This notion of a "semantic Web" is one of the great perennial "boil the ocean" topics. Germinated and perpetuated by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, it's been kicking around the industry for a few years now. It keeps going and going, and morphing into new contexts.
For example, from last week (now it's "Web 3.0"):
Web 2.0 Arrives to Find Web 3.0 Under Way.
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199000940
Or just the other day (it's "Web 3.0," but also "semantic SOA"):
SAIC Pushes Past Web 2.0 to Web 3.0
http://soa.sys-con.com/read/368248.htm
So what, if anything, is the "semantic Web"?
Is it some supermagical metadata, description, and policy layer that will deliver the nirvana of universal interoperability by making every networked resource automatically and perpetually self-describing on every conceivable level?
Or just some banal XML tagging schema or folksonomy that everybody will be exhorted to apply to every scrap of online content so as to facilitate more powerful metadata discovery, indexing, and search?
Or what?
Last week, I debated the issue with a host of other SOA industry analysts in the weekly podcast at www.briefingsdirect.com, hosted by Dana Gardner of Inter-Arbor Solutions. The stream and transcript won't be posted there for a few weeks, but I'll bring you up to speed on my evolving thoughts on this matter. Thanks especially to David Linthicum for his insightful commentary (much of it from articles he published 3 years ago....a period when I jotted some thoughts on the topic as well....I responded to him only in the past week).
More to come.
Jim
