What’s the Semantic Web?
I’ve been asked many times to explain the Semantic Web (SW). In the past learning about technology and W3C concepts has been difficult. The average person may not derive a great deal of meaning from the W3 overview of XHTML standards. In the case of SW they do a great job and I recommend anyone read the overview available on the W3C web site.
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The Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries. It is a collaborative effort led by W3C with participation from a large number of researchers and industrial partners. It is based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF).
The diagram below is called the Semantic Web “layercake” diagram which provides a great construct around the components that make-up the SW.
The Semantic Web is a web of data. There is lots of data we all use every day, and its not part of the web. I can see my bank statements on the web, and my photographs, and I can see my appointments in a calendar. But can I see my photos in a calendar to see what I was doing when I took them? Can I see bank statement lines in a calendar?
Why not? Because we don’t have a web of data. Because data is controlled by applications, and each application keeps it to itself.
The Semantic Web is about two things. It is about common formats for integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources, where on the original Web mainly concentrated on the interchange of documents. It is also about language for recording how the data relates to real world objects. That allows a person, or a machine, to start off in one database, and then move through an unending set of databases which are connected not by wires but by being about the same thing.”
