<div about="http://uri.to.newsitem">
<span property="dc:date">March 23, 2004</span>
<span property="dc:title">Rollers hit casino for £1.3m</span>
By <span property="dc:creator">Steve Bird</span>. See
<a href="http://www.a.b.c/d.avi" rel="dcmtype:MovingImage">
also video footage</a>…
</div>
yields, by running the file through a processor:
<http://uri.to.newsitem>
dc:date "March 23, 2004";
dc:title "Rollers hit casino for £1.3m;
dc:creator "Steve Bird";
dcmtype:MovingImage <http://www.a.b.c/d.avi>.
Linking to SQL
A huge amount of data in Relational Databases
Although tools exist, it is not feasible to convert that data into RDF
Instead: SQL ⇋ RDF “bridges” are being developed:
a query to RDF data is transformed into SQL on-the-fly
the modalities are governed by small, local ontologies or rules
An active area of development!
Common in RDFa and GRDDL
The user authors XHTML as usual
The result is displayed as usual
The author may add some annotations that leads to RDF
And for Ontologies?
The hard work is to create the ontologies in general
requires a good knowledge of the area to be described
some communities have good expertise already (e.g., librarians)
OWL is just a tool to formalize ontologies
Large scale ontologies are often developed in a community process
leading to versioning issues, too
OWL includes predicates for versioning, deprecation, “same-ness”, …
There is also R&D in generating them from a corpus of data
(or: does this have any industrial relevance whatsoever?)
Not any more…
Lots of tools are available. Are listed on W3C’s wiki:
RDF programming environment for 14+ languages, including C, C++, Python, Java,
Javascript, Ruby, PHP,… (no Cobol or Ada yet !)
13+ Triple Stores, ie, database systems to store (sometimes huge!) datasets
a number programming environments (in Java, Prolog, …) include OWL reasoners
there are also stand-alone reasoners (downloadable or on the Web)
etc
Some of the tools are Open Source, some are not; some are very mature, some
are not :
it is the usual picture of software tools, nothing special any more!
Anybody can start developing RDF-based applications today
Not any more… (cont)
SW has indeed a strong foundation in research results
But remember:
(1) the Web was born at CERN…
(2) …was first picked up by high energy physicists…
(3) …then by academia at large…
(4) …then by small businesses and start-ups…
(5) “big business” came only later!
network effect kicked in early…
Semantic Web is now at #4, and moving to #5!
Network effect
Metcalfe’s Law:
the value of one node is proportional to the number of other nodes
Rely on: Visionaries who can imagine what it would be like
and those who do their bit trust that others will do theirs
Easier with things which are well connected
Easier to get critical mass in small community
Small community: niche applications
The needs of a deployment application area:
have serious problem or opportunity
have the intellectual interest to pick up new things
have motivation to fix the problem
its data connects to other application areas
have an influence as a showcase for others
The high energy physics community played this role for the Web in the 90’s
Some RDF deployment areas
Library metadata
Defence
Life sciences
Problem to solve?
single-domain integration
yes, serious data integration needs
yes, connections among genetics, proteomics, clinical trials,
regulatory, …
Willingness to adopt?
yes: OCLC push and Dublin Core initiative
yes: funded early DAML (OWL) work
yes: intellectual level high, much modeling done already.
Motivation
light
strong
very strong
Links to
other library data
phone calls records, etc
chemistry, regulatory, medical, etc
Showcase?
limited
not at all
yes, model for other industries.
Some RDF deployment areas (cont)
These are just examples
Others are coming to the fore: eGovernment, energy sector (oil industry), financial services, …
Health care and life science sector is now very active
also at W3C, in the form of an Interest Group
The “corporate” landscape is moving
Major companies offer (or will offer) Semantic Web tools or systems using Semantic
Web: Adobe, Oracle, IBM, HP, Software AG, webMethods, Northrop Gruman, Altova, …
Some of the names of active participants in W3C SW related groups: ILOG, HP, Agfa, SRI International, Fair Isaac Corp., Oracle, Boeing, IBM, Chevron, Siemens, Nokia, Merck, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sun, Citigroup, …
“Corporate Semantic Web” listed as major technology by
Gartner in 2006
speakers in 2006: from IBM, Cisco, BellSouth, GE, Walt Disney, Nokia, Oracle, …
not all referring to Semantic Web (eg, RDF, OWL, …) but semantics in general
but they might come around!
Applications are not always very complex…
Eg: simple semantic annotations of patients’ data greatly enhances communications among doctors
What is needed: some simple ontologies, an RDFa/microformat type editing environment
Simple but powerful!
Data integration
Data integration comes to the fore as one of the SW Application areas
Very important for large application areas (life sciences, energy sector, eGovernment, financial institutions),
as well as everyday applications (eg, reconciliation of calendar data)
Life sciences example:
data in different labs…
data aimed at scientists, managers, clinical trial participants…
large scale public ontologies (genes, proteins, antibodies, …)
different formats (databases, spreadsheets, XML data, XHTML pages)
etc
Example: antibodies demo
Scenario: find the known antibodies for a protein in a specific species