Semantic Web

Date: 11.07.2008
Lectures 1 & 2

1
The Context

2
 Semantics & Communication
Things, Symbols & Concepts
• Humans require words (or at least symbols) to communicate
efficiently. The mapping of words to things is only indirectly
possible. We do it by creating symbols that stand for things.

• The relation between symbols and things has been described in the
form of the meaning triangle:

Concept

“Jaguar“
[Ogden, Richards, 1923]

3
 The problem
• With the increasing complexity of our systems and our IT needs,
we need to go to human level interaction
• We need to maximize the amount of Semantics we can utilize
• From data and information level, we need to go to human
semantic level interaction
DATA Information Knowledge
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Noise Human Meaning

• And represented semantics means multiply represented

semantics, requiring semantic integration
4
5
 Dimensions of Interoperability &
Integration
Our interest lies here
i t y Community
bil
r a
p e Enterprise
ero
n t System
o fI
l s Application
v e
Le Component
6
Object

Data
3 Kinds of Integration
0% 100%
Interoperability Scale
6
 Semantic Integration Implies Semantic
Composition Complex Semantic Model, Knowledge,
System Integration & Composition

Unification of complex networks of graph

Structures, with complex reasoning, complex
Semantic Web ontologies:

 

Simple Semantic Model, Knowledge

Integration & Composition
Unification of tree or graph structures,
with reasoning, simple Semantic Web
ontologies:


Simple Syntactic Object Integration

2010
& Composition 2005
Alignment of embedded interface
definition language statements mapping
two CORBA, Javabean objects
1998

Simple Procedure Integration &

Composition
Concatenation, alignment of calling
Procedure with called procedure: 1960
Caller: Do_this (integer: 5, string: “sales”) - signifies the composition operation
Called: Do_this (integer: X, string: Y) 7
The Semantics of “Semantics”

8
 Semantics?
(It’s what we do every second of the day.)
• Convert data into something we can
comprehend
• By developing or applying concepts
• Quickly relating them to instances in the world
• Applying and revising our world models
• Sharing our models with others

9
10
 Taxonomies and Vocabularies
• Close
• One hierarchy of terms of concepts
• Permit only one accepted notion of a term

11
•
How do
Generalization
you do semantics?
– organizing concepts by kind
• Aggregation
– Aggregating complexes into simpler concepts
• Common Properties
– Relationships (connecting properties)
– Attributes (flat properties)
• Naming Conventions
– Terms / Phrases
– Language

12
What else do semantics provide?

• Contextual Meaning
• Inferred Relationships
• Causality
• Granularity

13
Context, …

14
 The Problem of Semantic
Ambiguity

context=food context=hardware

Did you say you were looking for mixed nuts?

People use context to derive the correct meaning.

15
 Word Senses footrace
streak
duration
play
test
operate go
tally move fast

has form
scat

A single word maps

To many concepts

“run”
16
Context Of Semantic Web

17
18
Three alternative trends of Web development
Machines, Applications,
Human
devices, services, agents
Communities
Facilitates
computers Machine-to-
Facilitates
Machine
Software-to-
interaction
Software
Facilitates interaction
Human-to-
Human
interaction

19
 Scientific American, May 2001:

• Realising the complete “vision” is too hard for now (probably)

• But we can make a start by adding semantic annotation to
web resources
20
 The Key Problem of Today’s Web
• The meaning of Web content is not machine-
accessible: lack of semantics
• It is simply difficult to distinguish the meaning
between these two sentences:
I am a professor of computer science.
I am a professor of computer science,
you may think. Well, . . .

21
 “The web has made people smarter. We need to
understand how to use it to make machines smarter, too.”

-- Michael I. Jordan, paraphrased

from a talk at AAAI, July 2002
by Michael Jordan (UC Berkeley)

22 22
 “The Semantic Web will globalize KR,
just as the WWW globalize
hypertext”

-- Tim Berners-Lee

23 23
 What is the Semantic Web?
• Web was “invented” by Tim Berners-Lee (amongst others), a
physicist working at CERN
• His vision of the Web was much more ambitious than the reality
of the existing (syntactic) Web:

“… a set of connected applications …

forming a consistent logical web of data …”

“… an extension of the current web in which

information is given well-defined meaning,
better enabling computers and people to work
in cooperation …”

• This vision of the Web has become known as the Semantic Web
24
 Semantic…
• Making web pages machine readable

