Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 11:37
AM
Subject: [regrep] Semantic Web
Collaborations
Dear Colleagues:
I was recently asked to write a brief
description of a rationale to begin establishing regular liaison connections
between entities or bodies working on standards or pilot programs by which the
emerging framework of the Semantic Web as envisioned in the W3C can be
advanced. In other words, 'It's time to start making the semantic web work in
practical, pragmatic terms with concrete examples by connecting previously
unconnected resources."
I am sending this message out to
the specific resources, bodies and entities that I personally want to connect,
so please understand that this message is request for help to make this
happen.
If you want to skip the rest of the preamble and get to the
nuts, bolts, who, what and how of this message, you can skip to the horizontal
rule.
First, let me narrow this request by saying that it is aimed at
the leadership of the lists to which this message is being sent but that is
not meant to preclude anyone who reads this from participating, especially
those whose suggestion prompted this message. Any of us can act as informal
liaisons or contribute in any number of ways, but I do want to move toward
some more formal relationships to enable a regular exchange of information at
the least, and, at best, active participation in new and existing projects and
pilot programs as well.
That said, there are several facts I
want to note. This effort to describe the interconnections that are now ready
to be made in liaisons and collaborations that will benefit and advance the
work of all parties revolves first around my own participation in the OASIS
Emergency Management Technical Committee, then the Web Services for Remote
Portlets, WSRP, and HumanMarkup TCs, and then my potential participation in
the E-Gov TC.
As co-chair of the HumanMarkup TC,
I can say that we identified our own requirement for a liaison with the E-Gov
TC from its inception, but have not had success in finding someone capable of
following through with such a commitment, and so I have decided to do this
myself, and curtail other commitments to enable this, perhaps by serving as
liaison to both the Emergency Management and HumanMarkup TCs.
I also envision working with both the
ebXML Registry TC and the Content Assembly Mechanism TC. The ebXML Registry TC
has a Semantic Content Management Subcommittee which may be of specific
interest and use in connecting with E-Gov TC, which has identified a
requirement to address the need for a Semantic Content Management Mechanism of
some sort.
A note on my personal history may
help put this into a more complete context. I co-founded the Content
Development Working Group of the Web3D Consortium in 1998, when it was named
The VRML Consortium. I joined HumanMarkup work as it was forming in order to
develop a high level authoring language capable of being used to provide
standard behaviors for real-time representation of 3D humans on the web, and
this remains my long term goal. I recently became involved with Emergency
Management because it is a natural extension of my work to provide
geospatially accurate 3D depictions of emergency environments in real
time. These are, of course, longer term goals as opposed to what we can
provide more immediately in the next few years. So, this is a consistent
thread in my own work since I first began working on standards for my own
work.
As an example of the kind of work I envision, I offer the
60-slide presentation accompanied by a 27-page paper, I made on behalf of the
OASIS HumanMarkup TC, and Humanmarkup.org, Inc., the 501(c)(3) Non-Profit
Corporation to educate and foster development of the Human Markup Language, of
which I am the volunteer Executive Director. The ultimate product of the
collaboration described was a (WSRP 1.0/JSR 168 conformant) Web Services-based
Public Healthcare Preparedness Portal using the Common Alerting Protocol, CAP,
developed by the Emergency Management TC, shown in slide 59:
Slides:
http://ua-exp.gov/QuickPlace/ua-exp/Main.nsf/h_12CDF5C6107594FD85256DEF0073C0BA/B6211857396EBE3485256DF6007B83A8/?OpenDocument
Paper:
http://ua-exp.gov/QuickPlace/ua-exp/Main.nsf/h_12CDF5C6107594FD85256DEF0073C0BA/E2D6A4734FFFA14585256DF80053D03F/?OpenDocument
Realizing the Semantic
Web:
The W3C released the most current RDF
and OWL specifications December 15, 2003. OWL is the Web Ontology Language and
RDF is the Resource Descritpion Framework, and together they comprise the
fundamental specifications which specifically enable inference engines and,
therefore, allow the Semantic Web to begin developing in earnest.
OWL
Overview:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/PR-owl-features-20031215/
OWL
Guide:
http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-guide/
OWL
Reference:
http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/
OWL Semantics and Abstract
Syntax:
http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-semantics/
OWL Web Ontology
Language Test Cases:
http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-test/
OWL Use Cases
and Requirements:
http://www.w3.org/TR/webont-req/
RDF/XML Syntax Specification
(Revised)
http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar/
RDF Vocabulary Description Language 1.0: RDF
Schema
http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/
RDF Primer:
http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-primer/
Resource Description Framework (RDF): Concepts and
Abstract Syntax
http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-concepts/
RDF
Semantics
http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-mt/
RDF Test
Cases
http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-testcases/
The Stanford Medical Informatics
Groups recently released Protege 2.0, a working Knowledge Base and Ontology
Building open source application project, which has both an OWL Plugin and an
RDF Plugin.
http://protege.stanford.edu
This gives us a set of
languages and a toolkit to use to build applications realizing practical,
working applications of the Semantic Web.
Disclaimer: all of these components are recent, though they have
been in development for several years, but should not be expected to display
error-free or mature reliability.
My personal short term goal at this
point in time is to develop an extension of the Portal developed in the
presentation given to the EA Collaboration Expedition Workshop #30 cited
above, perhaps including, or being included within an extended format with the
presentation given by ebXML Registry Services to XML 2003 in December in
Philadelphia,
PA.
http://ebxmlrr.sourceforge.net/presentations/oasis-demo-xml2003.sxi
http://ebxmlrr.sourceforge.net/presentations/oasis-demo-xml2003.ppt
The
very extensive collaborations represented in the presentations given at the EA
Workshop and XML 2003 illustrate the breadth of standards and organizations
which can interoperate using the principles on which the Semantic Web is
based. Moving this further can be facilitated by adding a few more components
such as the the Web Services Business Process Execution Language, WSBPEL, and
the Web Services Choreography Language which is under development by
W3C.
To be specific about the entities which I would like to see
involved in active liaisons, I offer this list:
OASIS Content Assembly
Mechanism TC
OASIS ebXML Registry
TC
ebXML Registry Semantic
Content Management SC
OASIS e-Government TC
OASIS Emergency Management
TC
EM GIS SC
EM Infrastructure Framework SC
EM Messages
and Notification SC
OASIS HumanMarkup
OASIS Web Services Business
Process Execution Language TC
OASIS Web Services for Remote Portlets
TC
My wish list for extra-OASIS participants:
W3C Web Services
Choreography Working Group
Stanford Medical Informatics--Protege
Web3D
Consortium Geovrml Working Group
This does not mean that I do not think
other groups ought to be included, but I am somewhat more focused on the
emergency management application area in order to deliver immediately
understandable, and global/pan-human benefits in any demonstration projects
that might be developed.
--
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley,
CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email:
rexb@starbourne.com
Tel: 510-849-2309
Fax: By Request