The Semantic Web

An interpretation of The Semantic Web

Posted on 23. Jan, 2010 by admin in News

Having just started to research what exactly is ‘The Semantic Web’ this is an extract from The W3 Schools Semantic Web Tutorial, this is the cleanest explanation i found.

The word semantic stands for the meaning of.

The semantic of something is the meaning of something.

The Semantic Web = a Web with a meaning.

What is the Semantic Web?

The Semantic Web is a web that is able to describe things in a way that computers can understand.

* The Beatles was a popular band from Liverpool.
* John Lennon was a member of the Beatles.
* “Hey Jude” was recorded by the Beatles.

Sentences like the ones above can be understood by people. But how can they be understood by computers?

Statements are built with syntax rules. The syntax of a language defines the rules for building the language statements. But how can syntax become semantic?

This is what the Semantic Web is all about. Describing things in a way that computers applications can understand it.

The Semantic Web is not about links between web pages.

The Semantic Web describes the relationships between things (like A is a part of B and Y is a member of Z) and the properties of things (like size, weight, age, and price)
The Web

“If HTML and the Web made all the online documents look like one huge book, RDF, schema, and inference languages will make all the data in the world look like one huge database”
Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, 1999

The Resource Description Framework

The RDF (Resource Description Framework) is a language for describing information and resources on the web.

Putting information into RDF files, makes it possible for computer programs (“web spiders”) to search, discover, pick up, collect, analyze and process information from the web.

The Semantic Web uses RDF to describe web resources.

If you want to learn more about RDF, please read our RDF tutorial.
How can it be used?

If information about music, cars, tickets, etc. were stored in RDF files, intelligent web applications could collect information from many different sources, combine information, and present it to users in a meaningful way.

Information like this:

* Car prices from different resellers
* Information about medicines
* Plane schedules
* Spare parts for the industry
* Information about books (price, pages, editor, year)
* Dates of events
* Computer updates

Can it be understood?

The Semantic Web is not a very fast growing technology.

One of the reasons for that is the learning curve. RDF was developed by people with academic background in logic and artificial intelligence. For traditional developers it is not very easy to understand.

One fast growing language for building semantic web applications is RSS. If you want to learn more about RSS, please read our RSS tutorial.

Tags: artificial intelligence, Computer, editor, Hey Jude, HTML, intelligent web applications, John Lennon, Liverpool, member of the Beatles, online documents, RDF, Resource Description Framework, semantic web applications, The Beatles, Web Having, web resources, web spiders, Web Tutorial