W3C Semantic Web

Announcements

SPARQL Query Language for RDF, 2005-11-28 The RDF Data Access Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of the SPARQL Query Language for RDF. SPARQL offers developers and end users a way to write and to consume search results across a wide range of information such as personal data, social networks and metadata about digital artifacts like music and images. SPARQL also provides a means of integration over disparate sources.
W3C Group Links Semantic Web With Medical Industry : 2005-11-22 , W3C is pleased to announce the launch of the Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group (HCLSIG). Chaired by Tonya Hongsermeier (Partners Healthcare) and Eric Neumann (Unaffiliated), the group is chartered to improve collaboration, research and development, and innovation adoption in the health care and life science industries. Aiding decision-making in clinical research, Semantic Web technologies will bridge many forms of biological and medical information across institutions. Additional information is availiable on the press release.
Rules Interchange Working Group Launched : 2005-11-07 , W3C is pleased to announce the launch of the Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Working Group. The group is chartered to produce a language for the exchange of rules and their transfer between rule systems. Rules are executable pieces of declarative knowledge, important in managing complex and dynamic operations. Additional information about the Rule Interchange Format, can be found in the press release.
Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) Working Drafts updated : 2005-11-04 , The Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group released updated Working Drafts of the SKOS Core Guide and SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification. The drafts explain how to express classification schemes, thesauruses, subject heading lists, taxonomies, terminologies, glossaries and other types of controlled vocabulary in RDF. Previous SKOS work was supported by the European project SWAD-Europe.
SPARQL Protocol in WSDL 1.1 : 2005-10-25 , The RDF Data Access Working Group has released a First Public Working Draft of the SPARQL Protocol for RDF Using WSDL 1.1. The draft describes the SPARQL protocol for RDF non-normatively in WSDL 1.1. It was written to gain implementation experience using existing Web services toolkits until WSDL 2.0 toolkits become widely available. The group also provides a wiki for code samples.
Simile Release of Piggy-Bank 2.1 : 2005-10-03 , The SIMILE project, a joint project conducted by the W3C, MIT Libraries, and MIT CSAIL has announced the availability of a new major release of Piggy Bank. Piggy Bank is an extension to the Firefox web browser that turns it into Semantic Web application making it easier to manage, organize and share RDF data. Built around its Longwell faceted browser engine, the new Piggy Bank release features greatly improved stability, usability, performance and integration of third-party services (e.g. Google Maps).
RDF Calendar Note published : 2005-09-29 , The W3C Semantic Web Interest Group has release a NOTE on RDF Calendar - an application of the Resource Description Framework to iCalendar Data. This report discusses an effort to apply the Resource Description Framework (RDF) to iCalendar data in order to integrate calendar data with other Semantic Web data such as social networking data, syndicated content, and multimedia meta-data.
Last Call: SPARQL Protocol for RDF : 2005-09-14 , The RDF Data Access Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of the SPARQL Protocol for RDF. The draft describes RDF data access and transmission of RDF queries from clients to processors. The protocol is compatible with the SPARQL query language and is designed to convey queries from other RDF query languages as well. Comments are welcome through 14 October.
Last Call: SPARQL Variable Binding Results XML Format : 2005-08-02 , The RDF Data Access Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of the SPARQL Query Results XML Format. The SPARQL query language (pronounced "sparkle") offers developers and end users a way to write and to consume search results across a wide range of information such as personal data, social networks and metadata about digital artifacts like music and images. SPARQL also provides a means of integration over disparate sources. Comments are welcome through 1 September.

rdf Syndicate this page via RSS 1.0, an RDF vocabulary. Archived news related to the Activity is also available.

Commercial Products

The following is a partial list of commercial products that use W3C Semantic Web technolgies.