• Combining information from multiple sources

• Making inferences to find new knowledge

26
 IMHO
• The web is like a universal acid, eating through
and consuming everything it touches.
– Web principles and technologies are equally good for
wireless/pervasive computing.
• The semantic web is our first serious attempt to
provide semantics for XML sublanguages.
• It will provide mechanisms for people and
machines (agents, programs, web services) to
come together.
– In all kinds of networked environments: wired,
wireless, ad hoc, wearable, etc.
27 27
 “Semantic Wave” (Web X.0)

We may add here:

Web 5.0 will come

finally and it is about
connecting models in
a “Global
Understanding
Environment” (GUN),
which will be such
proactive, self-
managed evolutionary
Semantic Web of
Things, People and
Abstractions where all
kinds of entities can
understand, interact,
serve, develop and
“The semantic wave embraces four stages of internet growth: learn from each other.
[Vagan Terziyan]
Web 1.0, was about connecting information ...
Web 2.0 is about connecting people.
Web 3.0, is starting now… and it is about … connecting knowledge…
Web 4.0 will come later … and it is about connecting intelligences in a ubiquitous
web where both people and things can reason and communicate together.”
[“Semantic Wave 2008” , Mills Davis ] 28
Syntactic Web

29
 Motivation for Semantic Web
Web Limitations
Semantic Web
Average WWW searches examine Doubles in size
only about 25% of potentially
relevant sites and return a lot of
every six months The Semantic Web is a
unwanted information vision: the idea of having
data on the Web defined and
linked in a way that it can be
World Wide Web
used by machines not just for
display purposes, but for
automation, integration and
reuse of data across various
Information on web is not suitable applications.
for software agents
4

B e fo re S e m a n tic W e b S e m a n tic W e b S tru c tu re

S e m a n tic
O n to lo g ie s L o g ic al S u p p o rt
A n n o tatio ns
S e m a n tic
W eb

T o o ls A p p lica tio n s /
L a n g u ag e s
S e rv ice s

W W W C re a to rs U se rs
WWW C re a to rs U se rs
an d and
B eyon d W e b c o n te n t W e b c o n te n t
B eyond

7 8
30
Where we are Today: the
Syntactic Web

[Hendler & Miller 02]

31
 Limitations of the Web today

Machine-to-human, not machine-to-machine

34
 Summarizing the Problem:
Computers don’t understand Meaning

• “My mouse is broken. I need a

new one…”

Use of ontology
“My mouse is broken”
vs. “My mouse is dead” 35
36
37
38
39
40
 The Syntactic Web is…
• A hypermedia, a digital library
– A library of documents called (web pages) interconnected
by a hypermedia of links
• A database, an application platform
– A common portal to applications accessible through web
pages, and presenting their results as web pages
• A platform for multimedia
– BBC Radio 4 anywhere in the world! Terminator 3 trailers!
• A naming scheme
– Unique identity for those documents
• A place where computers do the presentation (easy) and
people do the linking and interpreting (hard).
Why not get computers to do more of the hard work?
[Goble 03]
41
Hard Work using the Syntactic Web…
Find images of Peter Patel-Schneider, Frank van Harmelen and Alan
Rector…

Rev. Alan M. Gates, Associate Rector of the

Church of the Holy Spirit, Lake Forest, Illinois

42
Impossible (?) using the Syntactic Web…

• Complex queries involving background knowledge

– Find information about “animals that use sonar but are not either
bats or dolphins” , e.g., Barn Owl
• Locating information in data repositories
– Travel enquiries
– Prices of goods and services
– Results of human genome experiments
• Finding and using “web services”
– Visualise surface interactions between two proteins
• Delegating complex tasks to web “agents”
– Book me a holiday next weekend somewhere warm, not too far
away, and where they speak French or English

43
 What is the Problem?
• Consider a typical web
page: • Markup consists of:
– rendering
information (e.g.,
font size and
colour)
– Hyper-links to
related content
• Semantic content is
accessible to humans
but not (easily) to
computers…

44
 What information can we see…
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Speakers confirmed
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Tim is the well known inventor of the Web, …
Ian Foster
Ian is the pioneer of the Grid, the next generation internet …

45
 Why is this hard?

46 46
after Frank van Harmelen and Jim Hendler
What information can a machine see…

















…


…


…

47
 What a web page looks like to a machine…

And understanding
natural language is
easier than images!

“Webscraping” is
mostly done by hand
crafted rules or rules
generated by
supervised learning

Either way, the rules

can break when the
page structure changes.

48 48
after Frank van Harmelen and Jim Hendle
OK, so HTML is
Could we tell the
not helpful machine what the
different parts of the
text represent?

title
speaker
time
location
abstract
biosketch
host

49 49
after Frank van Harmelen and Jim Hendler
 XML to the rescue?

