OntoWeb: A Key Enabler for E-Commerce & Knowledge Management Networks Liaison Meeting Barcelona, February Valentina Tamma University of Liverpool, UK

OntoWeb Project name: OntoWeb: Ontology-based information exchange for knowledge management and electronic commerce Funding Agent: European Union IST Duration: 3 years: June 2001 to May 2004 Budget: 1.8 M €uro Contract number: IST Homepage: Mailing list:

Main Goals  Producing an overview of current research and development activities and an outline of main technical and scientific issues to be addressed in the near future in the form of a technical roadmap;  Demonstrating to industry how ontologies can be applied to particular problems in Knowledge Management, Enterprise Integration, and Electronic Commerce, and identifying problems in industry that can be addressed in scientific research;  Maintaining and extending information services for scientists, practitioners and students. Information services concern: scientific events and developments, courses, companies, and research institutions, material for research such as software and benchmarking problems;  Improving the co-operation with related scientific fields such as Software Agents, Web standards, Knowledge Engineering, Knowledge Representation, Information systems and database integration, and Information Retrieval;

Semantic Web Ontology Knowledge Management E-Commerce

Semantic Web – the full potential Web New & Next generation of the WebNew & Next generation of the Web: –Providing automated services based on machine- processable semantics of data, reasoning techniques and heuristics that make use of these data; –Interweaving computers and human beings;

Ontologies – Consensual Understanding The key asset for the Semantic Web –Ontologies: shared and common domain theories; –They describe the semantics of a domain in a human- understandable and computer-processable way –A crucial role to enable content-based access, interoperability, and communication across the Web; Semantic Web = Knowledge Web

Knowledge Management Semantic Web & Ontologies Semantic Web & Ontologies:  Turning information into useful knowledge;  Harness corporate knowledge assets (maintaining and finding the right information for companies at the right time and right place);  Secure company competition (efficiently release and reuse of knowledge);  Improve the understanding and smoothing the changing contextual knowledge;  Foster collaboration by capturing, representing and interpreting the knowledge resources of their organisations; Current status Current status: Company Intranet: Intellectual asset; Large information sources not well organised; Poor service (searching and analysing);

Semantic Web & Ontologies:  Enable content-based access, interoperability, integration information and communication.  Facilitate finding, interrogating and exchanging knowledge for B2B and B2C E-Commerce.  Smooth the B2B or B2C marketplace friction (content standard initiatives).  Renovate the traditional business intelligence. Current status Current status: Competitiveness of companies depends on the products and services they offer; The ability to find, query and exchange knowledge is fundamental for B2B and B2C e-Commerce; Supplier and providers want to reach different customers, while customers want a large range of products at lower price;

Ontologies and agents in the Semantic Web Using a combination of web pointers, web markup, and ontology languages, service descriptions can be enriched by including a machine-readable description of how the service runs and some explicit logic describing the consequences of using the service. Web services ability to extend programs to more efficiently perform tasks for users with less human intervention. Service descriptions + Service logics = Ontologies & Agents Integrating ontologies & agents

OntoWeb: THE Thematic Network for Semantic Web The focal point for bringing together activities in the area of ontology-based methods and tools for the Semantic Web; Improve information exchange in different areas (information retrieval, knowledge management, electronic commerce, language engineering, artificial intelligence and bioinformatics); Strengthen the European influence on standardisation efforts in web languages, upper- layer ontologies, and content standards of electronic commerce;

OntoWeb: Thematic Network for Semantic Web - Partners Coordinator Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam Academic members: –universities and research institutes (50) Industrial members: –large, medium, and small size companies (30)

What can OntoWeb provide Vision and outline the current status of ontology- related fields; Provide strategic guide to industrial and commercial applications; Promote the standardisation development; Disseminate and exchange knowledge; Organise workshops and Special Interest Groups (SIGs); Establish a link with related efforts, such as Agentcities and AgentLink (Ontoweb Liason task force);

OntoWeb: Thematic Network for Semantic Web - Special Interest Groups Special Interest Group –Content Standards (SIG1): Cooperate with current initiatives related to ontology-based content standardisation, develop a framework for characterising and comparing content standardisation efforts; –Ontology Language Standards (SIG2): Cooperate with related initiatives (DAML) and standardisation efforts and working groups (W3C ontology language standardisation processes) ; –Enterprise-Standard Ontology Environments (SIG3): Stimulate discussions on the development of Quality Requirements for enterprise-standard ontology environments, provide an open forum to promote synergy and cooperation between the ontology technology providers and industrial ontology users; –Industrial Applications (SIG4): Provide the open forum to bridge the gap between potential ontology-related research and the current electronic commerce market, for instance, B2C, B2B; –Language Technology in Ontology Development and Use (SIG 5): Promote connections between language technologies and ontologies;

Special Interest Group (SIG1) Content Standards Chairs: Nicola Guarino (LADSEB-CNR, Italy) Mission: –Cooperate with current initiatives related to ontology-based content standardisation; –Develop a framework for characterising and comparing content standardisation efforts, –Push the current standardisation initiatives towards well- defined ontology-based harmonisation goals –Promote the research on foundational aspects of ontology development and –Stimulate the transfer of research on ontology development from academia to industry. Working Groups: –Foundational Ontologies (upper-level, generic ontology) –Product Classification Standards (OntoWeb & UCEC) –Cultural Repositories Standards (OntoWeb & DELOS)

Special Interest Group (SIG2) Language Standardisation Chairs: –Ian Horrocks (University of Manchester, UK) –Frank van Harmelen (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) Mission: –Cooperate with related initiatives (DAML) and standardisation efforts and working groups (W3C ontology language standardisation processes). –Promote additional links with other projects –Disseminate the results and transfer the research and needs between academia and industry. –Provide a forum for cooperation in the development of language extensions and the initiation of further standardization efforts.

Special Interest Group (SIG3) Enterprise-Standard Ontology Environments Chairs: –Asun Gomez-Perez (University of Madrid, Spain) –Mike Brown (SemanticEdge, Germany) Mission: –Stimulate discussions on the development of Quality Requirements for enterprise-standard ontology environments; –Steer the efficient application of ontology technology in modern enterprises’ information technology systems; –Provide an open forum to promote synergy and cooperation between the ontology technology providers and industrial ontology users;

Special Interest Group (SIG4) Industrial Applications Chair: Hans Akkermans (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands) Mission: –Provide the open forum to bridge the gap between potential ontology-related research and the current electronic commerce market, for instance, B2C, B2B. Working Groups: –Knowledge Management + Business Intelligence –Web services integration –Product classification

Special Interest Group (SIG5) Language Technology in Ontology Development and Use Chair: Paul Buitelaar, Thierry Declerck, Gunter Neumann, (DFKI-Language Technology, Germany) Motivations: –Promote connections between language technologies and ontologies; –Provide a platform for cooperation and standards;

Main Workpackages Technical Roadmap of semantic web technologies; Industrial and Commercial Guidelines for the application of semantic web technologies to practical problems; Content Standardisation to promote the development of ontology-based metadata standards and content harmonisation/interoperability across different standards; Web-Language Standardisation to identify requirements for ontology languages and produce recommendations for ontology language standardisation; Promoting world-wide collaboration to encourage the world-wide collaboration on standardisation, development and applications; Web portal to be treated as the testbed where the technical possibilities of ontologies and semantic web are put into practice for the community itself; Organisation of Workshops and Seminars to achieve the goal of the network; Semantic web education to manage, co-ordinate and initiate educational initiatives related to Semantic Web;

OntoWeb Homepage: Mailing list: