The Semantic Web
Vineeta, 8PGC18, M.Tech (III Semester).
Introduction
The word semantic stands for the meaning of. The semantic of something is the meaning of something.
The Semantic Web = a Web with a meaning.
What is Semantic Web?
The Semantic Web is a web that is able to describe things in a way that computers can understand.
The Beatles was a popular band from Liverpool. John Lennon was a member of the Beatles. "Hey Jude" was recorded by the Beatles.
Sentences like the ones above can be understood by people. But how can they be understood by computers?
Semantic Web (Cont.)
Statements are built with syntax rules. The syntax of a language defines the rules for building the language statements. But how can syntax become semantic?
This is what the Semantic Web is all about. Describing things in a way that computers applications can understand it.
Semantic Web (Cont.)
The Semantic Web is not about links between web pages. The Semantic Web describes the relationships between things (like A is a part of B and Y is a member of Z) and the properties of things (like size, weight, age, and price) "If HTML and the Web made all the online documents look like one huge book, RDF, schema, and inference languages will make all the data in the world look like one huge database"Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving
the Web, 1999
Semantic Web Technologies
Explicit Metadata
<h1>Agilitas Physiotherapy Centre</h1> Welcome to the home page of the Agilitas Physiotherapy Centre. Do you feel pain? Have you had an injury? Let our staff Lisa Davenport, Kelly Townsend (our lovely secretary) and Steve Matthews take care of your body and soul. <h2>Consultation hours</h2> Mon 11am - 7pm<br> Tue 11am - 7pm<br> Wed 3pm - 7pm<br> Thu 11am - 7pm<br> Fri 11am - 3pm<p> But note that we do not offer consultation during the weeks of the <a href=". . .">State Of Origin</a> games.
Technologies (Cont.)
<company> <treatmentOffered>Physiotherapy</treatmentOffer ed> <companyName>Agilitas Physiotherapy Centre</companyName> <staff> <therapist>Lisa Davenport</therapist> <therapist>Steve Matthews</therapist> <secretary>Kelly Townsend</secretary> </staff> </company>
This representation is far more easily processable by machines.
Technologies (Cont.)
Ontologies
An ontology describes formally a domain of discourse. Typically, an ontology consists of a finite list of terms and the relationships between these terms.
In the context of the Web, ontologies provide a shared understanding of a domain. Such a shared understanding is necessary to overcome differences in terminology.
Technologies (Cont.)
Ontologies are useful for the organization and navigation of Web sites. Many Web sites today expose on the left-hand side of the page the top levels of a concept hierarchy of terms. The user may click on one of them to expand the subcategories. Also, ontologies are useful for improving the accuracy of Web searches. The search engines can look for pages that refer to a precise concept in an ontology instead of collecting all pages in which certain, generally ambiguous, keywords occur. In this way, differences in terminology between Web pagesand the queries can be overcome.
Technologies (Cont.)
Logic logic offers formal languages for expressing knowledge. Second, logic provides us with wellunderstood formal semantics In most logics, the meaning of sentences is defined without the need to operationalize the knowledge.
Technologies (Cont.)
Agents
Agents are pieces of software that work autonomously and proactively. A personal agent on the Semantic Web will receive some tasks and preferences from the person, seek information from Web sources, communicate with other agents, compare information about user requirements and preferences, select certain choices, and give answers to the user. An example of such an agent is Michaels private agent in the physiotherapy example.
Technologies (Cont.)
Today
user
In the future
User
Present in Web browser
Search Engine
Personal agent
Intelligent Infrastructure Services www docs
www docs
Intelligent Personal Agents
Technologies (Cont.)
Semantic Web agents will make use of all the technologies: Metadata will be used to identify and extract information from Web sources.
Ontologies will be used to assist in Web searches, to interpret retrieved information, and to communicate with other agents. Logic will be used for processing retrieved information and for drawing conclusions.
A Layered Approach
The development of the Semantic Web proceeds in steps, each step building a layer on top of another.
The pragmatic justification for this approach is that it is easier to achieve consensus on small steps, whereas it is much harder to get everyone on board if too much is attempted.
A Layered Approach
In building one layer of the Semantic Web on top of another, two principles should be followed: Downward compatibility. Agents fully aware of a layer should also be able to interpret and use information written at lower levels. For example, agents aware of the semantics of OWL can take full advantage of information written in RDF and RDF Schema. Upward partial understanding. On the other hand, agents fully aware of a layer should take at least partial advantage of information at higher levels. For example, an agent aware only of the RDF and RDF Schema semantics can interpret knowledge written in OWL partly, by disregarding those elements that go beyond RDF and RDFSchema.
A Layered Approach
RDF: Resource Description Framework
The RDF (Resource Description Framework) is a language for describing information and resources on the web.
Putting information into RDF files, makes it possible for computer programs ("web spiders") to search, discover, pick up, collect, analyze and process information from the web.
Why RDF?
XML does not provide any means of talking about the semantics (meaning) of data. For example, there is no intended meaning associated with the nesting of tags; it is up to each application to interpret the nesting. Let us illustrate this point using an example.
Suppose we want to express the following fact: David Billington is a lecturer of Discrete Mathematics. There are various ways of representing this sentence in XML. Three possibilities are <course name="DiscreteMathematics"> <lecturer>DavidBillington</lecturer> </course>
<lecturer name="David Billington"> <teaches>Discrete Mathematics</teaches> </lecturer> <teachingOffering> <lecturer>David Billington</lecturer> <course>Discrete Mathematics</course> </teachingOffering> RDF is essentially a data-model. Its basic building block is an object-attribute-value triple, called a statement. The preceding sentence about Billington is such a statement.
OWL: Web Ontology Language
OWL is a language for processing web information. OWL stands for Web Ontology Language OWL is built on top of RDF OWL is for processing information on the web OWL was designed to be interpreted by computers OWL was not designed for being read by people OWL is written in XML OWL has three sublanguages OWL is a W3C standard
OWL: Web Ontology Language
OWL was designed to provide a common way to process the content of web information (instead of displaying it). OWL was designed to be read by computer applications (instead of humans).
OWL and RDF are much of the same thing, but OWL is a stronger language with greater machine interpretability than RDF. OWL comes with a larger vocabulary and stronger syntax than RDF.
Applications
Horizontal Information Products at Elsevier Data Integration at Audi Skill Finding at Swiss Life e-Learning Web-Services
Conclusions
The Semantic Web is an evolving collection of knowledge, built to allow anyone on the Internet to add what they know and find answers to their questions. The knowledge on the Semantic Web is an aggregate of contributions from many sources, much as the Web is an aggregate of many web sites.
Implementing the Semantic Web requires adding semantic metadata, or data that describes data, to information resources.
References
http://www.SemanticWeb.org http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/ http://www.cs.vu.nl/~marta/wbkr.html http://www.cse.lehigh.edu/~hein/courses/semweb/ http://lsdis.cs.uga.edu/SemWebCourse/index.html http://www.sema^ Berners-Lee, Tim (2001-05-01). "The Semantic Web". Scientific American. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00048144-10D2-1C7084A9809EC588EF21. Retrieved on 2008-03-13. Nigel Shadbolt, Wendy Hall, Tim Berners-Lee (2006). "The Semantic Web Revisited". IEEE Intelligent Systems. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12614/1/Semantic_Web_Revisted.pdf. Retrieved on 2007-04-13. nticweb.org/>).
http://www.ninebynine.net/Papers/SemanticWebApplications.ppt ~.pdf http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/ http://www.w3.org/rdf
