Semantic Web

Nevertheless, compared with other sciences or engineering fields, computer science is still on its infancy. As a matter of fact, the discipline has a long way to go before it reaches a comparable level of maturity. However, given the fast pace shown and the objectively positive results achieved so far, this can only mean that computer science will continue revolutionizing every aspect of our life in unimaginable ways.

 From a technical point of view there are only two limitations to the impact computer science will have in our world. On the one hand, the computing power could place a burden on the capabilities and realization of new ideas and applications. On the other hand, it is the expressiveness of the formalism subjacent to computer science itself that could limit its expansion and impact. Yet, neither of them seems to currently pose a major obstacle. Actually, computing power continues to grow year after year challenging the limits of physics. Conversely, new ever demanding applications are developed that challenge and push forward the expressiveness and capabilities of the discipline.

 It is precisely in the context of further advancing the expressiveness of the formalisms subjacent to computer science that the concept and idea of the Semantic Web has been conceived. Roughly speaking, the current Web defines a system of interlinked, hypertext documents running over the Internet mainly characterized by the static and syntactic nature of the information codified. This means that only the human reader can understand and intelligently process the contents available. Therefore, current Web technology is only able to exploit but very little of the information available. Also the information processing capabilities of modern computers are not brought to its full potential. They are used solely as information rendering devices, which present content in a human-understandable format.

 In order to rise above these limitations, more expressive approaches are required that exploit all the capabilities computers and computer science can offer. The Semantic Web has precisely these objectives. The Semantic Web is the next generation of the WWW where information has machine-processable and machine-understandable semantics. The Semantic Web is an evolving extension of the Web in which content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a form that can be understood, interpreted and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily. In short, this novel technology brings structure to the meaningful content of the Web, being not a separate Web, but an augmentation of the current one, where information is given a well-defined meaning.

 The core concept behind the Semantic Web is the representation of data in a machine interpretable way. Ontologies facilitate the means to realize such representation. Ontologies characterize formal and consensual specifications of conceptualizations, providing a shared and common understanding of a domain as data and information machine-processable semantics, which can be communicated among agents (organizations, individuals, and software).  They provide the means to describe the basic categories and relationships of things by defining entities and types of entities within its framework. Therefore, ontologies can be said to study conceptions of reality.

 Ontologies bring together two essential aspects that help to push the Web to its full potential. Firstly, they provide machine processability by defining formal information semantics. Secondly, they provide machine-human understanding due to their ability to specify conceptualization of the real-world. By these means, ontologies link machine processable content with human meaning using a consensual terminology as connecting element.

Drivers

Industry

• HP
• Oracle
• Yahoo! Searchmonkey

Established players

• Ontoprise
• Saltlux
  
• Metatomix
• Thomson Reuters Calais

Start-ups

• evri
• peer 39
• AdaptiveBlue
• Radar Networks
• Semantinet
  
• Semsphere 
• playence 

Academia

• Semantic Technologies International

• FZI
• DERI