Semantic Technology Pillars: The Story So Far

IEEE Intelligent Systems, 2007

2009

The Semantic Web vision has drove hundreds of practitioners to research and develop a new bread of applications that could take the full potential of the Web to the next level. While there is a fairly clear understanding of where Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 stand now a day, the current status and position of the Semantic Web, also known as Web 3.0, is not as clear and well defined. Therefore, in this paper we present a landscape that illustrates and captures the trends in the Semantic Web with the purpose of guiding future developments.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2006

Semantic Web technology is being increasingly applied in a large spectrum of applications in which domain knowledge is conceptualized and formalized (e.g., by means of an ontology) in order to support diversified and automated knowledge processing (e.g., reasoning) performed by a machine. Moreover, through an optimal combination of (cognitive) human reasoning and (automated) machine reasoning and processing, it is possible for humans and machines to share complementary tasks. The spectrum of applications is extremely large and to name a few: corporate portals and knowledge management, e-commerce, e-work, e-business, healthcare, e-government, natural language understanding and automated translation, information search, data and services integration, social networks and collaborative filtering, knowledge mining, business intelligence and so on. From a social and economic perspective, this emerging technology should contribute to growth in economic wealth, but it must also show clear cut value for everyday activities through technological transparency and efficiency. The penetration of Semantic Web technology in industry and in services is progressing slowly but accelerating as new success stories are reported. In this paper and lecture we present ongoing work in the cross-fertilization between industry and academia. In particular, we present a collection of application fields and use cases from enterprises which are interested in the promises of Semantic Web technology. The use cases are detailed and focused on the key knowledge processing components that will unlock the deployment of the technology in the selected application field. The paper ends with the presentation of the current technology roadmap designed by a team of Academic and Industry researchers.

2006

The Web grew in five years from a development project to a global business. In contrast the semantic Web has spent ten years developing from a plan to introduce metadata to the Web to a suite of technologies that are used in niche markets, but are far from the global commodity business of the Web. There remain fundamental problems in implementing the vision of a semantic Web, which require both original technical research and considerable consensus building to reach agreed solutions. Many of the successes of the semantic Web are in small technologies such as RSS, Dublin Core and FOAF, while the main thrust of research is in big technologies such as ontological modeling and inference engines. The links between the small and large, as well as an understanding of the resulting benefits are required to move the semantic Web into the mainstream Web.

Data & Knowledge Engineering, 2002

Currently computers are changing from single isolated devices into entry points to a worldwide network of information exchange and business transactions called the World Wide Web (WWW). For this reason, support in data, information, and knowledge exchange has become a key issue in current computer technology. The WWW has drastically changed the availability of electronically available information. However, this success and exponential growth has made it increasingly difficult to find, access, present, and maintain the information required by a wide variety of users. In response to this problem, many new research initiatives and commercial enterprises have been set up to enrich available information with machine processable semantics. Such support is essential for "bringing the web to its full potential". This semantic web will provide intelligent access to heterogeneous and distributed information, enabling software products (agents) to mediate between user needs and the information sources available. This paper summarizes ongoing research in the area of the semantic web especially focussing on ontology technology.

2004

Computational Intelligence, 2007

ACM SIGMOD Record, 2002