Adobe's XMP - "Adobe's Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) is a labeling technology that allows you to embed data about a file, known as metadata, into the file itself. With XMP, desktop applications and back-end publishing systems gain a common method for capturing, sharing, and leveraging this metadata valuable opening the door for more efficient job processing, workflow automation, and rights management, among many other possibilities."
Altova's SemanticWorks - "Altova SemanticWorks 2006 is the ground-breaking visual RDF/OWL editor from the creators of XMLSpy."
Oracle's 10.2 Database - "Oracle Spatial 10g introduces the industry's first open, scalable, secure and reliable RDF management platform. Based on a graph data model, RDF triples are persisted, indexed and queried, similar to other object-relational data types. The Oracle 10g RDF database ensures that application developers benefit from the scalability of Oracle 10g to deploy scalable and secure semantic applications"
Cerebra Server - "Cerebra Server is a technology platform that is used by enterprises to build model-driven applications and highly adaptive information integration infrastructure. Cerebra comes with all of the platform capabilities - such as security, user management, audit, notifications, logging, and user interface services - you would expect from an enterprise-ready server."
Intellidimension's RDF Gateway and InferEd - "RDF Gateway is a platform for the development and deployment of Semantic Web applications. InferEd is a powerful authoring environment that gives you the ability to navigate and edit RDF (Resource Description Framework) documents"
Aduna's Metadata Server - "The Aduna Metadata Server automatically extracts metadata from information sources, like a file server, an intranet or public web sites. The Aduna Metadata Server is a powerful and scalable store for metadata."
Northrop Grumman's Tucana Suite = "With Tucana's Knowledge Discovery Suite at the core of your Enterprise Information Integration (EII) strategy you bring all the power of enterprise knowledge together and put it in the hands of your engineers, scientists, bankers, salespeople or managers."
Siderean's Seamark Navigator - "The Seamark Navigation Server provides a powerful view of all the information in your enterprise to your users or customers. Web search pages can be combined with product catalog databases, document servers, and other digital information from both inside and outside the enterprise."
Profium's Semantic Information Router (SIR) - "Reusability of information is often limited by a mixture of different formats and protocols. Profium SIR supports standardized metadata which improves information reusability and allows the user to process and distribute further information acquired from numerous sources in different formats. In addition to supporting internal processes of a company and helping to store and reuse different types of content, Profium SIR enables your company to commercialize and deliver the information it already possesses to both current and new customers."
Teranode's XDA - "Experiment Design Automation (XDA) software is a powerful platform that allows scientists to automate lab and in-silico experiments and manage data within and across laboratories, to improve the speed and quality of R&D projects."

A more comprehensive list of commercial products is also available. A list of various applications and demonstrations of open source tools and services using Semantic Web technologies are also available.

Introduction

Facilities to put machine-understandable data on the Web are becoming a high priority for many communities. The Web can reach its full potential only if it becomes a place where data can be shared and processed by automated tools as well as by people. For the Web to scale, tomorrow's programs must be able to share and process data even when these programs have been designed totally independently. The Semantic Web is a vision: the idea of having data on the web defined and linked in a way that it can be used by machines not just for display purposes, but for automation, integration and reuse of data across various applications.

Activity Statement

If you are a member of the public coming to this site you can read about what W3C is doing in this area in our Semantic Web Activity statement. Accompanied by a page of explanatory material to bring you up to speed, the Activity statement sums up W3C's present involvement in this area.

Specifications

In Feb 2004, The World Wide Web Consortium released the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the OWL Web Ontology Language (OWL) as W3C Recommendations. RDF is used to represent information and to exchange knowledge in the Web. OWL is used to publish and share sets of terms called ontologies, supporting advanced Web search, software agents and knowledge management. Read the press release and testimonials to see how organizations are using these technologies today.

Publications / Articles / Interviews

The following is a partial list of various publications and or interviews that help explain the goals and objectives of the Semantic Web.

Presentations

Groups

The following groups are currently charted and part of the Semantic Web Activity

Semantic Web Coordination Group

The Semantic Web Coordination Group is tasked to provide a forum for managing the interrelationships and interdependencies among groups focusing on standards and technologies that relate to this goals of the Semantic Web Activity. This group is designed to coordinate, facilitate and (where possible) help shape the efforts of other related groups to avoid duplication of effort and fragmentation of the Semantic Web by way of incompatible standards and technologies.

Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group

The focus of this Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment (SWBPD) Working Group is to provide hands-on support for developers of Semantic Web applications.

RDF Data Access Working Group

The focus of the RDF Data Access Working Group will be to evaluate the requirements for an query language and network protocol for RDF and defined formal specifications and test cases for supporting such requirements.

Rules Interchange Working Group

This Working Group is chartered to produce a core rule language plus extensions which together allow rules to be translated between rule languages and thus transferred between rule systems. The Working Group will have to balance the needs of a community diverse including Business Rules and Semantic users Web specifying extensions for which it can articulate a consensus design and which are sufficiently motivated by use cases.

Semantic Web Interest Group

The Semantic Web Interest Group is a forum for W3C Members and non-Members to discuss innovative applications of the Semantic Web. The Interest Group also initiates discussion on potential future work items related to enabling technologies that support the Semantic Web, and the relationship of that work to other activities of W3C and to the broader social and legal context in which the Web is situated.

Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group

The Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group is designed to improve collaboration, research and development, and innovation adoption in the health care and life science industries. Aiding decision-making in clinical research, Semantic Web technologies will bridge many forms of biological and medical information across institutions.

Semantic Web Services Interest Group

The purpose of the Semantic Web Services Interest Group is to provide an open forum for W3C Members and non-Members to discuss Web Services topics essentially oriented towards integration of Semantic Web technology into the ongoing Web Services work at W3C.

Past Groups

RDF Core Working Group

The RDF Core Working Group is chartered to consider update to the RDF Model and Syntax Recommendation, and to a few revisions to the RDF Schema specification. A further objective of this group is to respond to the Candidate Recommendation feedback and produced a revised RDF Schema document.

Web Ontology Working Group

The Web Ontology Working Group is chartered to build upon the RDF Core work a language for defining structured web based ontologies which will provide richer integration and interoperability of data among descriptive communities.

Additional support for this activity has been provided by DARPA under the DAML program.