Skip to contents |
W3C Technology and Society Domain | Semantic Web home

Semantic Web Activity Statement

The goal of the Semantic Web initiative is as broad as that of the Web: to create a universal medium for the exchange of data. It is envisaged to smoothly interconnect personal information management, enterprise application integration, and the global sharing of commercial, scientific and cultural data. Facilities to put machine-understandable data on the Web are quickly becoming a high priority for many organizations, individuals and communities.

The Web can reach its full potential only if it becomes a place where data can be shared and processed by automated tools as well as by people. For the Web to scale, tomorrow's programs must be able to share and process data even when these programs have been designed totally independently. The Semantic Web Activity is an initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) designed to provide a leadership role in defining this Web. The Activity develops open specifications for those technologies that are ready for large scale deployment, and identifies, through open source advanced development, the infrastructure components that will be necessary to scale in the Web in the future.

The principal technologies of the Semantic Web fit into a set of layered specifications. The current components are the Resource Description Framework (RDF) Core Model, the RDF Schema language, the Web Ontology language (OWL), and the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS). Building on these core components is a standardized query language, SPARQL (pronounced "sparkle"), enabling querying decentralized collections of RDF data. The POWDER recommendations provide technologies to find resource descriptions for specific resources on the Web; descriptions which can be “joined” to other RDF data. The GRDDL and RDFa Recommendations aim at creating bridges between the RDF model and various XML formats, like XHTML. RDFa also plays an important role as a format to add Structured Data to HTML, i.e., as a means to help using Linked Data in Web Applications. The goal of the R2RML language is to provide standard language to map relational data and relational database schemas to RDF and OWL. Finally, the goal of the newly proposed Linked Data Profile Working Group is to provide a “entry level” layer to manage Linked Data file using RESTful, HTTP based API.

Highlights Since the Previous Advisory Committee Meeting

The RDF Working Group has begun its work in February 2011; its charter has been extended until the 31st of December 2013. The The mission of the group is to update the 2004 version of the Resource Description Framework (RDF) Recommendation. The group has published a Candidate Recommendation for the “Turtle—Terse RDF Triple Language” in February, and an updated version of the “RDF 1.1 Concepts and Abstract Syntax”. in January 2013. The group has also published a Last Call Working Drafft for the “JSON-LD Syntax 1.0”; this document was originally developed by a separate “JSON for Linking Data” Community Group and has now been incorporated into the Recommendation track document of the RDF Working Group (JSON based serialization of RDF is part of the group’s charter). A First Public Working draft has also published for RDF 1.1 Semantics and for TriG, as well as two WG Notes (N-Triples and N-Quads), all in April 2013.

The SPARQL Working Group has published SPARQL 1.1 as a Recommendation in March 2013. The working Group is now closed.

With the publication of the XSD 1.1 Datatypes Recommendation two pending actions could be completed. The OWL Working Group has published a second edition for the OWL 2 Recommendation and the RIF Working Group has published a second edition for the RIF Recommendation. In both cases the issue was to make normative references to the new datatype document. Both Working Groups are now closed.

The RDFa Working Group has published the a Last Call Working Draft for HTML+RDFa 1.1. The working group plans to move to Proposed Recommendation soon, pending some issue related to dependencies on HTML5.

The Web Schemas Task Force, under the control of the Semantic Web Interest Group, continues its activity; it has become the major public discussion forum for the evolution of schema.org vocabularies, and we envisage keeping this task force open for the coming period.

The Provenance Working Group has begun its work in April 2011. The mission of the Provenance Working Group is to support the widespread publication and use of provenance information of Web documents, data, and resources. The Working Group has published the PROV family of documents and W3C Recommendation. The plan is to close the group in May 2013.

The Linked Data Platform Working Group has begun its operation in June 2012. The goal of this group is to define an “entry level” set of RESful APIs to develop simpler Linked Data Applications that may include large scale Enterprise Integration or Web Applications based on Linked Data. The Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft for the Linked Data Platform 1.0 document.

The Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group (HCLSIG) continues to be a primary forum for experts in this area, considering Semantic Web technologies for the management of biomedical data.

Upcoming Activity Highlights

The coming period should see the publication of the HTML5+RDFa 1.1 Recommendation. The activity has started developing a longer term strategy considering other areas of importance. This may include outreach into areas beyond the core technology stack of W3C.

Summary of Activity Structure:

GroupChairTeam ContactCharter
RDFa Working Group
(participants)
Manu SpornyIvan HermanChartered until 30 September 2013
Semantic Web Coordination Group
(participants)
Ivan HermanIvan HermanChartered until 28 February 2013
Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest GroupCharles Mead, Vijay BulusuEric Prud'hommeauxChartered until 31 August 2014
Semantic Web Interest GroupDan BrickleyIvan HermanChartered until 28 February 2013
RDF Working Group
(participants)
David Wood, Guus SchreiberSandro Hawke, Ivan HermanChartered until 31 December 2013
Provenance Working Group
(participants)
Luc Moreau, Paul GrothIvan HermanChartered until 30 September 2013
Linked Data Platform (LDP) Working Group
(participants)
Arnaud Le HorsEric Prud'hommeaux, Yves LafonChartered until 1 June 2014

This Activity Statement was prepared for TPAC 2012 per section 5 of the W3C Process Document. Generated from group data.

Ivan Herman, Semantic Web Activity Lead

$Id: Activity.html,v 1.414 2011/09/09 01:35:33 ijacobs Exp $
Valid XHTML 1.0!