.
-- Jeff

Nov 22, 2005, at 1:56 PM, jeff (AT) inf (DOT) ed.ac.uk wrote:

Quoting Bijan Parsia <bparsia (AT) isr (DOT) umd.edu>:

even XML people cannot understand RDF/WL due to those logics
and the way of RDF presentation. That's why this technology is
not well accepted and deployed. That's why I said here before,
the more complex the system, the less the user. It's the same
to developing semantic Web services.

For people trying to understand, and making decisions about
adopting, RDF/WL can be significantly more complex in the
ways that most affect their decision.
>>
>But he didn't make this claim. Acutally, he made a muddle of claims
>(is
>it that RDF & WL are a logic, or that they have bad presentation?)
>
It was "and", rather than a muddle. :)

The "and" doesn't alleviate the muddle.

>So, there's the claim that it *is* more complex and *why* it is more
>complex. Then the simple claim that *any* complexity reduces the
>number
>of users. So I believe you are reading far more into what he wrote.
>
I wasn't trying merely to repeat the original point.

I would then appreciate it if you marked that more clearly. *I*
certainly wasn't arguing that there's *N* complexity argument to be
made.

>And complex *for what*? Are we comparing relevantly similar tasks?
>(For
>example.) Perhaps we should look at the relative acceptance of Relax
>NG
>and XML Schema?
>
course there are sometimes other factors which are more important.

There are *usually* a lot of other factors that must be weighed
carefully. And turning complaints about complexity into *useful
actions* is *REALLY* hard. For example, if you offer *inadequate*
expressivity (since it's "simpler") then you make a lot of people's
lives harder because they can't directly say what they need to say and
have to compensate.

>I had written a lot more, but it doesn't seem worth it. I stand by my
>point that wild-eyed bashing is no more informative than wild-eyed
>hype, and that if you are going to talk about the acceptance dimishing
>effects of complexity, you have to be fairly sophisticated in your
>discussion. Acceptance and adoption are complex things which
>marketers,
>economists and psychologists spend a lot of time failing to accurately
>predict. I think we should be humble in our claims.
>
Those are good points;

Thanks.

however, if we end up believing that it's
too hard to tell whether we're making things better or worse,

Thank goodness I don't believe this. I do believe in being humble about
the grounds and certainy of my claims. Just as I see no need to hype
the benefits, I see no need to hype the detriments.

we're likely to continue on our present course, which seems to
be to make web services

ErI thought we were debating the semantic web!

increasingly complicated and complex.

But if that's what's required to meet needswhat's the problem?

Complexity == bad, simpliciter, is a pretty lame argument.

This isn't to say that I'm a fan of the cluttered, the baroque, and the
painful. My friends and enemies know well otherwise. However, I prefer
the discussion to be direct, grounded, and sensible. Well, a good
complaintfest all around is good fun, but I don't see that the current
thread is either useful or entertaining.

And yet, I participate. Go me!

Cheers,
Bijan.

Quoting Bijan Parsia <bparsia (AT) isr (DOT) umd.edu>:

There are *usually* a lot of other factors that must be weighed
carefully. And turning complaints about complexity into *useful
actions* is *REALLY* hard. For example, if you offer *inadequate*
expressivity (since it's "simpler") then you make a lot of people's
lives harder because they can't directly say what they need to say and
have to compensate.

A useful action that is often taken is to devise and implement
alternatives and thus gain experience with various possibilities,
rather than try to work it out a priori.

we're likely to continue on our present course, which seems to
be to make web services

ErI thought we were debating the semantic web!

I thought we were talking about web services should involve
the current approach to the semantic web (RDF, WL, );
that naturally involves some discussion of the semantic web.

increasingly complicated and complex.

But if that's what's required to meet needswhat's the problem?

The costs in cases other than the ones that require the complicated
and complex approach can be too great.

Settling on a complicated and complex approach can also allow
alternatives to be overlooked. Perhaps the complications and
complexity aren't actually necessary to meet those needs.
-- Jeff