The Semantic Web William M Baker

Today’s Topics Current State Of the Web Characteristics Of the Semantic Web Examples Problems Mechanics Interoperation Current State Of the Semantic Web

Current State Of the Web 160 million websites 600 billion documents 56% English 70% in the Deep Web Blogs and Wikis More than reading

Tim Berners-Lee Inventor of the World Wide Web Director of the 3W Consortium Named Greatest Living Genius Inventor of the Semantic Web

Tim Berners-Lee Semantic Web Definition A project designed to create a universal medium for all activity on the World Wide Web The current web is a document web The web of the future will be a data web

Semantic Web Examples Personal Medical Research Financial Managerial

Problems The Accural System

Problems – Language Language To be successful, the semantic web must enable globalization. More and more, countries are fighting the idea of English being the language of the web Moving to a data web may mean that SQL becomes the language of the web

Problems – Security Data security issues will be minimized if users accept the concept that all elements of the data web must be encrypted. Privacy HIPAA Continuum of Care

The Semantic Web

The Necessities XML RDF OWL

The Necessities – XML XML Ξ eXtensible Markup Language Rules for defining elements of documents for storage or for use on the Internet There are thousands of rule sets in XML, including XBRL Two types: Well-formed – conforms with all XML rules Valid – conforms to XML and additional rule sets (that are typically semantic), thus requiring XML Schema

The Necessities – RDF RDF Ξ Resource Description Framework Standardized metadata modeling set Uses triples, in subject-predicate-object form. For example, This presentation has the color orange. Presentation is the subject. Has the color is the predicate. Orange is the object. Useful for both knowledge management and the semantic web.

The Necessities – OWL OWL Ξ Web Ontology Language The family of accepted knowledge representation languages for authoring ontologies An ontology is a model of some set of real-world concepts. In short, ontologies classify nouns, describe their attributes, and outline their interrelationships.

The Necessities – OWL Three versions of OWL are accepted by the W3 Consortium: Owl Lite OWL DL (which includes all of OWL Lite) OWL Full (which includes all of OWL DL) As ontologies build up, their interrelationships are controlled by mediators

Business Applications (via B2B) Web Service Modeling Ontology (Requester) Describes Needs Searches for Services Selects Service Interoperates (Provider) Describes Services Advertises Services Interoperates

Elements of Interoperation Capability Formal description of the functionality of the service (desired and provided) Choreography Interaction style Specifies inputs and outputs Orchestration How the service uses other services

The Required Levels of Interoperability Communication Interoperability All necessary data are precisely defined Syntactic Interoperability Multiple software components can interact regardless of languages, operating systems, and any/all other technological concerns Semantic Interoperability Most important and most difficult to achieve Knowledge-driven ability to overcome differences in perceptions, assumptions, perspectives, and meanings

The Semantic Web – When?

The Semantic Web – When? Using rules, queries, and logic to establish the achievement of all three levels of interoperability results in proof. Proof, combined with encryption (and digital signatures) results in trust. Then, the fun begins…

The Result: E-Commerce Redefined Change will come very quickly Legacy B2B Relationships Long-term Highly Defined Tightly Coupled Modern B2B Relationships Undefined (usually short-) term Casual Complex

Current State Of the Semantic Web Seven to nine million documents Most common RDF Dublin Core (1,500,000 Occurrences) Most Common OWL FOAF (650,000 Occurrences) Resources Semanticweb.org “Business Tools: The Next Quantum Leap” (cover story of Strategic Finance, January, 2010)

It’s All About Revenue EDI & E-Commerce Outsource via Allowance Ads Yahoo BOSS Ads Blogs Facebook