XML fans propose

<title> </title> creating a XML tag set
<speaker> </speaker> to use for each
<time> </time> application.
<location>
</location>
<abstract> For talks, we can
choose <title>,
<speaker>, etc.
</abstract>
<biosketch>

</biosketch>
<host> </host>
50 50
after Frank van Harmelen and Jim Hendler
 XML  machine accessible meaning

But, to your
machine, the
  tags still look
  like this….
 
 The tag names

 carry no
meaning.

 XML DTDs and

 Schemas have
little or no
semantics.
 
51 51
after Frank van Harmelen and Jim Hendler
Solution: XML markup with “meaningful”
tags?
<name>

</name>
<location>
</location>
<date></date>
<slogan>
</slogan>
<participants>






52
 XML
User definable and domain specific markup
HTML:
<H1>Knowledge
<H1>Knowledge Management</H1>
Management</H1>
<UL>
<UL>
<LI>Manager:
<LI>Manager: John
John Davies
Davies
<LI>Project:
<LI>Project: SEKT
SEKT </UL>
</UL>

XML:
<research-topic>
<research-topic>
<title>Knowledge
<title>Knowledge Management</title>
Management</title>
<manager>John
<manager>John Davies</manager>
Davies</manager>
<project>SEKT</project>
<project>SEKT</project>
</research-topic>
</research-topic>
53
 XML: Document = labelled tree
• node = label + contents
course
<course date=“...”>
<title>...</title>
<teacher>...</teacher>
<name>...</name>= title teacher students

<http>...</http> name http

<students>...</students>
</course>

• DTD: simple grammars to describe legal trees

54
<play>
XML example
<title>The Life and Death of King John</title>
<Dramatis Personae>
<persona>The Earl of PEMBROKE</persona>
<persona>The Earl of ESSEX</persona>
……
</Dramatis Personae>
<Stagedir>SCENE England, the Court.</Stagedir>
<act>Act 1
<scene>Scene I.
<speech>
<speaker>JOHN</speaker>
<line>Now, Chatillon, what would France with us?</line>
</speech>

55
 XML Schemas provide a simple
XML Schema helps mechanism to define shared
vocabularies.
XML Schema file
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<xs:element name="book">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="title" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="author" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="character" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="name" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="friend-of" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0"
maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
<xs:element name="since" type="xs:date"/>
<xs:element name="qualification" type="xs:string"/>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
</xs:sequence>
<xs:attribute name="isbn" type="xs:string"/>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
</xs:schema>

   

   
   
 
 
 

 
 
 
   
56 56
after Frank van Harmelen and Jim Hendle
 But What About…
<conf>

</conf>
<place>
</place>
<date></date>
<slogan></slogan>
<participants>





</participants>
<introduction>



…
</introduction>
<speaker></speaker>
<bio>
…
57
 But there are many schemas
XML Schema file 1 XML Schema file 42
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<xs:element name="book"> <xs:element name="book">
<xs:complexType> <xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence> <xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="title" type="xs:string"/> <xs:element name="title" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="author" type="xs:string"/> <xs:element name="author" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="character" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"> <xs:element name="character" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded">
<xs:complexType> <xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence> <xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="name" type="xs:string"/> <xs:element name="name" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="friend-of" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0" <xs:element name="friend-of" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0"
maxOccurs="unbounded"/> maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
<xs:element name="since" type="xs:date"/> <xs:element name="since" type="xs:date"/>
<xs:element name="qualification" type="xs:string"/> <xs:element name="qualification" type="xs:string"/>
</xs:sequence> </xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType> </xs:complexType>
</xs:element> </xs:element>
</xs:sequence> </xs:sequence>
<xs:attribute name="isbn" type="xs:string"/> <xs:attribute name="isbn" type="xs:string"/>
</xs:complexType> </xs:complexType>
</xs:element> </xs:element>
</xs:schema> </xs:schema>

  <title> </title>

  <speaker> </speaker>
  <time> </time>
 <location>
 </location>
 <abstract>

 </abstract>
 <biosketch>
 </biosketch>
  <host> </host>
59 59
after Frank van Harmelen and Jim Hendler
 There’s no way to relate schema
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<xs:element name="book"> <xs:element name="book">
<xs:complexType> <xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence> <xs:sequence>

