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Smalltalk:::OWL-Project OWL is the Web Ontology Language. OWL is a standard for describing an ontology and provides formalisms for reasoning over the ontologies (or instances of the ontologies). It is similar to the notion of defining Classes/Attributes/Relationships in Smalltalk (the ontology), creating instances,and performing methods on those instances (a reasoner). For an overview on OWL visit W3C's OWL page. An Ontology Definition Metamodel (ODM) is being proposed to the Object Management Group (OMG), this ODM document provides a very good reference for the ODM, OWL, and mappings between various representations, e.g. UML, TopicMap, and ER. RuleML is intended to be the connonical xml rule language (driven by a desire to enable rules to be shared by different rule engine types and vendors). SWRL is a web rule language combining OWL and RuleML The Smalltalk OWL Project is focused on providing core OWL capabilities in Smalltalk, which could be leveraged by the community. The BottomFeeder RSS/News reader is an example, it uses RDF which is the basis for OWL. Select here for an overview of the project and current team Why should the Smalltalk community care ? The semantic-web and OWL are hot technologies that will be at the core of future information systems development. OWL has emerged from the AI/semantic community and tends to be in the open-source community which appears to be a direction for Smalltalk (e.g. Smalltalk Solutions at Linux World) Much of the work to date has been implemented in Python and Ruby which, from a language perspective, is very close to Smalltalk. However, those languages become less appealing if you have ever worked in the IDE's supporting those languages. OWL can provide the Smalltalk community with a "market" that is a good fit for the features of the ST language and supporting IDE's. Why is this effort sponsored by Agilense, Inc. ? Agilense provides a product named EA WebModeler (select the product url above if you would like to know more). The product is built in Smalltalk (VAST and Squeak), is an implementation of the Adaptive Object Model pattern, and we are leveraging ST in order to gain a competitive advantage in terms of ability to bring new capabilities in our product to market faster than our competition, and provide a stable product. EA WebModeler is all about building and leveraging ontolgies so it naturally fits in the OWL world. We do have a self-centered interest in the OWL-Project since Agilense would want to leverage OWL capability in our product, but, we also believe the core bits (which are open technology anyway...just not in ST) would be valuable for the ST community in general. On a personal note, I was a former ParcPlace employee and continue to support Smalltalk (obviously since our product is constructed in ST). I believe Smalltalk can establish a foothold in the semantic community because the community was raised on AI and likes Python & Ruby. I look forward to working with fellow Smalltalkers and with my "marketing hat on" will work to see that the efforts of this group are visible to communities of interest, including sources of funding. |
If you are interested in participating in this effort, please send a request via the form below, our you can send an email directly to Steve Hunter, CTO, Steve@Agilense.com or call me direct at (703)-878-2475 |
Copyright 2004 Agilense