Semantic Web Technologies – has their time come in education?
In 2005, TechWatch published a report on Semantic Web Technologies written by Brian Matthews who, at that time, was deputy manager of W3C’s UK office. As JISC has recently announced an open call of funding for a study on Semantic Web technologies in teaching and learning we thought we’d use this opportunity to provide a bit of an update on Semantic Web developments.
The JISC call seeks to fund a study which looks at pragmatic aspects of the actual use of semantic applications in real world scenarios. The successful applicant will review a number of case studies of real-world teaching and learning scenarios and look at the potential for use of semantic technologies. The key question they are asking is: “Can you convince us that semantic technologies offer one potential solution to some real problems?”
This is an interesting development. In 2005, the Semantic Web was still seen by many people as very much a computer science ‘Grand’ research project which would take years to reach fruition. Despite some very well worked out visions as to what it would deliver – a more automated Web in which some sense of ‘meaning’ or semantics had been imbued into data held within pages and their links – there were still plenty of practical doubts. Even in 2006, when Tim Berners-Lee and other researchers at Southampton provided an update (The Semantic Web Revisited) they admitted that: “this simple idea, however, remains largely unrealized” (page 96). However, they were optimistic, arguing that the key development was for standards that express meaning to become well established and they reported that this was “progressing steadily”.
Despite this there are still concerns expressed, particularly by the business community, as to the practical reality of doing semantic web. Recent conferences such as Semantic Technologies have highlighted the question again: where are the practical examples? The Tallis Semantic Web Gang have produced a useful podcast of a round-up discussion which reviews their attendance at these conferences in which they debate some of these issues. As they make clear one of the key things to come out of these conferences is that venture capitalists and business development people are starting to ask quizzical questions about what exactly semantic web is, what does it actually do for real users and what is the ‘killer app’?
This reflects the original TechWatch report, which commented that: “people are still asking how they can be used in practical situations to solve real problems” (page 2). However, the report also concluded that higher education was likely to be at the forefront in the use of these technologies. Given that, the JISC open call seems particularly timely. There is an opportunity here for higher education to lead the way in making use of semantics with real users and I think it will be interesting to see the outcomes.
TechTracking: XML-based office document standards
Last summer TechWatch published a report on XML-based office document formats. The issue was one of standards: increasing pressure, particularly from the EU, was being brought to bear on public sector software procurement practices to only buy software that conforms to open standards. The argument is about how taxpayers’ money should be spent. In essence, that members of the public should be able to have easy access to all electronic documents published in the public sector without being required to purchase a particular software product in order to view or edit those documents. The TechWatch report looked at the on-going debate over the move away from closed, proprietary document formats used by everyday applications such as word processing and spreadsheet software.
The problem was that although everyone agreed that XML was the way forward, there was considerable controversy and technical debate over two proposed XML-based formats: Open Document Format (ODF) and Office Open XML (OOXML). The former had already been formally ratified as an international standard by ISO, whereas the latter, promoted by ECMA and based heavily on work by Microsoft, was still undergoing a process of being ‘fast-tracked’ towards standardisation. The fact that a scenario was emerging where there would be two international standards was causing considerable consternation.
The report concluded at the time that it was extremely important for HE/FE to keep a watching brief on the developments of these two standards and to start engaging with the debates. It also recommended that institutions should begin planning, pro-actively, for a switch to XML-based formats arguing that:
“although the UK higher education sector has, for a long time, understood the interoperability benefits of open standards, it has been slow to translate this into easily understandable guidelines for implementation at the level of everyday applications such as office document formats. As far as higher education is concerned, the use of office document formats has now reached a watershed.”
In October 2007 Becta referred Microsoft to the Office of Fair Trading after talks had failed to secure the agreements needed in several key areas. In the interim, Becta’s advice to schools was that they should not move to Microsoft’s School Agreement subscription licensing model.
Since then things have moved on. Although ISO approved OOXML (a standard they refer to as ISO/IEC 29500) in April 2008, four countries (Brazil, South Africa, Venezuela and India) lodged appeals. This meant that OOXML was immediately ‘unratified’ pending the outcome of the appeal.
In addition to these formal appeals there have been a number of complaints about the process of standardization including:
- In the UK, an application was made by UK Unix & Open Systems User Group (UKUUG) for a Judicial Review of the BSI’s (British Standards Institute) role in voting ‘Yes’ to the standardization of OOXML. This was rejected by a High Court judge, but UKUUG is appealing against the decision.
- The Danish Open Source Business Association lodged a complaint about the way the process was carried out at the national level in Denmark.
In January 2008 the EU announced that it would investigate a number of suspected abuses of dominant market position by Microsoft and that this would include the question as to whether: “Microsoft’s new file format Office Open XML, as implemented in Office, is sufficiently interoperable with competitors’ products”.
All in all, things are not looking good for OOXML. Also in January, Becta released formal advice to the effect that schools should not upgrade to Microsoft Vista or Office 2007 and that existing users of Office 2007 should not save in Microsoft’s OOXML format. In the short term, they recommend that existing Office 2007 users should save files in .doc, .xls, and .ppt formats.