The Semantic Web
The Semantic Web is about two things. It is about common formats for integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources, where on the original Web mainly concentrated on the interchange of documents. It is also about language for recording how the data relates to real world objects. That allows a person, or a machine, to start off in one database, and then move through an unending set of databases which are connected not by wires but by being about the same thing. At its core the semantic web is a vision of information that is understandable by computers, so that they can perform more of the tedious works involved in finding, sharing and combining information on the web.
The semantic web derives from W3C director and ‘Inventor’ of the Internet as we know it, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. His vision of the Web as a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange is driving most of the proposed changes.
I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.
Tim Berners-Lee
At its core, the semantic web comprises a philosophy, a set of design principles, collaborative working groups, and a variety of enabling technologies. Some elements of the semantic web are expressed as prospective future possibilities that have yet to be implemented or realized. Other elements of the semantic web are expressed in formal specifications.
Some of these include Resource Description Framework (RDF), a variety of data interchange formats (e.g. RDF/XML, N3, Turtle, N-Triples), and notations such as RDF Schema (RDFS) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). All of which are intended to provide a formal description of concepts, terms, and relationships within a given knowledge domain.
Any developer should be aware of the proposed changes to the Net’s architecture.
