Talk SOAP
By Amit Asaravala
In a May 2001 Scientific American article, Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, and Ora Lassila outlined a vision for the Web's future. Dubbed the "semantic Web," their vision focused on software applications that could share data with one another. For instance, the calendar program on a personal handheld device could check with the master calendar application at a doctor's office and automatically schedule a patient's next appointment. Taking this vision one step further, it's not difficult to imagine that stereos may one day automatically check the servers of major recording companies and download the latest hit singles. Likewise, a car's in-dash computer could send information about stress, heat, and mileage levels back to the automobile manufacturer where that data could be processed to determine the next tune-up date.
These ideas certainly aren't new. Berners-Lee had in fact written about the semantic Web as early as 1998. And for decades, we've dreamed of the day when computers would handle most mundane tasks, freeing our time for other activities. While there are great human benefits to the realization of these ideas, advancements in this area have been slow and often owned by a small number of private organizations. The problem with such proprietary research is that the results mostly remain in the hands of the investing companies. Interoperability across different products and devices becomes limited by competition and the overhead of forming complicated partnerships. If we were to continue at this pace and with this methodology, chances are slim that the semantic Web would ever be realized.<>
