The founder of the World Wide Web talking about the semantic web, on MIT video. Another video that is worthwhile viewing, requires a fair amount of technical understanding.
Sir Berners-Lee starts off with a definition of "Emergence" and its needs:
- lots of individual things
- simple interactions
- common interactions
noting that standards are needed for these "needs" to let emergence occur. Stating that "emergence occurs when the individual things are organized to recognize and communicate with other things."
At the time of the development of the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee stated the following.
- URI is global identifier, having one is good
- URI schemes have different properties
- HTTP scheme allows publish and lookup
- HTTP allows many data formats
- HTML is a language for hypertext
- ... but links not typed (Refer back to my "Vision" entry here for an understanding of typing.)
- RDF + OWL + etc for knowledge representation. (Italics noting these were added later)
Today, integrating the semantic web to enable and to integrate data across enterprises is the objective.
But ...
- What about "typed" links?
- What about help from machines?
- What about data?
Establishment of the metadata Resource Description Framework (RDF) standards was passed by the W3C and is used throughout the web. It enables companies to deal more accurately with the data they have, to find associated data, and most importantly, the ability to interchange data between trading partners. Hence the importance of this blog entry to the general audience of the oil and gas community that is forming here.
I want to stress the importance of viewing this video. In it Berners-Lee states that standards are fundamental to the effective and efficient functioning of this opportunity. Noting specifically that the ability of certain individuals or groups to control the standard for their own benefit is a possible outcome of the process.
Being a troll is not what this blog is attempting to do. It is attempting to build the community in such a way that the joint operating committee becomes the central oil and gas focus of an oil and gas producer. That there are large vested interests aligned against this principle is another story. This community has to be built around the needs of the 3 groups that need such an application. That being the software developers, employees / workers / consultants, and producers / investors.
I don't want to leave anyone out of this community and would note. The large organizations have the Oracle Fusion and SAP applications to support their organizations. And they are motivated to continue with them. However, this community is about the individuals that are interested in developing the best applications for oil and gas and that includes the individuals that may be beneficiaries of the good salaries and vested pensions of the large bureaucracies.
With respect to the W3C standard ontology of the joint operating committee. The standard will be one of the initial deliverables of this communities efforts. They will also be public domain. Any copyright issues associated with me licensing my intellectual property to make that happen will be done. The only condition I will insist upon is that this community is supported by the producers by some form of long term commitments. Spinning these standards out with a perpetual license of my copyright is probably the most effective means of dealing with this for the long term.
One of the valuable points of the web discussion of Berners-Lee is his representation of how simple this really is. At least he makes it sound easy, and it is, and should be. This is an excellent educational video from the founder of the World Wide Web. One of the things that he does in his rambling style, is provide a good example of why these ontologies are so important.
- XML - a registration document contains a single license number field
- RDF - a car has a unique license number
- Therefore, semantic data is much more reusable
He then states the critical difference between the web that most people know and use, and the one that he and I are discussing in the video and this blog;
- "Making the web of hypertext links which is useful for people, to a web of concepts that is useful to machines"
Citing the possible scenario where an individual, who wants to find the best snow tires for his car, within 5 miles of his home, that fit his vehicle, and the costs and time necessary to have them installed. This query should be easily done on the semantic web with only two lines of text.
That to achieve this type of complex information aggregation only requires the "triple". A simple reduction of any "thing" and defining it in the ontology by "subject" "property" and its "value". So in the prior example the "car" "license" "HWX 149" defines the "thing", which is unique representation of a vehicle is HWX 149. But putting these definitions on the web, machines can derive information and understand the meaning or semantics of the information.
Berners-Lee goes on to note, that this metadata is not a relational database, its not a tree like what XML is designed to do, its a primordial soup, its a web of very complex data, and the concepts around that data. This accurately reflects the effect that Java has in "typing" of objects and why that language has such a strict requirement of typing. If this sound overly complicated or theoretically impossible. Consider that I see up to 10 dimensions that Java objects can represent. So yes a three dimensional web of data and concepts is a close representation of the possibilities.
With the combination of relational theory as defined by Dr. E.F. Codd, the semantic web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the Java programming language by Dr. James Gosling, one has the tools to truly change the world. Add the components of WiMax and IPv6. I think we can change the performance of an oil and gas producer in such a dramatic fashion that the world will have the energy it needs. So join this community, contact me through this blog, I'll send you my thesis that started all of this and then we can all go from there.