From: mburke (mburke@darpa.mil)
Date: 04/05/02
I agree with David Martin's assessment of the need as well as Jim's assessment of the Web Site. I think some of the best arguments for DAML from the DOD standpoint are in Jim's initial proposal within DARPA to get the initiative started. Of course, his proposal argues why we need a research program more than why someone should adopt and use DAML in the next few years. I believe the key DAML interest in DARPA/IXO is related to the potential support it provides for information integration which in turn enhances timely military decision-making. While I disagree with John Lemmer it is always nice to hear from the Bayesian's. Murray A. Burke Program Manager DARPA/IXO 3701 N. Fairfax Drive Phone: 703-696-2303 Arlington, VA 22203-1714 Fax: 703-696-2203 mailto: mburke@darpa.mil DSN: 426-2303 -----Original Message----- From: Pat Hayes [mailto:phayes@ai.uwf.edu] Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 1:20 PM To: Jim Hendler Cc: daml-all@daml.org Subject: RE: ASSERTION, QUESTION, SUGGESTION At 2:35 PM +0000 4/4/02, Lemmer John F Civ AFRL/IFTB wrote: As a potenial DAML +OIL user, but one who will probably not go that route, here is my 2 cents worth. Every new thing like DAML exits somewhere in a tradeoff between academic elegance and practical utility. From what I see of DAML, it is way to far from utility and way to close to (attempted) elegance. It seems DAML is re-fighting (and still not winning) the wars the KR community has been struggling with for at least the last 20 years. john It is so good to see our Air Force researcher lab staff so open-mindedly examining a new technology Oh come on: DAML isn't a NEW technology. Its a description logic, is all, rendered into a barbaric notation, and with a botched interface to a triple-store mechanism (for which botching I bear part of the blame, to be honest) and burdened with an ill-defined commitment to using URIs as universal identifiers in some as-yet-still-unspecified way. - I hope that this will not come back to haunt them during AFSAB reviews. I'd love to hear from John why he thinks that DAML is not winning - I cannot remember another AI language that ever has had so much public interest, web use, and moved into standardization by a major body -- in fact, in hype we probably lag behind the old expert systems days, but in acceptance we seem to be moving beyond and winning acceptance. Perhaps the military seems to be moving slow (as usual), but the Web Ontology Working Group includes such small companies as Intel, Daimler-Chrysler, EDS, Fujitsu, HP, Intel, Lucent, Nokia, Philips Electronics, and Unisys -- with a couple of other big players talking to me about joining. There's also a rumor around that IBM Research has included Semantic Web-related work in their strategic plan -- in short, we're seeing a positive interest that had not been seen in this way in the past (except maybe for the expert systems days - which all these companies, and many of the rest of the Fortune 500, are using regularly). Sure, keeping a keen eye on what the SW is up to, particularly once one has already paid ones W3C membership costs in any case, is probably a no-brainer for any significant IT company. Endorsing DAML+OIL is something else again, however. Perhaps John's message helps explain why Air Force F-16s are flying with 240,000 lines of Jovial code in their controllers and why the DoD is still maintaining that Corba, not Java, is the language of the future... If F-16s ever get controllers written in Java then I'm going to hide underground. -JH p.s. John - you're lucky I'm not the PM anymore - if you sent a messgae like the above when I was PM you'd be looking for another program to support. Now, now, Jim! You know its not considered good form to threaten the servants, even if they do annoy you sometimes with their talkative ways. Pat -- Professor James Hendler hendler@cs.umd.edu Director, Semantic Web and Agent Technologies 301-405-2696 Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Lab. 301-405-6707 (Fax) AV Williams Building, Univ of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/hendler -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola, FL 32501 (850)202 4440 fax phayes@ai.uwf.edu http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes
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