During the semantic web panel, Stefan presented the DAML program,
Tim Berners-Lee preseneted the semantic web vision, Dieter Fensel
presented information on ontologies, and there was a presentation on MPEG
7. It appears that the panel went well. (Chairperson's note
- MPEG 7 was presented by Ana Belen Benitez.) Tim Berners-Lee
presented a dependency graph diagram of what W3C was working on.
A pointer that requires SVG for viewing is available at: http://www.w3.org/2001/Talks/0501-tbl/
One interesting question that may be worth our committee's attention
is why there are both XML Schema and RDF Schema (and why one needs more
than XML Schema). Frank proposed the answer that XML Schema is useful
for encoding a structure while RDF Schema is useful encoding the meaning
of the terms in a structure. Another comment worth considering is the request
that languages be such that "a journalist could write [in the language]
by hand".
Some issues that arose with DAML are making more explicit layers
for expressiveness, adding back more of the "frame feeling" of the language.
One final impression from the meeting from Frank is that of "cautious
interest" for DAML+OIL.
There was a suggestion that we obtain the viewgraphs. (Chairperson's note: since the meeting, Lynda Hardman has made the slides available at http://www.cwi.nl/~lynda/www10/ . This is expected to also be published on the daml web site.)
The W3C RDF Core WG
had a meeting during W3C. Ora Lassila reported.
One concern may be that there should not be semantic web efforts that
take resources away from other efforts (such as the lower level XML efforts).
There may be 10-11 W3C people working at some level on the semantic web
activities.
A discussion followed on whether someone like Pat Hayes (representing
the logicist viewpoint) would be asked to join the RDF core working group.
It was speculated that he (or someone like him) would be asked to join
when his expertise was needed. (Chairperson's note - I am leaving
in the pointer to the member list from 2 weeks ago. I assume this
is updated but since it is not a public site, I can not check it.
I am also leaving the pointer to the email archives which are public.)
The full member
list is not public, but the email
archives (including Introductions from most members) are.
The web ontology committee has not started yet. Eric Miller (the chair of the larger semantic web activity) has just had a baby and it is expected that there will be additional activity in the general area once he returns to email processing regularly. One issue that we should address is making sure that the web ontology effort will not take resources away from other core w3c web work. One issue that may help is that Ora Lassila is willing to be scribe of both the web ontology committee as well as the RDF core working group, thereby providing a liason between both groups.
There was a developers day at www10 which included at least presentations on how to build a semantic web site. Again the impression from the committee member in attendance (Stefan) was that the semantic web was taking off at this conference.
Dieter Fensel's email prior to the meeting contained 3 points:
Layering. We discussed the usefulness of layering.
This can be viewed as being helped if there is a tutorial guide that will
lead new users through the simple portions of the language first.
Stefan is working on a draft.
Naming: We are expecting a renaming of the ontology language
with the onset of the web ontology committee thus this issue was not addressed
in detail.
Frame-feel: The issue of look and feel of a language may
be addressed with tools. One suggestion was to ask dan connolly if
he is ready to submit any of his tools for general usage.
Lessons Learned: Dan Connolly asked about the availability of the lessons learned exercises that funded researchers did for DAML. Kelly Barber identified that lessons learned 1 and 3 were available and she was checking on the lessons learned from homework 2.
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