The W3C RDF Data Access Working Group recently released an initial public Working Draft specification for "RDF Data Access Use Cases and Requirements". Naturally, this triggered discussion on the RDF mailing list along the following lines:
In section, 4.1 Human-friendly Syntax, you say "There must be a text-based form of the query language which can be read and written by users of the language", and you list the status as "pending".
As background for section 4.1, you may be interested in RDFQueryLangComparison1 (original text replaced with live link).
It shows how to write queries in a form that includes English meanings.
The example queries can be run by pointing a browser to www.reengineeringllc.com .
Perhaps importantly, given the intricacy of RDF for nonprogrammers, one can get an English explanation of the result of each query.
-- Dr. Adrian Walker of Internet Business Logic
The Semantic Web continues to take shape, and Infonauts (information centric agents) are already taking shape.
A great thing about the net is the "back to the future" nature of most Web and Internet technology. For instance we are now frenzied about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Event Drivent Architecture (EDA), Loose Coupling of Composite Services etc. Basically rehashing the CORBA vision.
I see the Semantic Web playing a similar role in relation to artificial intelligence.
BTW - It still always comes down to data, and as you can imagine Virtuoso will be playing its usual role of alleviating the practical implementation and ulization challenges of all of the above :-)