Introduction To Semantic

Web
Princess Nora University
Net535
Overview
 What is the Semantic Web?
 Background
 Components of the Semantic Web
 Why the Semantic Web is needed
 Uses of the Semantic Web
 Implementing the Semantic Web
 Examples
 Conclusion
Web of Today
 As we know today web is linked many documents
made with computer but is intended to humans
understanding only !!!

 Even though the web documents are made with

computers, computers can NOT understand the
content of these documents. They can't read, see
relationships or make decisions like human can. !!!

 Most of the Search Engines are based on keywords

which return not accurate and precise results !!!
 What is the Semantic Web?

The Semantic Web is "an extended web of

machine-readable information and
automated services that amplify the Web
far beyond current capabilities" (Daconta et
al., 2003)
 A framework that:
◦ Adds meaning to data
◦ Provides a mechanism for organizing, interpreting,
and making use of that meaning
 Semantic Web
Semantic means the study of the meaning

 “The Semantic Web is a major research initiative of the World

Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to create a metadata-rich Web
of resources that can describe themselves not only by how
they should be displayed (HTML) or syntactically (XML), but
also by the meaning of the metadata.”

W3C Semantic Web Page

 An enhancement to the current Web, not a replacement
 “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.”
The Semantic Web, Scientific American, May 2001 by Tim Berners-Lee
et al
Semantic Web Cont’d
 The term “Semantic Web” refers to W3C’s
vision of the Web of linked data. Semantic
Web technologies enable people to create
data stores on the Web, build vocabularies,
and write rules for handling data. Linked data
are empowered by technologies such as RDF,
SPARQL, OWL, and SKOS.
So Semantic Web
 It is a vision for the future Web (a web of meaning — semantics);
originally defined by Tim Berners-Lee (aka father of the Web).

 It is not a separate web, but an extension of the current one.

 It provides a way for machines to get much better at being able

to process and understand the data that they merely display at
present.

 It is a web on which machine reasoning can become ubiquitous

and powerful.

 It describes an emerging set of standards, markup languages,

and related processing tools.
Background
 1968 – Internet used as a communications
network by DOD
 1989 – Tim Berners-Lee (and others) at CERN
develop HTML
 Early 1990s – Web browsers created to
interpret HTML
 1996 – XML developed
 1990s+ – Tim Berners-Lee & W3C continue to
pursue development the Semantic Web
Example
 Why Semantic web cont’d .
 The agent would do this not by looking at pictures and reading
descriptions like a person does, but by searching through
metadata that clearly identify and define what the agent needs to
know.

 Metadata are simply machine-readable data that describe other data.

 In the Semantic Web, metadata are invisible as people read the page,
but they're clearly visible to computers.

 Metadata can also allow more complex, focused Web searches with
more accurate results. To paraphrase Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of
the World Wide Web, these tools will let the Web -- currently similar
to a giant book become a giant database.
 Why the Semantic Web is Needed

 The current Web remains largely unstructured

(e.g., company)

 Large amounts of information remain

unavailable
 Semantic Web Purpose
 Wikipedia describes the purpose of the Semantic Web as follows:

Humans are capable of using the Web to carry out tasks such as
finding the Arabic word for “cat”, reserving a library book, and
searching for a low price on a DVD.

However, a computer cannot accomplish the same tasks without

human direction because web pages are designed to be read by
people, not machines.

The semantic web is a vision of information that is

understandable by computers, so that they can perform more of
the tedious work involved in finding, sharing and combining
information on the web.
 Components of the Semantic Web
 Four major components:

1. XML )eXtensible Markup Language)

XML is a markup language likehypertext

markup language (HTML), which you're probably
somewhat familiar with from surfing the Web. HTML
governs the appearance of the information you look
at on the Web. XML complements (but does not
replace) HTML by adding tags that describe data.
These tags are invisible to the people who read the
document but visible to computers.
Components of the Semantic
Web(cont’d)
2. Resource Description Framework (RDF)

RDF does exactly what its name indicates -- using XML

tags, it provides a framework to describeresources. In
RDF terms, pretty much everything in the world is a
resource. This framework pairs the resource (any noun,
like Anakin Skywalker or the "Star Wars" trilogy) with a
specific item or location on the Web so the computer
knows exactly what the resource is. Clearly identifying
resources keeps the computer from doing things like
confusing Anakin Skywalker with Sebastian Shaw or
Hayden Christiansen, or the original trilogy with the 
One-Man "Star Wars" Trilogy.
Components of the Semantic
Web(cont’d)
3.Ontologies

 There are two related tools for helping a

computer understand human vocabulary. An
ontology is simply a vocabulary that describes
objects and how they relate to one another.
 A schema is a method for organizing
information.
4. Agents  read all the metadata found at different sites.
Tying it All Together

 In our original example, we talked about buying "Star Wars" DVDs

online. Here's how the Semantic Web could make the whole process
easier:
 Each site would have text and pictures (for people to read) and
metadata (for computers to read) describing the DVDs available for
purchase on their site.
 The metadata, using RDF and XML tags, would make all the attributes
of the DVDs (like condition and price) machine-readable.
 When necessary, businesses would use ontologies to give the
computer the vocabulary needed to describe all of these objects and
their attributes. The shopping sites could all use the same ontologies,
so all of the metadata would be in a common language.
 Each site selling the DVDs would also use appropriate security and
encryption measures to protect customers' information.
 Computerized applications or agents would read all the metadata
found at different sites. The applications could also compare
information, verifying that the sources were accurate and trustworthy.
Semantic Web Technologies
 Semantic Web data is represented using a
technology standard called Resource
Description Framework (RDF).