XML Schema file 1

<xs:element name="title" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="author" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="character" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded">
XML Schema file 42
<xs:element name="title" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="author" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="character" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded">
<xs:complexType> <xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence> <xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="name" type="xs:string"/> <xs:element name="name" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="friend-of" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0" <xs:element name="friend-of" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0"
maxOccurs="unbounded"/> maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
<xs:element name="since" type="xs:date"/> <xs:element name="since" type="xs:date"/>
<xs:element name="qualification" type="xs:string"/> <xs:element name="qualification" type="xs:string"/>
</xs:sequence> </xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType> </xs:complexType>
</xs:element> </xs:element>
</xs:sequence> </xs:sequence>
<xs:attribute name="isbn" type="xs:string"/> <xs:attribute name="isbn" type="xs:string"/>
</xs:complexType> </xs:complexType>
</xs:element> </xs:element>
</xs:schema> </xs:schema>

  <title> </title>

  <speaker> </speaker>
  <time> </time>
 <location>
 </location>
 <abstract>

 </abstract>
 <biosketch>
 </biosketch>
  <host> </host>
Either manually or automatically.
60 XML Schema is weak on semantics. 60
Need for Semantics

61
 Need to Add “Semantics”
• External agreement on meaning of annotations
– E.g., Dublin Core
• Agree on the meaning of a set of annotation tags
– Problems with this approach
• Inflexible
• Limited number of things can be expressed
• Use Ontologies to specify meaning of annotations
– Ontologies provide a vocabulary of terms
– New terms can be formed by combining existing ones
– Meaning (semantics) of such terms is formally specified
– Can also specify relationships between terms in multiple
ontologies

62
 The Semantic Web - Evolving the Web

• Evolution of the Web to a network of

application-usable information
– open standards from W3C
– open software from many sources
• An open-ended framework for combining and
exploiting information from a wide range of
sources

63
 The Vision

500 million user

more than 3 billion pages

WWW
Static URI, HTML, HTTP

64
 The Vision
Serious Problems in information
•finding
•extracting
•representing
•interpreting
•and maintaining

WWW Semantic Web

Static URI, HTML, HTTP RDF, RDF(S), OWL

Semantics 65
 The Vision

Bringing the computer

back as a device for
Web Services computation
Dynamic UDDI, WSDL, SOAP

WWW Semantic Web

Static URI, HTML, HTTP RDF, RDF(S), OWL

Semantics 66
 The Vision
Bringing the web to its full potential

Web Services Intelligent Web

Dynamic UDDI, WSDL, SOAP
Services

WWW Semantic Web

Static URI, HTML, HTTP RDF, RDF(S), OWL

Semantics 67
 The Vision
 Semantic Web Services have the potential to
become a key-enabling infrastructure for:
 Knowledge Management and eWork
 Enterprise Application Integration
 eCommerce
=> In consequence Semantic Web Services are one of
the key areas of applied computer science.

68
 Origins of the Semantic Web
Tim Berners-Lee’s original 1989
WWW proposal described a web TBL
of relationships among named
objects unifying many info.
management tasks.
Capsule history
• Guha’s MCF (~94)
• XML+MCF=>RDF (~96)
• RDF+OO=>RDFS (~99)
• RDFS+KR=>DAML+OIL (00)
• W3C’s SW activity (01)
• W3C’s OWL (03)
http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html
69
 W3C’s Semantic Web Goals
Focus on machine consumption:

"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." -- Berners-
Lee, Hendler and Lassila, The Semantic Web,
Scientific American, 2001

70 70
 Semantics

As the integration and interoperability increases between

different sectors, the need for semantics also increases as a
mediator between the structure and content of the different
knowledge bases. There will be a need, not just for semantics
to mediate the structure and content, but also for the
services themselves.
The use of semantics is not confined to just the application
sectors. Semantics will also be necessary to compose,
federate and create complex services.
ISTAG-WG8 report, March 2004

71
 Semantic Technology

Semantic technology as a software technology

allows the meaning of information to be known and
processed at execution time. For a semantic
technology there must be a knowledge model of
some part of the world that is used by one or
more applications at execution time.

72
 Semantic Technology
Semantics is the study of meanings. Semantic Technologies
are software technologies that make this meaning more
explicit.
Semantic Technologies represent meanings separately from
data, content, or program code, using the open standards for
the semantic web.
The Semantic Web initiative have recently (February 2004)
anointed RDF and OWL as W3C standards, which is expected
to bring a flood of products based on Semantic Technologies.
“If software is ever going to be able to effectively interoperate
(in ways that were not explicitly preconceived and engineered),
it will be because applications share enough of the semantics
of their data elements”, Doug Lenat, President, Cycorp
73
 Semantic Models

Taxonomy – a simple Ontology – a richer

Semantic Model Semantic Model

Homogeneous “parent- Relationships are

child” relationships explicitly named and
differentiated
75
 Semantic Model
Semantic models are intended as a way for different
agents (applications and/or people) to interoperate
and to share meaning. Unlike object models they describe
the world that is outside of any of the application that uses
the model. Furthermore, the variations and commonalities
semantic models represent are not of a single entity or
stakeholder. By definition semantic models support
multiple viewpoints. This makes them especially suitable
for solving interoperability problems.

