The Emerging Semantic Web

A new edition of the widely used guide to the key ideas, languages, and technologies of the Semantic Web The development of the Semantic Web, with machine-readable content, has the potential to revolutionize the World Wide Web and its uses. A Semantic Web Primer provides an introduction and guide to this continuously evolving field, describing its key ideas, languages, and technologies. Suitable for use as a textbook or for independent study by professionals, it concentrates on undergraduate-level fundamental concepts and techniques that will enable readers to proceed with building applications on their own and includes exercises, project descriptions, and annotated references to relevant online materials. The third edition of this widely used text has been thoroughly updated, with significant new material that reflects a rapidly developing field. Treatment of the different languages (OWL2, rules) expands the coverage of RDF and OWL, defining the data model independently of XML and including coverage of N3/Turtle and RDFa. A chapter is devoted to OWL2, the new W3C standard. This edition also features additional coverage of the query language SPARQL, the rule language RIF and the possibility of interaction between rules and ontology languages and applications. The chapter on Semantic Web applications reflects the rapid developments of the past few years. A new chapter offers ideas for term projects. Additional material, including updates on the technological trends and research directions, can be found at http://www.semanticwebprimer.org.

"The Semantic Web is an extension of the current Web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation." —Tim Berners-Lee, Scientific American, May 2001 This authoritative guide shows how the Semantic Web works technically and how businesses can utilize it to gain a competitive advantage Explains what taxonomies and ontologies are as well as their importance in constructing the Semantic Web Companion Web site includes further updates as the framework develops and links to related sites

The Semantic Web is a Web defined and linked in a way that it can be used by machines not just for display purposes, but also for automation, integration and reuse of data across various applications. This work presents technologies that will enable the Semantic Web to become a reality.

The geosciences are one of the fields leading the way in advancing semantic technologies. This book continues the dialogue and feedback between the geoscience and semantic web communities. Increasing data volumes within the geosciences makes it no longer practical to copy data and perform local analysis. Hypotheses are now being tested through online tools that combine and mine pools of data. This evolution in the way research is conducted is commonly referred to as e-Science. As e-Science has flourished, the barriers to free and open access to data have been lowered and the need for semantics has been heighted. As the volume, complexity, and heterogeneity of data resources grow, geoscientists are creating new capabilities that rely on semantic approaches. Geoscience researchers are actively working toward a research environment of software tools and interfaces to data archives and services with the goals of full-scale semantic integration beginning to take shape. The members of this emerging semantic e-Science community are increasingly in need of semantic-based methodologies, tools and infrastructure. A feedback system between the geo- and computational sciences is forming. Advances in knowledge modeling, logic-based hypothesis checking, semantic data integration, and knowledge discovery are leading to advances in scientific domains, which in turn are validating semantic approaches and pointing to new research directions. We present mature semantic applications within the geosciences and stimulate discussion on emerging challenges and new research directions.

The Web is evolving from a place where a prodigious amount of text and images are stored to a place where educational and other needs are serviced. The Web is becoming increasingly automated with functions that previously required human action undertaken automatically moving learners and other users more quickly to useful support. More and more such services interoperate with each other through computer programs and agents. This is the territory of semantic Web services and Web 3.0. Just as shop bots and auction bots abound in handling a particular task on the Web currently, in higher education of the future such related bots and agents will interact with the heterogeneous information that is the stuff of higher education. The scale of such agent-based mediation and linked data will grow over time. Increasingly, intelligent agents and bots will undertake tasks on behalf of their faculty, administrator, and student owners. Collaborations among faculty and students around the world will be increasingly supported by semantic social networks capable of providing crucial functions. Students can be engaged in participating in the design and development of semantic Web applications in such areas as structuring and representing knowledge. The increasing availability of interactive educational tools and collaborative community-resources, such as wikis, can be the foundation for deploying semantically marked-up and social-connected educational spaces where students construct their own learning pathways in explorations of knowledge and creating new content integration. This volume will share visions and partial realizations of the impact of the semantic Web and associated Web 3.0 features on higher education. This volume will provide accounts of cutting-edge pedagogic applications of the semantic Web with its extremely extensive use of interconnecting information technologies.

The all pervasive web is influencing all aspects of human endeavour. In order to strengthen the description of web resources, so that they are more meaningful to both humans and machines, web semantics have been proposed. These allow better annotation, understanding, search, interpretation and composition of these - sources. The growing importance of these has brought about a great increase in research into these issues. We propose a series of books that will address key issues in web semantics on an annual basis. This book series can be considered as an extended journal published annually. The series will combine theoretical results, standards, and their realizations in applications and implementations. The series is titled “Advances in Web Sem- tics” and will be published periodically by Springer to promote emerging Semantic Web technologies. It will contain the cream of the collective contribution of the Int- national Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Web Semantics Working Group; WG 2. 12 & WG 12. 4. This book, addressing the current state of the art, is the first in the series. In subsequent years, books will address a particular theme, topic or issue where the greatest advances are being made. Examples of such topics include: (i) process semantics, (ii) web services, (iii) ontologies, (iv) workflows, (v) trust and reputation, (vi) web applications, etc. Periodically, perhaps every five years, there will be a scene-setting state of the art volume.

The Semantic Web is a vision – the idea of having data on the Web defined and linked in such a way that it can be used by machines not just for display purposes but for automation, integration and reuse of data across various applications. However, there is a widespread misconception that the Semantic Web is a rehash of existing AI and database work. Kashyap, Bussler, and Moran dispel this notion by presenting the multi-disciplinary technological underpinnings such as machine learning, information retrieval, service-oriented architectures, and grid computing. Thus they combine the informational and computational aspects needed to realize the full potential of the Semantic Web vision.

Provides a single record of technologies and practices of the Semantic approach to the management, organization, interpretation, retrieval, and use of Web-based data.