The Web Semantic

Back in January an interesting discussion started on the semantic web interest group regarding a possible schism between OWL focused tools and RDF focused tools.   What isn’t mentioned, but is obvious in reading the new OWL2 specs is that RDF isn’t nearly as prominant as it was in OWL1.  Specifically, the first OWL specification was written with all it’s examples in RDF/XML.  OWL2 introduces 3 new representation formats, machester, owl2xml, and owl functional.  That’s in addition to the existing represenation formats (n3, turtle, RDF/XML), and there is a tremendous amount of complexity and details in just understanding the set pre- owl2.  (if you don’t believe me see  this blog post on the details)

I think OWL2 further complicates and already overly complex story for the semantic web.  The reduced usage of RDF is profound…in that we’ve been reading and learning that RDF is the secret sauce that will open up a web of data.  It seems reasonable then that the language to describe and structure this web should  be composed of the same stuff, at least when it’s presented publicly.  I issue that concerns me is that OWL1 was only just beginning to be used in a few places (foaf for example).  In most examples I’ve seen OWL applied, it’s applied sloppily, admiting to being only partially complete and under revision.  Furthermore, most of it’s advanced features go unused (because most of us don’t understand or need them).  This entire episode is slightly reminescent of the J2EE specification frenzy, during which many app server vendors struggled to keep up with the rapidly changing  and bloated specifications.  I wonder how they would have reacted back in ‘99 if they’d know that in the future EJB would not be used, but rather, ActiveRecord implemented on various interpreted language platforms. (ruby, groovy, php).  The same will be true in the semantic web space, where things are even more competive and there are fewer dollars/euros/yen/won.

What the semantic web needs is simplicity and focus.  So much goes into satisfying the AI (artifical intelligence) aspects of semantic web that leaves me confused and wondering if I’ve walked into the wrong technology by mistake.  Do you think the semantic web has a community relations problem?

Tagged: owl, owl2, RDF, Semantic Web, Web Ontology Language