W3C and the Semantic Web

Charles McCathieNevile - charles@w3.org

• Who is W3C?
• What do they do?
• What is the Semantic Web?
• What is RDF?
• Why is it interesting?

Who is W3C

• An international consortium

  "leading the Web to its full potential"

• ~400 members

  Companies, universities, governments, associations...

• 67 Staff led by Tim Berners-Lee (creator of the Web)
• Working groups developing technical specifications

What does W3C do?

"Standards" for the Web, in 4 areas

1. Achitecture
2. Interaction
3. Technology and Society
4. Web Accessibility Initiative

Architecture and Interaction

Basic standards for the Web, such as

• (X)HTML, HTTP, URI
• MathML, SVG, SMIL, Xforms, ...
• Internationalisation (i18n), Device Independence
• Web Services protocols
• XML, Xlink, XML Schema, XSLT, ...

Web Accessibility Initiative

Access for all, regardless of disability

• How to make Web pages that work for everyone
• Development of tools and techniques
• Promotion of accessibility
• Review of W3C work to ensure accessibility

Technology and Society

• Security and encryption
• Content selection
• Privacy (P3P)
• Semantic Web (RDF)

Semantic Web?

• Processing the Web with computers

  - not just people reading and following links

• Part of the original vision of the Web
• Using the Web as a database
• Major current development of the Web

  (serious work started mid 1990's)

What is RDF?

Resource Description Framework

• A language for the Semantic Web...
• Written in XML
• Collecting, merging, querying diverse information
• Designed as part of the architecture of the Web

How does it work?

Anyone can say anything about anything...

Can combine like this:

What can it do?

• Merge different "assertions"
• Encode hierarchies and relations

  - a 3rd party can describe 2 independent vocabularies

• Annotate existing Web resources
• Support inferences over partial information

To do things like:

• Using RDF to work with image parts (SVG, wordnet, ...)
• finding relationships between people (foaf)
• W3C news at a a glance (RSS)
• Finding people, organising meetings (many)

To reach the vision:

Information Management: A Proposal,

--Tim Berners-Lee, CERN, March 1989

Why is it interesting?

• Very applicable to bibliographic work

  - a major driver was the library community

• Allows powerful, extensible thesaurus development
• Integrates to the Web, and Web formats, well.
• Working on basic widely available tools

A bibliographic example?

There is a work which has

• titulo (english) "Theory of Relativity"
• creador Albert Einstein
• idioma "Deutsch"
• version lo de Bartleby
• version que tiene
  • formato "film"
  • creator "NCAM"
  • EsUnaAlternativa de la versionBartleby

  ....etc

As a picture?

"James' dream"...

Making it work in the field.

• Who, where, what, when, (why,) says who?
• Look up thesauri in real-time

  - in the language closest to mine...

  • Voice interaction?
  • Pictures?
  • Thesaurus terms?

Using the information...

• Publish direct to secured Web
• Or correct details afterwards (audit trail!!)
• Allowing ongoing monitoring over data collection
  • Discovering multiple identity
  • Finding patterns
  • Checking consequential events

Why do I believe it?

I tried it! To manage an Italian legal case

• Documents and translations
• Witnesses, experts, actors
• Events, dates, locations
• Simple extensible tools

And I am innocent...

Thank you

Questions?

This Presentation (will be)

http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/talks/040603-ecchrd/all

--chaals: charles@w3.org

the rest

• http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe