W3C: World Wide Web Consortium

W3C and the Semantic Web

Daniel Dardailler, W3C Director for Europe.

This presentation at: http://www.w3.org/2002/Talks/11-dd-ist2002/all.htm

W3C?

The International Web Standardization Organization,
creator of HTML, XML, HTTP, Web Services, Semantic Web technologies, etc.

• Mission: Lead the Web to its full potential
• Goals: Interoperability, Universality, Functionalities
• How: Industry driven + Grants,
  Neutral/nonforprofit, consensus based, fast process
  Open participation, open results
• What: Working groups, working drafts, open source reference code
• Who: 450 members, 70 staff, Tim Berners-Lee, MIT/INRIA/Keio

W3C Web Technologies and Activities

• 
  • Hypertext Protocols (HTTP1.1) - with IETF: stable
  • Extensible Markup Language: XML - Core, Schema, Query, Link, XSLT, etc
  • Web Services: SOAP, WSDL, etc
  • Adressing (URL, URI, etc)
  • Document Object Model (DOM)
  • Open source code: Jigsaw Java HTTP server
    
    
• 
  • Hypertext Markup Language:
    XHTML (1.1, Basic, 2.0), HTML4
  • Style Sheets (CSS, XSL)
  • Graphics (PNG, SVG)
  • Math Markup (MathML)
  • Internationalization (I18N)
  • Open source code: Amaya browser/editor
    
    
• 
  • Synchronized Multimedia: SMIL
  • Voice Browser/Multimodal
  • Device Independence/Mobile Access/Television and the Web
  • XForms
    
    
• 
  • Metadata/Content Selection (RDF, Semantic Web)
  • Privacy (P3P)
  • Digital Signature (XSIG), XML Encryption
  • Public Policy, Patents..
    
    
• 
  • Review of Web specifications
  • Accessibility Guidelines for Web Content, Browser, AuthoringTools, XML
  • Accessibility Education & Outreach
  • Tracking R&D projects
    
    
• 
  • Quality Assurance: across the board: better specs for better test suites for better products

  Semantic Web Activity at W3C

  

  Semantic Web Activity at W3C

  • RDF Core Working Group
  • Web Ontology Working Group
  • RDF Interest Group
  • Semantic Web Advanced Development
    - form the basis for widely-deployed Semantic Web infrastructure
    - explore leading edge issues before standardization
  • SWAD-Europe EC Project with DG-INFSO D.5
    30 month, started in May 2002, about 300 pm total, 5 partners
    Architecture, Tools, Application cases

  Semantic Web and Web Services

  • Same goal: make the Web more intelligent
  • Add richness to the data
  • SW: use metadata like RDF that says things about data
  • WS: provide a programmatic interface (API) to the Web data
  • Machine-readable Web: allow for programming the Web

  Public Resources

  • W3C Home Page: http://www.w3.org/
  • W3C Spec (Technical Reports): http://www.w3.org/TR
  • W3C Semantic Web Home page http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/