The Semantic Web: Overview of Strategy and Development at the W3C
Eric
Miller
W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
Semantiske dager 2006 (Norwegian Semantic Days 2006)
Stavanger, Norway
April 26, 2006
Slides
are available at
http://www.w3.org/2006/Talks/0426-semweb-em/
The World Wide Web Consortium
-
International consortium directed by Tim Berners-Lee
- Mission: "Lead the Web to its full potential"
- Hosts: MIT, ERCIM, Keio University
- Defines Web standards: HTML, XML, Web Services, Semantic Web
- W3C track record: building infrastructure to address
technical and social needs of the Web
Semantic Web
-
A Web of Data
-
Framework to facilitate data integration
-
Data reuse across application, organizational, community
boundaries - "recombinant data"
A Problem
Where to stay?
-
Hotel location information on web
-
Meeting location information on desktop
Useful data on the Web
Representation problem
Common representation - RDF
A benefit of common representation
Useful Data on My Web
Another representation problem
30 sec, ical -> RDF conversion later...
A benefit of common representation
Power of Recombinant data
Demonstration (time permitting)
How does it work?
-
Apply power of URIs to concepts of relational data
-
Think 'http://foo.com/color#red' not 'Red' (or
'Rouge' or...)
-
Think 'http://foo.com/pantone#red' isa
'http://foo.com/pantone#Color'
-
Think 'http://foo.com/pantone#Color' sameAs
'http://bar.com/rgb#Color'
-
Model real things, not documents or database tables
Leveraging 'Reuseful' Data
-
Wrapping, Enhancing the Existing Web
-
Exposing data hiding in documents, servers and databases
-
Machine Processible data on the Web
-
Web Evolution not Revolution
Common semantics - e.g. space and time
And ...
-
taking advantage of increasingly available commercial and
open source tools
-
in this particular case,
Simile's Piggy-bank,
Solvent and Dan Connolly's icaltordf.py script
Semantic Web Technologies
Semantic Web Standards
-
Focus is on Web Evolution
-
Web Evolution causing a quiet data revolution
Oracle
"Oracle Database 10g Release 2 is the world's first
mainstream commercial database to provide direct and native
support for Semantic Web technologies from W3C. Oracle has
already enabled many customers in the healthcare, life
sciences and government industries to use semantic
technologies to create exciting new solutions to real-world
problems. Taking advantage of the scalability, security and
availability of the Oracle technology, these new semantic
capabilities are certain to find wide application in
commercial enterprises."
- Ken Jacobs, VP Product Strategy, Oracle.
Vodafone
"The Vodafone Live! service is a 'mobile portal'
which provides a unified user experience and access to
content and servers from a number of providers. Bringing
goods closer to the customer increased sales, and the use
of RDF metadata was a key factor in making this possible.
On the Mobile platform, Semantic Web technologies are
driving user experiences which touch and enrich millions of
people's lives."
- Dan Applequist, Senior Technology Strategist, Vodafone
Group Services Limited
Vodaphone Live Mobile Portal
|
Search application (e.g. ringtone, game, picture)
using RDF
-
better search : page views per download decreased
50%
-
increased revenue : ringtone up 20% in 2 months
Bringing goods closer to customers increased sales
RDF was key factor in making this possible
|
|
Adobe
"As the leading provider of content creation tools to help people communicate better, adding intelligence to media via metadata was integral to our strategy. We developed Adobe XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) based on W3C's RDF, because it provided a flexible and interoperable framework for fostering the capture, preservation, and interchange of metadata across digital media and workflows. The Adobe Creative Suite provides a design platform that enables creative professional to create information rich assets powered by XMP that can be more effectively repurposed and consumed across multiple media and diverse domains."
- David Burkett, Director of Product Management, Adobe Systems
Adobe's XMP
|
Adobe's eXtensible Metadata Platform
(XMP)
RDF/XML cross product metadata toolkit
supporting the creation,
processing, and interchange of document metadata across
publishing workflows
effective
management of digital resources
|
|
Nokia - forum.nokia.com
Opera - my.opera.com
Common Themes
-
No "one schema" that can be used for describing
everything
-
No "right way" for describing / organizing anything
-
Importance of "Partial Understanding"
-
Things change, plan up front for it
-
The value in "as needed" data integration
-
Big wins come from many little ones
-
The power of links - network effect
-
Open-world, open solutions are cost effective
Potential future directions
W3C Member
Draft
Activity Proposal
- Enabling standards
- Deployment
- Education
- Community
Theme: Web Data (creating, exposing, managing, processing)
Data Access Working Group
-
RDF query language and protocol (SPARQL)
-
"Joining the web"
-
example DAWG
Shows
Rule Interchange Format Working Group
GRDDL
-
Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages
(
GRDDL)
-
mechanism to relate other XML syntaxes (especially XHTML
dialects or "microformats") to the RDF abstract syntax
via transformations
-
schema annotation
Deployment
-
SKOS - Simple Knowledge Organization Schema (thesauri,
etc.)
-
Vocabulary management
-
Ontology engineering principals and practice
-
RDF/A - human readable and machine processible web pages
Education and Outreach
-
develop strategies and materials to increase awareness
among the Web community of the need and benefit for the
Semantic Web
-
educate the Web community regarding related solutions and
technologies
-
business cases, educational resources, etc.
-
organize meetings (e.g. CIO/CTO Symposium)
Conclusions
- The Semantic Web is here
- More work is still needed
- You can help!
More Information
-
Slides
are available at
http://www.w3.org/2006/Talks/0426-semweb-em/
-
W3C - http://www.w3.org/
-
Semantic Web Home
Page - http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/
-
Me - Eric
Miller, em@w3.org