76
 Semantic Application Architecture

Typical
Typical Application
Application Architecture
Architecture Semantic Application Architecture

77
 Architecture for Semantic Interoperability

Interoperability is
achieved by using a
common set of
models describing
business concepts and
their relationships

Semantic Interface

Enterprise Resource Planning

Customer Relationships Management Product Data Management

Semantic technology could be used to encapsulate business domain knowledge

used by many applications. This means that the applications would become thinner
as they no longer need to have their own representation of business logic. Instead
they would need to have a way to consult a knowledge model. Such access is
made possible through the use of semantic engines. 78
 Semantics in Social Computing (Mills Davis)
Semantic instant messaging — Use Semantic email — Use semantic technology to
semantic technology for online messages, chat, understand messages. Models & tags people, profiles,
and conference to understand conversations; threads, contents, and addresses; Searches semantically.
keep track of people, topics & history; search by Links messages to other information. Performs actions
concept; act on messages. according to a semantic model.

Semantic blog — Enhance web journal
with machine interpretable annotations
and models & personal ontologies to
harvest, link, and search information of
interest by concepts and relationships.
Semantic desktop and webtop — Use natural
language understanding, ontologies, data space
concepts, and semantic processing to manage every
piece of information a person encounters.

Semantic bookmarking & tag clouds — Associate links Semantic social networks — Web of
to web resources with concepts represented in an external people, content, sites, and profiles that
ontology. Use semantic auto-tagging to Map folksonomy + machines help build, interrelate,
semantic relationships between tags, users, and site resources. communicate with, and enjoy.

Semantic Collaboration — Collaboration
tools enable groups to read, write, edit, and present
information, coordinate their activities, share
information and manage knowledge together.
Semantic collaboration adds a layer of knowledge
representation and meanings that enrich the
collaborative experience and utility of its results.
Semantic wikis — Read-write web site that includes an
underlying model of the knowledge described in its pages.
Features include concept- rather than language-based
searching; richly structured content navigation (multiple
views, perspectives, levels of abstraction); context-specific
visualization and presentation; mining of relationships;
linking with external repositories, feeds, and systems. 79
Semantic Web

80
 Semantic Web
If a scalable way to add semantics to the World Wide Web
(WWW) can be found, the Semantic Web will create a world
where agents, search engines, and other programs can read
semantic markup to decipher the real meaning of a web page.
Semantic Web-aware agents will be able to retrieve computer
readable facts, integrate and reason about those facts, answer
questions, solve problems, and generally bring a new level of
intelligence to the WWW that is unimaginable with today’s
technology.
CyCorp Inc., April 2004

81
 The Semantic Web
• Current Web is a collection of links and resources: machine-readable, not
machine-understandable, semantically-interpretable

• 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.
• T. Berners-Lee, J. Hendler, and O. Lassila. 2001. The Semantic Web. In The
Scientific American, May, 2001,
http://www.scientificamerican.com/2001/0501issue/0501berners-
lee.html

• Languages to support machine-interpretable semantics of Web data, artifacts

• T. Berners-Lee: The Semantic Web & Challenges.
http://www.w3.org/2003/Talks/01-sweb-tbl/slide3-0.html..

• Machines will be able to consume machine-readable information, better enabling

computers and people to work, learn and exchange knowledge more effectively
• Eric Miller, The Semantic Web from the W3C Perspective.
http://www.ercim.org/EU-NSF/semweb/slides/miller-w3/slide4-0.html

82
Semantic Web – the full potential Web

• New & Next generation of the Web:

Web
– Providing automated services based on machine-
processable semantics of data, reasoning
techniques and heuristics that make use of these
data;
– Interweaving computers and human beings;

83
 The Semantic Web Vision

Turning the WWW into a machine

understandable knowledge base
Intelligent
Documents
Agents
Ontologies
Semantic Web
Knowledge
Markup
Databases Applications
84
 The Semantic Stack

OWL Reasoning CD CD

RDFS Classes A Is-a CD

RDF Relationships A hasTrack

B

XML Structures
86
 Semantic Web: Motivation & Features
• Current WWW was built for humans, not for machines
• “Semantic Web” is like a global KB
– (cf. use of the WWW as an infrastructure)
– better security & privacy will allow us to reason about trust,
enabling completely new kinds of services and businesses
– content-with-semantics paves way for the use of software agents
• Hyperlinks with meaning
– agents can navigate the WWW by following semantic links
• What will happen when data comes with semantics?
– data from different sources can be combined
• new, perhaps unforeseen opportunities and functionality will
result
– machines can meaningfully use the WWW and perform tasks on
our behalf (“machine-understandable” content)

