Semantic Web

From glossaLAB
Collection GlossariumBITri
Author Anabel Fraga Vázquez
Jorge Morato-Lara
Yorgos Andreadakis
Editor Sonia Sánchez-Cuadrado
Year 2010
Volume 1
Number 1
ID 94
Object type Concept
Domain Web
es web semantica
fr web sémantique
de semantisches Web

1. Evolution, limitations and advantages of the proposal. Tim Berners-Lee created this concept by proposing a network in which information and services are semantically defined so that requests of people and machines could be understood and satisfied. Computers would be able to analyze all Web data: content, links, transactions between persons and computers. A Semantic Web that could be able to do this is emerging, and this way, when this is possible there will be a qualitative leap in the interconnection between multiple repositories, electronic commerce, semantic queries and automatic question-answer systems.

Semantic Web has already been with us for a decade and a great effort has been invested for its development by private and academic entities, but regretfully results are currently scarce, because this forward-looking approach implicates a “technical construct of protocols, process, languages, and tools.

However, three factors present Semantic Web as an attractive solution; these are the interoperability and the creation of semantic resources with the common domain knowledge:

i) Interoperability: some authors consider the Semantic Web as a project for creating a universal mediator for information interchange (Kalfoglou, 2007). This would be possible through the creation of interoperable documents semantically well defined for the computer applications of the World Wide Web. In other words, it is about converting the Web, and its distributed databases, into a great database. Interoperability between the documents is sustained through the use of a common language based on RDF (Resource Description Framework) (W3C, 2005), a language which is based on XML (Extensible Markup Language) (W3C, 2006). The advantages of obtaining this interoperability are obvious for knowledge reuse (Russ, Jones and Fineman, 2006), conceptual navigation, and the fusion of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) through multiple domains (W3C, 2006; Zeng, 2004).

ii) Semantic Resources: Semantic Web requires that the semantic knowledge should be expressed in documents written in a Web language oriented to knowledge modeling, like RDF. These documents model KOS and its instances. KOS have an important role in the Semantic Web because they support the semantic knowledge management. This is necessary to perform indexing and retrieval tasks, giving as a result more relevant and noiseless information for the user. KOS define the concepts utilized for describing and representing an area of knowledge (Daconta, Smith and Obrst, 2003; Gruber, 2005). These resources are used by persons, databases, and applications that need to share information on a specific domain, considering for every domain the specification of a knowledge area, such as medicine, real estate, commercial management, etc.

Semantic Web Layers

Semantic Web proposal suggests a seven layer “cake” for its implementation. Each layer has to be compatible with previous ones. For instance, the layer three -RDF/RDFS- must be understood by XML applications, while the next layer, usually encoded by OWL, must be able to extract information from RDF documents.

Although the following layer scheme correspond to the most well known version of the cake, other versions has also been proposed (Bratt, 2007):

  1. Unicode-URI: basic coding and resource identification.

  1. XML-NS-XMLSchema: syntax and its relationship with name-spaces, also expressing XML structure.

  2. RDF+RDFSchema: RDF/RDFS shows primitives to represent knowledge.

  3. Ontology Vocabulary: structuring and classifying concepts by an ontology.

  4. Logic: axioms and monotonic rules.

  5. Proof: to validate assertions

  6. Trust: trustworthiness of the data.

Topic Map Standard and Semantic Web

Topic Maps standard constitutes a proposal similar in purpose but earlier in its roots. This standard was proposed at the beginning of the 1990s. Nowadays the proposal have been updated to recommend XML encoding and other improvements. Although this proposal has lower inference capabilities, it is more intuitive. With the same objective of metadata vocabularies, this standard initially used Public Subject Indicators (PSI).

Related Resources

References

  • BERNERS-LEE, T., FISCHETTI, M. (1999). Weaving the Web: the Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by its Inventor. 1st. San Francisco: Harper.
  • BERNERS-LEE, T., HENDLER, J., LASSILA, O. (2001), “The Semantic Web,” Scientific American. [Online] <http://www.personal.si.umich.edu/~rfrost/courses/SI110/readings/In_Out_and_Beyond/Semantic_Web.pdf> [visited 01/11/2009]
  • BRATT, S. “Semantic Web, and Other Technologies to Watch”. [Online] <http://www.w3.org/2007/Talks/0130-sb-W3CTechSemWeb/#(24)> [visited 01/04/2010]
  • DACONTA, M. C., SMITH, K. T., OBRST, L. J. (2003) The Semantic Web: a Guide to the Future of Xml, Web Services, and Knowledge Management. 1. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
  • KALFOGLOU Y (2007) “Knowledge society arguments revisited in the semantic technologies era”. Int. J. of Knowledge and Learning - Vol. 3, No.2/3 p. 225 – 244
  • MORATO, Jorge, et al. (2008) Hacia una web semánticasocial. El profesional de la información, Enero-febrero, v. 17, n. 1, pp. 78-85.
  • RUSS, M., JONES, J.K., FINEMAN, R. (2006) “Toward a taxonomy of knowledge-based strategies: early findings”. Int. J. Knowledge and Learning, Vol. 2, 1-2: 1-40
  • W3C (2005). Primer: Getting into RDF & Semantic Web using N3. (Online) http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/Primer [visited 01/11/2009]
  • W3C (2006). Extensible Markup Language (XML) [Online] <http://www.w3.org/XML/> [visited 01/11/2009]
  • W3C (2007). Ontologies. [Online] <http://www.w3c.es/Traducciones/es/SW/2005/owlfaq> [visited 01/11/2009]
  • ZENG, M. L. CHAN, L. M. (2004). “Trends and issues in establishing interoperability among knowledge organization systems”. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol., 55(5) (Mar. 2004), 377-395. [Online] <http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.10387> [visited 01/11/2009]


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