"Semantic Web on its way into practice"

Germany’s most visited IT-site has an article about the Semantic Web on its way into practice. The article itself isn’t that interesting for people working in this area, but there is one interesting comment: In it a reader complains that the Semantic Web people are always claiming the Gene Ontology as an application of Semantic Web technology, even though it’s not even using OWL light. The writer seems to be quite knowledgeable about the Gene Ontology and hence this makes for an interesting read. His argument about the Gene Ontology having nothing to do with Semantic Technologies, however, has little merit: the Gene Ontology is an explicit, computer understandable conceptualization of a domain – that’s what we’re talking about all the time. Doesn’t matter if its in OWL or something simpler.

If your interested in the application of Semantic Web to life sciences – take a look at the current HCLSIG homepage – it really improved since the last time I wrote about it and contains useful links & resources.

P.S.: I'm very busy until Thursday (with both a software delivery deadline and a conference I'll be attending). So don't expect to many posts until then ... Unless of course, the conference is totally boring, the software has less bugs than expected and the weather in Vienna is too bad for sightseeing ... (two of these conditions actually have a chance of happening ..).

Tags: OWL, Semantic Web, Gene Ontology