Are the SW tools as robust and as ubiquitous as, say, the xerces XML parser?
In general most of the tools are of a good quality already. On the open source domain Jena, Sesame, or Redland, for example, can easily be compared to xerces in their widespread usage and richness of features; databases like Mulgara or Virtuoso are also in widespread use and have undergone a very thorough development in the past few years. There are more and more commercial tools, including editors, professional databases, content management systems, ontology creation and validation tools, etc. The Wiki page on the W3C ESW Wiki site gives a good overview of most of those. Obviously, there is room for improvement. SW is a younger technology than XML and it still needs time to catch up and have tools of the same maturity and efficiency level than the XML World. However, huge improvements have already been made in the past few years in all areas, and large-scale enterprise deployment is also happening already.
In general most of the tools are of a good quality already. On the open source domain Jena, Sesame, or Redland, for example, can easily be compared to xerces in their widespread usage and richness of features; databases like Mulgara, AllegroGraph, or Virtuoso are also in widespread use and have undergone a very thorough development in the past few years. There are more and more commercial tools, including editors, professional databases, content management systems, ontology creation and validation tools, etc. The Wiki page on the W3C ESW Wiki site gives a good overview of most of those. Obviously, there is room for improvement. SW is a younger technology than XML and it still needs time to catch up and have tools of the same maturity and efficiency level than the XML World. However, huge improvements have already been made in the past few years in all areas, and large-scale enterprise deployment is also happening already.