87
 Motivation for Semantic Web
Web Limitations
Semantic Web
Average WWW searches examine Doubles in size
only about 25% of potentially
relevant sites and return a lot of
every six months The Semantic Web is a
unwanted information vision: the idea of having
data on the Web defined and
linked in a way that it can be
World Wide Web
used by machines not just for
display purposes, but for
automation, integration and
reuse of data across various
Information on web is not suitable applications.
for software agents
4

B e fo re S e m a n tic W e b S e m a n tic W e b S tru c tu re

S e m a n tic
O n to lo g ie s L o g ic al S u p p o rt
A n n o tatio ns
S e m a n tic
W eb

T o o ls A p p lica tio n s /
L a n g u ag e s
S e rv ice s

W W W C re a to rs U se rs
WWW C re a to rs U se rs
an d and
B eyon d W e b c o n te n t W e b c o n te n t
B eyond

7 8
88
Semantic Web Illustrated

89
Tim Berners-Lee's Vision of Semantic
Web (IJCAI-01)

96
 Semantic Web: New “Users”

C
re
ato
rs U
se
rs
S
eman
tic
We
b a
nd S
ema
nticW e
b applications
B
eyo
nd conten
t
agents

Se
m a
n tic
O
nto
lo
gie
s L
og
ic
alS
upp
ort
A
nno
tations
S
eman
tic
We
b

T
oo
ls A
pp
lic
a tio
ns/
L
an
gua
ges
S
ervic e
s

WW W C
re
ato
rs U
se
rs
a
nd
Be
yon
d W
ebc
onte
nt

97
 Semantic Web: Annotations
C
re
ato
rs U
se
rs
S
eman
tic
We
b a
nd S
ema
nticW e
b applications
B
eyo
nd conte
nt
agents

Se
m a
ntic
O
nto
lo
gie
s L
og
ic
alS
upp
or
t
A
nn
ota
tions
S
eman
tic
We
b
Semantic annotations are
specific sort of metadata,
T
ools A
pp
lic
a tio
ns/
L
an
gua
ges
S
ervic swhich provides information
e
about particular domain
objects, values of their
properties and relationships,
WW W C
re
ato
rs U sers
in a machine-processable,
a
nd formal and standardized way.
Be
yon
d W
ebc
onte
nt

98
 Semantic Web: Ontologies
C
re
ato
rs U
se
rs
S
eman
tic
We
b a
nd S
ema
nticW e
b applications
B
eyo
nd conte
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agents
Ontologies make metadata
Se
m a
ntic interoperable and ready for
O
nto
lo
gie
s L
og
icalS uppor
t
A
nn
ota
tions efficient sharing and reuse. It
S
eman
tic provides shared and common
understanding of a domain, that
We
b can be used both by people and
machines. Ontologies are used as
L
an
gua
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ools App aa
lic form
tio
ns/of agreement-based
Ser vic e
s
knowledge representation about
the world or some part of it and
generally describe: domain
individuals, classes, attributes,
WW W C
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ato
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s
relations and events.
a
nd
Be
yon
d W
ebc
onte
nt

99
 Semantic Web: Rules
C
re
ato
rs U
se
rs
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eman
tic
We
b a
nd S
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b applications
B
eyo
nd conte
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agents

Se
m a
ntic
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nto
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gie
s L
og
ic
alS
upp
or
t
A
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tions
S
eman
tic
We
b Logical support in form of rules is needed to
infer implicit content, metadata and ontologies
from the explicit
Ap plic
a ones.
ti
o n s/ Rules are considered to
L
an
gua
ges Too
ls be a major issue in
Service sthe further development of
the semantic web. On one hand, they can be
used in ontology languages, in conjunction with
or as an alternative to description logics. And on
WW W C
re
ato
rs the other hand, U s
theyers
will act as a means to draw
a
nd inferences, to configure systems, to express
Be
yon
d W
ebc
onten
t constraints, to specify policies, to react to
events/changes, to transform data, to specify
behavior of agents, etc. 100
 Semantic Web: Languages
C
re
ato
rs U
se
rs
S
eman
tic
We
b a
nd S
ema
nticW e
b applications
B
eyo
nd conte
nt
agents

