Definition
The central idea of the Semantic Web initiative is to enrich Web content by machine-processable semantics. The approach is based on the following ideas:
- 1.
Use meta-data (data about data) as semantic annotations
- 2.
Use ontologies to describe knowledge needed to understand collections of Web information. The semantic annotations are linked to such ontologies
- 3.
Use logic-based techniques to process and query collections of meta-data and ontologies
In the current Semantic Web work, two main goals can be distinguished.
Interpretation 1: The Semantic Web as the Web of Data
In the first interpretation, the main aim of the Semantic Web is to enable the integration of structured and semi-structured data sources over the Web. The main recipe is to expose data-sets on the Web enriched with semantic annotations, to use ontologies to express the intended semantics of these data-sets, in order to enable the integration and unexpected re-use of these data.
A typical use case for this...
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Recommended Reading
Antoniou G. and van Harmelen F. A Semantic Web Primer (2nd ed.). MIT Press Cambridge, MA, 2008.
S. and Staab R. (eds.). Studer Handbook on Ontologies (2nd ed.). Springer, New York, 2008.
Berners-Lee T., Hendler J., and Lassila O. The Semantic Web. Sci. Am., 284 (May 2001): 34–43.
REASE. Available at: ubp.l3s.uni-hannover.de/ubp.
The International Semantic Web Conference (http://iswc.semanticweb.org/).
Journal of Web Semantics (www.elsevier.com/locate/websem).
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Antoniou, G., Plexousakis, D. (2009). Semantic Web. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_1320
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_1320
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