RE: Usefulness and Limitations of XML
> mfu@redwood.rt.cs.boeing.com replied:
>
....
> XML has no formal semantics, and is unlikely to have one in the forseeable future.
> XML Schema are coming along, but fall far short of the expressive needs that have
> received much discussion on the SUO list. This is why I thought noone would be
> suggesting their use. XML as is currently is, is completely bereft of expressive
> capability. See Frank van Harmelen's competent discussin of it's shortcomings.
>
Of course XML has not formal semantics, or only in a trivial sense. XML itself is a syntax-description language. It plays exactly the same role as BNF or any of the other approaches that have been mentioned to describe syntaxes. Neither BNF nor XML have formal semantics themselves, or in and of themselves provide semantics for the languages defined using them.
....
> XML schema are not scheduled for realease for many moonths to come, we cannot
> hold up our effort by waiting around. I stand by my view that we need to
> develop our own SUO language (or adopt or adapt an existing one). Separately
> form this, it is probably important to XMLify our language so it can easily be
> ported. I believe that this latter step is conceptualy trivial.
>
Wait a minute. We don't have time to work with a standard language-system that has a reasonable chance of industrial use, but we do have time to develop our own language!! Come on! Who's going to use it? Is this just another academic game? Rather than waste our time with an utterly redundant language description language, let's use an existing standard language description language (playing the role of pilot project as we need to) to define XKIF, and then explore how to use XKIF to build ontologies. Not only will we have our ontologies, we'll have a standard way to exchange information expressed in those ontologies.
Jim