Exactly.
"In fact, the gain from the Semantic Web comes much before [AI]. Maybe [in 2001] we should have written about enterprise and intra-enterprise data integration and scientific data integration. So I think data integration is the name of the game...What we should realize is that the return on investment will come much earlier when we just have got this interoperable data that we can query over." - Tim Berners-Lee, Feb 7 2008, interview (http://talis-podcasts.s3.amazonaws.com/twt20080207_TimBL.htm...)
"Trying to use the Semantic Web without SPARQL is like trying to use a relational database without SQL." - Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director, 15 Jan 2008 Press Release (http://www.w3.org/2007/12/sparql-pressrelease)
"SPARQL's focus on querying the data models saves time for developers; there's no need for a host of little Web services to retrieve different aspects of the state of a system. This allows the user of the SPARQL endpoint to ask any question -- it is as though they could design their own interface instead of having to work with a limited set of fixed services." - Lee Feigenbaum, Chair of the RDF Data Access Working Group (i.b.i.d.)
"Trying to use the Semantic Web without SPARQL is like trying to use a relational database without SQL." - Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director, 15 Jan 2008 Press Release (http://www.w3.org/2007/12/sparql-pressrelease)
"SPARQL's focus on querying the data models saves time for developers; there's no need for a host of little Web services to retrieve different aspects of the state of a system. This allows the user of the SPARQL endpoint to ask any question -- it is as though they could design their own interface instead of having to work with a limited set of fixed services." - Lee Feigenbaum, Chair of the RDF Data Access Working Group (i.b.i.d.)