They are used mainly by unexperienced users mainly on the basis of natural language understanding. The success of the internet caused the utilization of huge varieties of semantics. XML and other ML are becoming the baseplate of internet applications. However, XML supports semantics and consistency to a very limited extend. Third, the importance of research on semantics is hyper-raising by applications.
Applications are more and more decentralized and require careful integration.
UML become to be the 'inter-galactic' application specification language. It has almost no semantics. In order to develop consistent application the semantics foundation needs to be worked out. This Dagstuhl seminar aims in bringing together different communities such as the database theory community, the logics community, the AI community, the complexity theory community, the type theory community and the database applications community. To encourage discussion, we will have talks with a responder.