Trip Report WWW2004 P5: web semantics and web services: a marriage made in heaven ?

panelists:

• katia sycara, carnegi mellon university (ks)
• francisco curbera, IBM research (fc)
• david martin, SRI international (dm)
• michael uschold, boeing corporation (mu)

there were approximately 150-200 attendees.

introduction:

what semantics is about:

• meta data, annotation
• onthologies
• rules

web semantics versus web services:

• web semantics:
  • vast
  • distributed
  • imprecise
  • anarchistic
  
  
• web services:
  • based on standards
  • discover - invocation - composition
  • reliable, robust, reuse
  • security, access
  • language and vendor platform neutral

web services are hailed as the new frontier of e-commerce.

statements from the panelists:

francisco curbera:

• the web service vision:
  • new paradigma in distributed computing
  • bring internal and external computing seamlessly together
  • open service economy requires a set of open protocols, service descriptions, contracts, runtime interoperatibility
• apply semantics gradual to web services
• where is the killer application ?

michael uschold:

• "this will not going to end in marriage, but they can be good friends in the long term"
• what semantic web is about: we want the machine to do the right thing
• XML has meaning for humans only

katia sycara:

• the semantic stack:
  
• the evolution: tool driven - data driven - process driven - model driven - semantic web
• semantic web may reduce the cost of software maintenace
• there is a disconnect between web/HTML/XML and RDF
• strategy:
  • evolution = add semantic to current standards
  • revolution = nightmare for those that have adopted previous standards

david martin:

• web services provide a building block for interoperability, encapsulation, reuse, language- and vendor neutral deployment
• web services make available a vast global repository of interoperable services
• no need for a revolution, the foundation is already in place (HTTP, XML, SOAP etc), more semantic is appearing (UDDI etc.)
• don't look for perfection, the marketplace will make it happen

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