conference blogging from XML 2005

Kurt Cagle of  www.understandingxml.com has been blogging from the XML 2005 conference:

1. Reporting Live from XML 2005 in Atlanta
2. XML 2005 Conference, First Day (Tuesday)
3. XML 2005 Conference, Wednesday
4. XML 2005 Conference, Thursday (Last Day)
5. UnConventional Thoughts

Of particular interest to me as I scanned through was a presentation from Wednesday:

XML in Mathematical Web Services: Stephen Watt, Professor, University of Western Ontario, Canada

Paper was undertaken as a collaboration of the MONET project, funded by the European Union

The Monet services architecture assumes that you have multiple users that are each working with a heterogeneous environment. It then acts as a brokering architecture that lets those users communicate with one another (or with computer systems) in the problem domain - for instance, attempting to create symbolic solutions to integration problems.

Their standard XML data formats:
* OpenMath
* Content MathML
* OWL
* XSLT

...

Additional XML formats were designed:
* Mathematical Services Description Language (MSDL)
* Mathematical Problem Description Language (MPDL)
* Mathematical Explanation Language (MEL)
* Mathematical Service Query Language (MSQL)
* Mathematical Services Configuration Language (MSCL)

Here's some blurbage from the MONET Home Page:

One area of interest is the possibility of offering mathematical algorithms through web services that can be accessed from a wide variety of software packages. The challenge is to develop a framework in which such services can describe their capabilities in as much detail as is necessary to allow a sophisticated software agent to select a suitable service based on an analysis of the characteristics of a user's problem.

The aim of the MONET project is to demonstrate the applicability of the latest ideas for creating a semantic web to the world of mathematical software, using sophisticated algorithms to match the characteristics of a problem to the advertised capabilities of available services and then invoking the chosen services through a standard mechanism. The resulting framework will be powerful, flexible and dynamic, yet robust and easy to navigate, putting state-of-the-art algorithms at the disposal of users anywhere in the world.

link to conference reporting via ZDNet SOA blog: UBL progress report at XML 2005