Se
m a
ntic
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s L
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tions
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b
Languages are A needed
pplic
a tio
nsfor
/ machine-processable
L
an
gua
ges T
oolsformal descriptions of: metadata (annotations) like
S
e rvic e
s
e.g. RDF; ontologies like e.g. OWL.; rules like e.g.
RuleML. The challenge is to provide a framework for
specifying the syntax (e.g. XML) and semantics of
WW W C
re
ato
rs U
all of these languagesse
inrs
a uniform and coherent
a
nd way. The strategy is to translate the various
Be
yon
d W
ebc
ontent
languages into a common 'base' language (e.g. CL
or Lbase) providing them with a single coherent
model theory. 101
 Semantic Web: Tools
C
re
ato
rs U
se
rs
S
eman
tic
We
b a
nd S
ema
nticW e
b applications
B
eyo
nd conte
nt
agents

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m a
ntic
O
nto
lo
gie
s L
og
ic
alS
upp
or
t
A
nn
ota
tions
S
eman
tic
We
b User-friendly tools are needed for
metadata manual creation (annotating
content)
A p
p lic
a tio
nor
s/automated generation, for
L
an
gua
ges T
ools
ontology
S ervic e
sengineering and validation,
for knowledge acquisition (rules), for
languages parsing and processing,
etc.
WW W C
re
ato
rs U
se
rs
a
nd
Be
yon
d W
ebc
onte
nt

102
Semantic Web: Applications and Services

C
re
ato
rs U
se
rs
S
eman
tic
We
b a
nd S
ema
nticW e
b applications
B
eyo
nd conte
nt
agents

Se
m a
ntic
O
nto
lo
gie
s L
og
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upp
or
t
A
nn
ota
tions
S
eman
tic
We
b

T
ools A
pp
lic
a tio
ns/
L
an
gua
ges
S
ervic e
s

Utilization of Semantic Web

metadata, ontologies, rules,
WW W C
re
ato
rs U se
languagesrs and tools enables to
a
nd provide scalable Web applications
Be
yon
d W
ebc
onte
nt and Web services for consumers
and enterprises" making the web
'smarter' for people and machines.
103
The Semantic Web

104
105
106
SOFTWARE AGENTS
will be greatly facilitated by
semantic content on the
Web. In the depicted
scenario, Lucy's agent tracks
down a physical therapy
clinic for her mother that
meets a combination of
criteria and has open
appointment times that
mesh with her and her
brother Pete's schedules.
Ontologies that define the
meaning of semantic data
play a key role in enabling
the agent to understand what
is on the Semantic Web,
interact with sites and
employ other automated
services.
107
108
109
110
111
Six Challenges for the Semantic Web

112
 Challenge 1: Availability of Content

• Currently, there is little Semantic Web content

available. There is a need need to create a set of
annotation services (middleware) concerning static
and dynamic web documents, which may include
multimedia, and web services.

113
 Challenge 2: Ontology Availability,
Development and Evolution

• Constructing of kernel ontologies to be used by all

the domains.

• Managing evolution of ontologies and their relation

to already annotated data.

114
 Challenge 3: Scalability of Semantic
Web Content

• Once we have the Semantic Web content, we need to

worry about how to manage it in a scalable manner, that
is, how to organize it, where to store it and how to find
the right content.

115
 Challenge 4: Multilinguality

• Multilinguality plays an increasing role at the level of

ontologies, of annotations and of user interface.

116
 Challenge 5: Visualization

• With the increasing amount of information overload,

intuitive visualization of content will become more and
more important.

117
 Challenge 6: Semantic Web
Language Standardization

• WWW consortium is producing

recommendations on the languages and
technology that will be used in Semantic Web
area.

• In order to advance the state of the art in the

Semantic Web, it is important that such
standards appear fast and will be adopted by the
community.

118
 Ongoing W3C’s Semantic Web Activity
• RDF Data Access Working Group
– RDQL… => SPARQL
• Rules Interchange Working Group
– RuleML => SWRL=> RIF
• Best Practices Working Group
– Vocabulary management, e.g. WordNet
– Thesauri– SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System)
– Image Annotation
– DOAP (Description of a Project)
– Many tutorials and demos
• Semantic Annotations for Web Services Description Language
Working Group
– OWL-S and WSDL-S
– WSDL 2.0

119
The Semantic Web
The Ontology Articulation
Toolkit helps agents to
understand unknown ontologies

120
 Some Professions around Semantic Web

Content creators AI Professionals

Content Logic, Proof

Mobile Computing and Trust
Professionals

Web designers
Ontologies

Agents Annotations

Ontology engineers
Software engineers
121
 Semantic Web: Resource Integration

Semantic
annotation
Shared
ontology

Web resources /
services / DBs / etc. 122
 What else Can be Annotated for
Semantic Web ? External world
resources
Web resources /
services / DBs / etc.