 RDF is a graph (web-like) structure that links

data elements together in a self-describing
way
Supplemental Components of the
Semantic Web
 Supplemental components
◦ Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs)
◦ Web services
◦ Inference rules
◦ Service discovery
◦ Semantic aware applications
◦ Security and trust
◦ XML and RDF schemas
Semantic Web technology stack as a
framework (the Semantic Web layer
cake)
Semantic Web Foundations
 URI/IRI: URI is an acronym for Uniform Resource Identifier; a
compact string of characters used to identify or name a resource.
The URL to a web site (e.g. http://www.semanticfocus.com) is a
popular example of a URI. IRI is an acronym for
Internationalized Resource Identifier which is a form of URI that uses
characters beyond ASCII, thus becoming more useful in an
international context.

 Unicode :Unicode is the universal standard encoding system and

provides a unified system for representing textual data. 1 million
characters can be encoded to specify any character in any language
without a single escape sequence or control code. Before Unicode,
there were several different encoding systems which made
communication and integration across borders a big pain.
(semanticfocus.com)
Semantic Web Foundations Cont’d
 XML: XML is an acronym for Extensible Markup Language.
With XML, we have a standard way to compose information
so that it can be more easily shared. At the same time, it still
affords the freedom to structure that information however
the heck we want. It's kind of like HTML - only, you get to
make up your own tags and attributes. How cool is that?

 Namespaces: Namespaces (aka XML Namespaces) are

integral to XML. Namespaces provide a means to qualify the
tags and attributes in an XML document with URIs which then
makes them truly unique on the Web and thus, universal
(among other things). (semanticfocus.com)
Semantic Web Foundations Cont’d
 XML Schema XML Schema describes the structure of XML documents
just like DTDs, only better. An XML Schema is known as an XML
Schema Definition (XSD). Basically, if you're going to use XML to
invent your own document structures, XSD provides the way to
define your rules (like guidelines) so that people and machines can
understand them, adhere to them, and integrate with them. XML

 Query XML Query (aka XQuery) is a standardized language for

combining documents, databases, Web pages and almost anything
else. It is very widely implemented, powerful, and easy to learn.
XQuery is replacing proprietary middleware languages and Web
Application development languages. XQuery is replacing complex
Java or C++ programs with a few lines of code. (semanticfocus.com)
Semantic Web Foundations Cont’d
 RDF is a common framework for describing resources.
 It is primarily intended to represent metadata that can be
parsed and processed by machines rather than just
displayed to people. While the resources it describes may
be content or services that exist on the Web, they don't
have to be; they can be real-world objects like you and I.
Anything with identity can be described in RDF and, in this
sense, RDF is a good candidate for recording and sharing
knowledge on the Web

 With RDF, we can model information by describing

concepts in a way that is consistent enough for machines
to process uniformly. (semanticfocus.com)
Semantic Web Foundations Cont’d
 Ontology formally represents knowledge as a set of
concepts within a domain, and the relationships among
those concepts. It can be used to reason about the
entities within that domain and may be used to describe
the domain.

 In theory, an ontology is a "formal, explicit specification

of a shared conceptualization".[1] An ontology renders
shared vocabulary and taxonomy which models a
domain with the definition of objects and/or concepts
and their properties and relations (wikipedia.org)
Ontologies

“the common words and concepts (the

meaning) used to describe and represent
an area of knowledge" (Daconta et al.,
2003)
Provide the repositories for meaning
interpretations
 Provide a mechanism for defining the

relationship among different words and for

the Semantic Web, relationships among
different resources
Ontologies (cont)
 Consist of:
◦ Taxonomies
 “An organized set of terms.” (McComb, 2004)
 A classification and a tree (Daconta et al., 2003)
 Hierarchal, tree-like structures similar to
organizational charts
 Example
◦ Sets of inference rules
 Used to organize semantics

Next
Taxonomy Example

Back
Agents

 Also known as software agents

 Provide automation services
 Should not be designed to replace humans or

to make decisions
 Examples: Web spiders and crawlers
Agent (Cont)
 scenario illustrates functionalities that can be
implemented based on Semantic Web
technologies
Supplemental Components of the
Semantic Web
 Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs)
◦ Provide a mechanism for identifying available
resources
◦ The super-set of URNs, URLs and URCs
 Web services
◦ Allow computer applications to communicate directly
with each other over the Internet
 Inference rules
◦ Define the relationships and rules between data
Supplemental Components of the
Semantic Web (cont)
 Service discovery
◦ Allows applications to find ontologies and agents
 Semantic aware applications
◦ Applications that can make use of semantic
information
 Security and trust
 XML schema
◦ Define the structure of XML documents
◦ Standardizes the communication between systems
 RDF schema or OWL
◦ Can be used to define the language used in
ontologies and RDFs
Uses of the Semantic Web

 Improve e-business processes

 Improve business-to-business (B2B)
communication
 “assist human users in their day-to-day online
activities” (Antoniou & van Harmelen, 2004)
 “build knowledge and understanding from raw
data” (Daconta et al., 2003)
◦ Improve knowledge management
◦ Improve information retrieval
◦ Automate tasking
◦ Integrate data
◦ Maximize customer value and profits
Implementing the Semantic Web

 Convert data to XML format according to

defined XML schemas

 Expose applications as Web services

 Build ontologies that specify semantic

meanings and the relationships between data

 Create agents that make use of the semantic

data, automate search processes, and
automate other business processes
Issues Concerned with Implementing
the Semantic Web
 Cost
 Security
 Nonstandard technology issues
 Semantic precision
Examples
 http://www.foaf-project.org/
 http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~hendler/
 http://www.mindswap.org/
 http://www.daml.ri.cmu.edu/
 http://www.semanticwebsearch.com/query/