Subject: [apps-discuss] request for review: draft-bvandervalk-sadi-00.txt (individual submission)

From: Ben Vandervalk <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:37:33 -0800

Hi all,

I have recently submitted an I-D (as an individual) regarding RDF/OWL-based
web services called SADI (Semantic Automated Discovery and Integration).

My intent is to put this I-D on the standards track, and I have been
advised that the first step is to solicit comments/reviews on this list, in
order to guage interest.

There are currently three implementations of SADI in Java, Perl, and
Python, which are available from http://sadi.googlecode.com/. The Java and
Perl implementations were created by the authors, whereas the Python
implementation was created independently by Jim McCusker of MSU. The Python
implementation does not yet implement all of the features in the draft, but
we think it is likely that Jim will expand his implementation in time, or
that other parties will create additional implementations of SADI.

I am unfamiliar with IETF procedures regarding individual submissions and
would appreciate any advice in that regard as well.

Thanks for your consideration!

======

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts
directories. This is an Individual Submission.

       Title : SADI: Semantic Automated Discovery and Integration
       Author(s) : Ben Vandervalk, E. Luke McCarthy, Mark D. Wilkinson
       Filename : draft-bvandervalk-sadi-00.txt
       Pages : 31
       Date : 2012-01-31

This document describes Semantic Automated Discovery and Integration
(SADI), a set of best practices for implementing stateless web
services that consume RDF data as input and generate RDF data as
output. The goal of SADI is to establish conventions that will
enable a much higher level of interoperability between web services
from independent providers than is currently possible under the
widespread use of WSDL/XML and RESTful services. Under SADI,
interoperability depends on the shared use of predicate vocabularies,
rather than the shared use of particular XML schemas, JSON
structures, or ad hoc data formats. Through the use of OWL to
describe service input and output datatypes, SADI enables: i)
automated discovery of services that provide data or computations of
interest, and ii) automated matchmaking between local data and
available services. By iterative application of the former two
capabilities, SADI enables semi-automated construction of arbitrarily
complex workflows across independent service providers.

A URL for this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-bvandervalk-sadi-00.txt

-- Ben Vandervalk
Wilkinson Lab, University of British Columbia

---

From: Tim Bray <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:03:30 -0800

My feeling is that this draft would not be a good investment of IETF
time.  The adoption RDF and OWL is moderate at best, and to the extent
that this sort of highly semantic business-oriented thing needs
standards-group attention, it probably doesn't need the IETF's.  -Tim

On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 5:37 PM, Ben Vandervalk <[email-masked]> wrote:
> My intent is to put this I-D on the standards track, and I have been advised
> that the first step is to solicit comments/reviews on this list, in order to
> guage interest.
>
> There are currently three implementations of SADI in Java, Perl, and Python,
> which are available from http://sadi.googlecode.com/. The Java and Perl
> implementations were created by the authors, whereas the Python
> _______________________________________________
> apps-discuss mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/apps-discuss
>

---

From: Graham Klyne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2012 08:10:34 +0000

I skimmed through this with some interest, but I feel (with some regret) that I 
must agree with Tim Bray that the IETF is probably not the right venue for this. 
  I have two main technical reasons for saying this:

(1) it does not really define any new protocol in the sense that IETF generally 
defines protocols; rather it defines a (quite reasonable) pattern of use for 
HTTP for a particular class of web services.

(2) the "protocol" described is quite specific in the content types it deals 
with (just RDF), which I feel means it is not the kind of common 
infrastructure-layer element that the IETF would normally consider.

None of this means that the work is without merit, or not worthy of wider 
review.  In particular, I note that it may find early applicability outside 
bioinformatics in areas such as open government data applications where there is 
significant use of RDF.

Suggestions I offer to present this to a wider audience are:
- I would expect that a proposal like this would likely gain more traction in 
W3C.  In the first instance, there might be a possibility to see if the W3C HCLS 
group would be interested to review this and publish it as a W3C Note.
- If you feel it really has applicability to communities beyond those who engage 
with W3C activities, it might be a candidate for individual submission as an 
informational RFC; though there no guarantee that it will get extensive review 
on that route.  (There is a "precedent" in BEEP (formerly BXXP) for 
specifications being first published by that route, and later becoming formally 
standardized as http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3080.txt - though I don't know that 
it's widely used).

There may well be other, better ways to develop this work - those are just a 
couple of suggestions that occur to me.

Best,

#g
--