Semantic Web concepts

Edinburgh

http://www.w3.org/2005/Talks/0517-boit-tbl/

Tim Berners-Lee

MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)

Director, World Wide Web Consortium

Three 'hot' directions of Web development

• Mobile Web
• Web Services
• Semantic Web

What is Semantic Web?

• Data integration across application, organizational boundaries

How does it work?

1. Apply power of URIs to concepts of relational data
2. Model real things, not documents or database tables

SW: Everything has a URI

Don't say "colour" say <http://example.com/2002/std6#col>

The relational database

The element of the Semantic Web

• Can be encoded in XML
• Simplicity and mathematical consistency
• This is called Resource Description Framework (RDF)

Semantic web includes tables,...

...trees

... everything

Applications connected by concepts

Fractal Web of concepts

• Across boundaries of scale -- personal, group, global
• Varying access levels
• Tension between local and global standards
• Society is a fractal tangle, so must SW be.
• Personal interactions on multiple scales

Example: Drug discovery

2003: Enterprise Application Integration

RDF: Enterprise Integration hub

Global Integration bus

Clients of the RDF bus

New data applications can be built on top of RDF bus, for example:

Components: Adapting random files

Keep your existing systems running - adapt them

Components: Triple store

Virtual severs actually figure stuff out as well as look up data

Adapting SQL Databases

Keep your existing systems running - adapt them

Adapting XML

Remeber- RDF on an HTTP server can always be virtual

Adapting XML: GRDDL

Remeber- RDF on an HTTP server can always be virtual

Components: Smart servers

Virtual severs actually figure stuff out as well as look up data

Infrastructure roadmap

Stack of expressive power

Challenges: Deployment

• Scientific data:
  • Integration across fields
  • Eg Life sciences, drug discovery; Geospatial
  • Pointers to experimental conditions, sources, algorithms
• Electronic Commerce:
  • Well-defined meaning for documents
  • Catalogs, prices, rates, specifications as data
• Personal Information Management: Calendar, Photos, Money, etc
• Common platform for database, inference, etc etc
• Index rules & ontologies if not data: new algorithms
• New challenges on top of Semantic Web - AI

Snowball problem: Techniques

Making communities

• Build common ontologies
• Adapt legacy systems - GRDDL etc.
• Accumulate & publish Best Practices
• Showcase early adopters
• Motivate by vision
• Motivate by other, short term, return on investment

Challenge: Logic languages

• Integration of multiple logics on same
• Quotation & self-references makes FOL tricky
  • Statements about statements
• Exchange of proofs between dissimilar inference engines

Challenges: Looking ahead

Semantic-Web based research

• What about a web of rules? Web of logic?
• Indexing that, inference using indexes.
• Delegated query
• Ultimate User Interface to the Semantic Web
• Speech and Graphic UI info hints in ontologies

Non-monotonic/Fuzzy things

Not Semantic Web phase one.

• Extraction of semantics from exiting natural language
• Probabilistic heuristics for ontology matching

Deployment: Flagship fields

• Scientific data:
  • Integration across fields
  • Eg Life sciences, drug discovery; Geospatial
  • Pointers to experimental conditions, sources, algorithms
• Electronic Commerce:
  • Well-defined meaning for documents
  • Catalogs, prices, rates, specifications as data
• Personal Information Management: Calendar, Photos, Money, etc

Deployment: Techniques

Making communities

• Build common ontologies
• Adapt legacy systems - GRDDL etc.
• Accumulate & publish Best Practices
• Showcase early adopters
• Motivate by vision
• Motivate by other, short term, return on investment

Deployment: Action

IT Management

• Model the company business
• Use existing ontologies where they meet your needs
• Develop your own ontologies
• Work with other groups, other companies
• Map data sources to RDF and SPARQL: databases, XML, spreadsheets, etc...
• Deploy visualizers, inference, validation etc tools
• Don't change the way you do things underneath
• Be aware of SW deployment curve

World Wide Web Consortium

Global organization for a global infrastructure

• Users, Vendors, Academics meet
• Pool investment of energy
• Forming consensus: hard work but invaluable
• Well-honed process and patent policy
• Decentralized architecture
• Working on SPARQL, best practice
• Starting work on Rules, life sciences

Thank you

Questions?