Lessons Learned so far: Whats Hot, Whats Hard, Open Issues

Whats Hot

• small RDF files define new applications; use large body of common code
• vocabulary mapping is easy, low-hanging fruit that we've sampled
• visualization; circles & arrows diagrams
• log:includes allows reasoner to access web and reason about/with other documents
• allow arbitrary user to quickly construct something that pulls together information from widely disparate sites; information brokering

Whats Hard

• built-ins for digital signatures
• proof generation
• fundamental mismatch between classical semantics "of the whole" and the extremely localized, socially grounded meaning of real human interactions
• making RDF/Semantic Web technology easier to understand
• data modeling for the masses
• trying to uncover the semantics from legacy apps so we can pull the data out of them

Open Issues

• Are agreeing to use URI's enough? or is there some base ontology thats required. Or, perhaps some middle ground of daml:uniquePropery a useful middleground.
• Scalability