www.boxuk.com

© 2005 Box UK Ltd. All rights Reserved.Box UK, The Box UK logo, Amaxus and the Amaxus logo are trademarks of Box UK Ltd.

Other company product and service names may be trademarks of others.

INTERNET DEVELOPMENT & CONSULTANCY

Daniel Zambonini, Box UK

British Computer Society

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web – What is it?

Data about things, That anyone can create, For computer consumption

“…technologies for enabling machines to make more sense of the Web… …making the Web more useful for humans”

Edd Dumbill, xml.com

“…technologies for enabling machines to make more sense of the Web… …making the Web more useful for humans”

Edd Dumbill, xml.com

“…moving from a Web of Documents to a Web of Data”

Eric Miller, W3C

“…moving from a Web of Documents to a Web of Data”

Eric Miller, W3C

“The bane of my existence is doing things that I know the computer could do for me”

Dan Connolly, W3C

“The bane of my existence is doing things that I know the computer could do for me”

Dan Connolly, W3C

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web – Technologies – The XML Factor

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web – Technologies – The XML Factor

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web – Technologies – The XML Factor

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web – Technologies – Now for the Science Bit

Unicode > XML > RDF > OWL > Logic > ...

The RDF Model, or “Statement”, or “Assertion”, or “Triple”, or...

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web – Technologies – Now for the Science Bit

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web – The Disagreement

Argument

• People don't want to create metadata

• Metadata is often low quality and open to abuse

• It just won't work!

Counter-Argument (condensed)

• They don't have to!

• Yes, but no!

• Look, it does!

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web - Today

100+ Major Semantic Web applications, covering:

Catalogue/Thesaurus Management

Data Integration

Knowledge Management

Annotation & Enrichment

Discovery & Selection

Media & Content Metadata

Personal Information Management

Semantic Indexing

Knowledge Creation

Syndication

MozillaEARL Annotea

Edutella

XMP

MusicBrainz

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web - Today

RDF

Site A

RDF

Site C

RDF

Site BRDF

Site D

RDF

Site E

REST, not SOAP

Portal

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web - Today

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web - Today

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web - Today

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web - Today

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web - Today

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web - Today

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web - Tomorrow

Logic, Inference

Web of Trust

www.boxuk.com

Semantic Web - Tomorrow

www.boxuk.com

Conclusion

Technology and Data exists

Simple fundamental technology

Some potential problems, main problem = misunderstood

Big possibilities, big opportunities

“I do expect there to be a serious first mover advantage when it comes to being Semantic Web compatible in software products”

Sir Tim Berners Lee, W3C