Working backwards on the Semantic Web

I just had a bit of an insight: I think that many people, including myself, may be taking the wrong approach to working on the Semantic Web. I think that dealing with XML serializations of RDF, RDFS, and OWL is just plain wrong. Tools like Protege offer a frame-like UI that makes it a lot easier to work with (and free descriptive logic engines like Fact++ help by checking for consistencies). However...

I have had a little free time today to work on a pet project that Obie inspired: write Ruby wrapper code for making it easier to deal with RDF/RDFS/OWL by loading files and automatically mirroring classes, etc. I would work in Protege, then write Ruby code to consume the RDF/RDFS/OWL files so that I could work in a decent language. OK, fine.

However, this all still seems more than a little wrong to me. Since the Semantic Web is largely about ontologies and knowledge representation, why turn our backs on decades of AI research? Why not work with knowledge representation systems written in Lisp (or Prolog, Ruby, etc.) and have a back end that serializes to XML/RDF/RDFS/OWL as required. Really, use the best notation possible for all of the human-intensive work.

While Protege is a terrific tool, I still think that using older technologies like KEE, Loom, PowerLoom, etc. with optimal programming environments makes a lot of sense. Any language with good introspection (like Ruby or Common Lisp) would work for supporting XML serialization when required.

Comments

  1. I really like Protege, but I have to agree with your comments about building the knowledge representation directly in Lisp or Ruby and then communicating this in terms of rdf/rdfs/owl. I have tried a number of the plugins for reasoning/scripting, and they don't really offer a seamless and dynamic environment like you would have in Lisp/Ruby. Protege's first generation was originally implemented on a Symbolics. You can see the parallels to the MOP in the system classes and also the parallel to presentation types in the forms interface. Take a look at SWCLOS (http://iswc2004.semanticweb.org/demos/32/) it extends the CLOS MOP to do OWL.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello Author,

    I have played with SWCLOS - pretty neat work.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ruby Sinatra web apps with background work threads

Time and Attention Fragmentation in Our Digital Lives

My Dad's work with Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller