The Semantic Web will not happen. Yet.

There, I said it. Stuck my head out precariously. Feel free to chop it off, but in a nice way please.

Although, the "Semantic" part of the term can indeed be used, and that thingamy intends to do. But it won't work for the "Web" (as in the whole Cloud, the WWW), for now.

The cloud (web) holds information and the information is contained in (web) objects - pretty much unstructured and rather messy. Not a problem, just something we'd like to sort out, Semantic Web wise for example:

Applying Semantic Web methodology would include adding RDF N-triples - [subject] + predicator + [object] - to web objects. Computers understand it (thanks to W3C standards) and humans get it, perfect.

But, there's the quandary; each web object (mostly) represents a multitude of real world objects. Each information bearing object - article, web site, form - is messy with a multitude of object representations within itself.

A form represents a person, an account, an address and many other real world objects. An article is a narrative describing many objects and referring to many more. Both have owners and authors and purposes - yet more, virtual or tangible, singular real world objects represented therein.

So which part of the subject and object would the predicator apply to? What is actually related to what?

In order to add precise relationships in the cloud, web objects need to be singular, each representing one single real or virtual object. Precise objects.

It is all about knowledge. How objects relates to other objects equals knowledge. Not more, nor less, that's it. Knowledge in a nutshell.

And without precise objects, no relationships can be precise and thus little knowledge created. And therefore no successful Semantic Web (all of the WWW that is) for awhile.

(BTW, narratives and forms used to be the solution to hold knowledge as it includes all the important relationships therein. Neat method in the paper days, but now when we'd be better off having something that computers can understand? Nah.)

What to do? The idea of a Semantic Web is too good to let lie.

By now you may have guessed it, use it only for pockets of web based information that fits the bill of object singularity. That's what I will do in thingamy:

And we're extremely lucky, we operate in a controlled environment, in an organisation or business, where you not only use information but you also create the information - thus you can define the classes such that the objects become truly singular.

Then the triple offers precise relationships. And with precise relationships between precise objects, knowledge ensues.
That computer readable knowledge allows a system to find, use and report objects according to any relationship. Real time processes, Semantic Accounting (!), reports combining objects or drilled down, up, sideways or wherever you want to go.

Semantic Enterprise before Semantic Web?

Comments

[Tomi Itkonen]

Googled this arbitrary UML diagram:
http://groups.sims.berkeley.edu/CDE-Events/SMJ-UML.jpg

In that diagram, there are verbs like "describes", "sponsors" and "publishes" between classes.

So, the way I see it, the current crop of enterprise applications only models those classes omitting the relationships between. Thingamy, however, will "put the verb back" and thus create a more complete model of the enterprise.

[sig]

Tomi, quite.

Although we let the objects itself have triples (not only classes!) describing the relationship between specific objects.

That allows for all kind of craziness - say in accounting (just discussed with John by mail) - now Semantic Accounting:

Q: What is "inventory"?
A: Products and parts that we own and that resides in one of our warehouses. (Depending on GAAP of course).
Solution: Triples added to product and part objects with predicator and object: ".... is owned by Company" and "... is located in Warehouse X, row 14"

That way the system can pick up the value of the objects at the point of time required and produce an Inventory.

Now why is that good?

Every now and then the regulatory bodies changes the rules, semantically I should add, which you can apply in the system by changing the "filtering rules" in the accounting templates without touching the data as such. Given an extensive use of triples on objects of course, preferably anything remotely interesting of course...

In that case, if you go all over board and your boss wants a report on the value of all products sold to customer XY over the last three years produced by operator Peter on rainy days only - well, doable again! (Useless report probably, but accounting and tax rules changes may be rather inscrutable too!)

[Tomi Itkonen]

Thank you Sig once again for your clarifications.

It will be very interesting to see what's the actual implementation of these concepts.

[Tomi Itkonen]

Forgot to mention... With all these breakthrough features, please put effort to the user interface. In other words, grab an UI team which is capable of understanding the underlying concepts and providing an excellent experience for the end-user.

But I'd guess you are planning to do exactly that as soon as the more important decisions have found their answers... ;)

[sig]

Tomi, do I know it, do I know it!

It's high up on the list now, get this fork up and tweaked and yes, then. Gonna be interesting though to translate "simple but very different" concepts into something that is possible to grasp, fast.

Wish me luck! Need it... :)

[Tomi Itkonen]

Yep. Good luck with the UI side, Sig!