Web users
(profiles, Shared
preferences) ontology

Web agents /
applications

Web access
devices Smart
machines and
123
devices
 Contrasting Semantic and Other Technologies:
Models and their Role
Traditional OO analysis Programming
Program
Requirements Object
Code
Model
Model-Driven Architecture
modeling translation translation
Program
Requirements Analysis Design
Code
Model Model
Knowledge/Rules Engineering
modeling translation
Domain Rules &
Knowledge
Knowledge Knowledge
Model
Semantic Engineering Base
Integration
Rules & Design Semantic
Knowledge Model Application
Base 124
Components Of SW

125
 Pieces of the cake…
• Parts of the Semantic Web:
– A Global naming schema (URI)
– A standard syntax for describing data (RDF)
– A syntax for representing the properties of the
data (RDF Schema)
– A standard means of describing the relationships
between data (OWL)

126
 5
Standards Work
Semantic Web Services OWL-S OWL-L Logic

OWL (Ontology Web Language) Knowledge

RDFS (RDF Schema) Classes

RDF (Resource Description Framework) Assertions (as Triples)

XML (Extensible Markup Language) Structures

• XML was first, RDF and RDFS followed

• OWL 1.0 specification released in February 2004
• UML to OWL mapping is under way
• STEP community is working on OWL interoperability
• Standards based on RDF are on the increase: RSS, FOAF, PRISM

128
 Emerging XML Stack Architecture for the
Semantic Web + Grid + Agents
• Semantic Brokers Agents, Brokers, Policies
• Intelligent Agents
Intelligent Domain Services, Applications
• Advanced Applications
• Use, Intent: Pragmatics
• Trust: Proof + Security + Identity Use, Intent Pragmatic Web
• Reasoning/Proof Methods Trust Security/Identity

• OWL: Ontologies Reasoning/Proof Inference Engine

• RDF Schema: Ontologies Higher Semantics OWL

• RDF: Instances (assertions) Semantics RDF/RDF Schema

• XML Schema: Encodings of Data Elements & Structure XML Schema

Descriptions, Data Types, Local Models
Syntax: Data XML
• XML: Base Documents
• Grid & Semantic Grid: New System Services,
Intelligent QoS Sem-Grid Services Water, LISP? 129
130
131
 Ontology Example
Concept name email
conceptual entity of the domain
student Person research
Property ID field

attribute describing a concept isA – hierarchy

(taxonomy)
Student
Relation attends
Professor

relationship between concepts holds

or properties Lecture

Axiom lecture
no.
topic
coherency description between
Concepts / Properties /
Relations via logical expressions holds(Professor, Lecture) =>
Lecture.topic = Professor.researchField

Instance Ann memberOf student

individual in the domain name = Ann Lee
studentID = 12345
132
 An Ontology level is needed
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

XML <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">

<xs:element name="book">
<xs:complexType> Ontologies add
Ontology
<xs:sequence>

• Structure
<xs:element name="title" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="author" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="character" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded">

256 <xs:complexType>

• Constraints
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="name" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="friend-of" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0"
maxOccurs="unbounded"/>

• mappings
<xs:element name="since" type="xs:date"/>
<xs:element name="qualification" type="xs:string"/>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>

imports </xs:sequence>
<xs:attribute name="isbn" type="xs:string"/>

</xs:schema>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
imports
XML Ontology 1 XML Ontology 42
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<xs:element name="book"> <xs:element name="book">
<xs:complexType> <xs:complexType>

=
<xs:sequence> <xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="title" type="xs:string"/> <xs:element name="title" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="author" type="xs:string"/> <xs:element name="author" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="character" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"> <xs:element name="character" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded">
<xs:complexType> <xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence> <xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="name" type="xs:string"/> <xs:element name="name" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="friend-of" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0" <xs:element name="friend-of" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0"

<>
maxOccurs="unbounded"/> maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
<xs:element name="since" type="xs:date"/> <xs:element name="since" type="xs:date"/>
<xs:element name="qualification" type="xs:string"/> <xs:element name="qualification" type="xs:string"/>
</xs:sequence> </xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType> </xs:complexType>
</xs:element> </xs:element>
</xs:sequence> </xs:sequence>
<xs:attribute name="isbn" type="xs:string"/> <xs:attribute name="isbn" type="xs:string"/>
</xs:complexType> </xs:complexType>
</xs:element> </xs:element>
</xs:schema> </xs:schema>

We need a way to define ontologies in XML

So we can relate them
So machines can understand (to some degree) their meaning
133 133