answer these questions. Instead, it provides
a foundation and a relatively simple stan-
dard format for exchanging information
about Web sites. Reasoning agents can use
the standard syntax for input and output of
their algorithms, in the same way that a
word-processing program handles different
file formats.      If your research project involves design-
ing classes of metadata properties for Web
documents and Web sites, you are faced
with three options: you can encode the
meta information using META tags, use
RDF, or develop an ad hoc proprietary
encoding scheme.      For practical purposes, you should con-
sider the META tag. Although it is of lim-
ited expression, it is widely used by search
engines, Web browsers, and Web authoring
tools. Web sites and authoring tools will
not likely scrap the META tag and switch
to RDF on a very large scale any time soon.
Instead, the META tag will very likely be
around for a long while. In the meantime,
early adopters who require the added fea-
tures are employing RDF and XML tags.      In my opinion, it’s best to first specify the
classes, the property names, and the property
values as abstract entities, independently from any syntactic constraints. Then, try to
implement the specifications by supporting
both the META tag and the RDF syntax,
without resorting to proprietary, ad hoc cod-
ing schemes. Using basic META tags might
not let you implement the full specification
and might result in less precise definitions,
but you will be operating within the bound-
aries of existing, widely accepted
standards. Conversely, adopting
the RDF syntax in separate XML
documents lets you evaluate the
pros and cons of new technolo-
gies, without resorting to propri-
etary schemes that might not be
widely accepted in the future. Ibelieve that RDF will slowly become a widely accepted stan-
dard on the Internet, especially
for large-scale catalogs that com-
bine domain knowledge about
multiple domains. RDF’s single
most important contribution is that it permits the combination and exten-
sion of dictionaries of properties originating
from heterogeneous classes, or domains, in
a single, relatively compact document for-
mat. This reason alone justifies considering
it as a viable document format. 22 IEEE INTELLIGENT  SYSTEMS Relevant URLs The META tag specification in the HTML 3.2
standard from the World Wide Web Consortium: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32.html#meta The RDF home page at the W3 Consortium: http://www.w3.org/RDF The Dublin Core of RDF bibliographic elements: http://purl.org/DC This IBM Web site demonstrates XCentral, the
first search engine that indexes XML and RDF
documents: http://www.ibm.com/developer/xml XML name spaces are an important new W3
Consortium Recommendation: ttp://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xml-names-19990114 Mobility Focusing on the idea of mobile people triggering system action and exploring difficulties
inherent in locating mobile users and locations. Actors & Agents Representing a cross section of current work involving actors and agents—autonomy,
identity, interaction, communication, coordination, mobility, distribution, and parallelism. Object-Oriented Technology Showcasing traditional and innovative uses of object-oriented languages, systems,
and technologies. Workflow Investigating distributed computing solutions that enable rapid and dependable provisioning
of complex services involved in business processes. Data Mining Focusing on system-level issues and mechanisms as well as the social implications of current
and planned data-mining applications. Check us out at http://computer.org/concurrency ® ® IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY Like Comparing Alligators to Armadillos Distributed databases: rethinking integrity
Parallel computing trends in European industry
Application-centric parallel multimedia software
Distributed programming tools Concurrency IEEE PA R A L L E L ,    D I S T R I B U T E D    &    M O B I L E    C O M P U T I N G / OCTOBER  –  DECEMBER   1997 Also Appearing in 1999 Concurrency IEEE