Yeah, I agree. When I started thinking about the overall web services
discussion, I found the prospect of retrieving useful information in XML
form far more exciting than the notion of attaching metadata to those
resources. I guess this is because I find it so implausible that a
significant proportion of information sources providers will bother to offer
metadata that is useful and consistent.
At the same time, you can get exactly the same kind of effect using normal
XML technologies. In my example, all the semantic metainformation necessary
can be conveyed by using some sort of standard MovieML. You can then do
interesting things to plug and play sites together without having to add all
kinds of other metadata by hand. For example, the processing application
could easily merge together data from Do Kina (e.g. where is the movie
playing) with info from the Internet Movie Database (e.g. the user rating).
So you get a very semantic-webby effect, as you put it, without any extra
effort.
Matt
-----Original Message-----
From: Dare Obasanjo
To: Matthew Gertner; Simon St.Laurent;
Sent: 4/26/2002 11:34 PM
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] What are Web Services for? (Was RE: [xml-dev] lots of
WS reading material)
This sounds rather semantic-webby....
Come to think of it, if the semantic web folks were headed in creating
applications that went in this direction perhaps I wouldn't have so much
disdain for them. This bears investigation.
--
PITHY WORDS OF WISDOM
Celibacy is not hereditary.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.
You assume all risk for your use. (c) 2002 Microsoft Corporation. All
rights reserved.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matthew Gertner [mailto:]
> Sent: Friday, April 26, 2002 7:51 AM
> To: Dare Obasanjo; Matthew Gertner; Simon St.Laurent;
>
> Subject: RE: [xml-dev] What are Web Services for? (Was RE:
> [xml-dev] lots of WS reading material)
>
>
> OK, for what it's worth, I think I figured out the right way
> to do this that would be accessible to users of very little
> technical ability. Simply provide a forms-based interface
> that can access XML information sources and guides you
> through the process of creating your customized view. So I
> would go to www.createmyview.com and would be presented with
> a set of questions:
>
> Q: Which website do you want to view?
> A: www.dokina.cz
>
> Q: This website offers information about (1) cinemas and (2) movies.
> A: (2)
>
> Q: This website offers the following information about
> movies: (1) name, (2) director, (3) actors, (4) description.
> (Multiple selection)
> A: (1)
>
> Q: Sort movies by (1) city or (2) cinema?
> A: (2)
>
> Q: Select the cinema(s) that you would like to see: (long
> list, multiple
> selection)
> A: Ster Century Slovansky Dum
>
> Q: Press finish or select another website.
> A: www.imdb.com
>
> Q: This website offers the following information about movies...
>
> ...and so on. This is pretty much how MyYahoo works (and
> probably a lot of other customizable websites). The big
> difference is that I can tie one website's data into
> another's, since all of the data is available to me (or
> actually to www.createmyview.com) as XML.
>
> As you can see, absolutely no mention of WSDL, SOAP or
> whatever. There needs to be some way to access the data on a
> website as XML, but how it is actually done still doesn't
> strike me as particularly important.
>
> Matt
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Dare Obasanjo [mailto:]
> > Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 5:33 PM
> > To: Matthew Gertner; Simon St.Laurent;
> > Subject: RE: [xml-dev] What are Web Services for? (Was RE:
> > [xml-dev] lots of WS reading material)
> >
> >
> > So explain to me how you think the current web service technologies
> > WSDL/SOAP/WS-*/etc can easily solve your problem in a
> feasible manner?
> >
> > This is an honest question.
> >
> > --
> > PITHY WORDS OF WISDOM
> > If you want to recapture your youth, cut off his allowance.
> >
> > This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
> > rights. You assume all risk for your use. (c) 2002 Microsoft
> > Corporation. All rights reserved.
