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Point 1: Build Upon a Common Formal Foundation

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• What is semantics anyways?
• Using a Semantic Web standard like RDF or OWL?
• The mysterious philosophical connection between some representation and what it represents?
• Having a precise formal model of what the computation is doing?
• Answer: All of the above!
• Concentrate on formal semantics ala the operation semantics of XQuery or the model theory of OWL
• The obvious answer: π calculus!
• The π calculus is one of a family of calculi that describe processes - a free standing computation on a channel that receives and sends messages with other processes, possibly in parallel.
• All one knows is the input and output of a process. Non-functional properties can be encapsulated as parameters, and real-world effects captured as output.