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Semantic Web: In Quest for the Next Generation Killer Apps
1. Semantic Web:
In Quest for the Next
Generation Killer Apps
Jie Bao
Tetherless World Constellation
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
baojie@cs.rpi.edu
http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~baojie
Oct 22nd, 2010 @ UMass Lowell 1
2. Outline
• Why Semantic Web?
• Key SW Standards
• Opening Data for SW
• Building SW Applications
2
4. A Killer App is
• …Any computer program that is so
necessary or desirable that it proves
the core value of some larger
technology, […]. A killer app can
substantially increase sales of the
platform on which it runs.
-- Wikipedia
4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_application
28. What We Need
• A standard data interchange format
• A standard representation of the
meaning of data
• A standard way to link data
28
29. Semantic Web Languages
29
Source: W3C's Semantic Web Activity / Semantic Web overview
http://www.w3.org/2007/Talks/0130-sb-W3CTechSemWeb/#%2824%29
The Layer Cake
33. SPARQL= SPARQL Protocol And RDF
Query Language
A query language for RDF
SELECT ?person ?org
WHERE{
?person foaf:knows rpics:hendler .
?person swrc:affiliation ?org .
}
(find all people (and their affiliations) who know
Hendler)
33
34. OWL = Web Ontology
Language
• A much more powerful ontology language
• Examples (informally)
– If twitter:baojie and linkedin:baojie both use email
baojie@cs.rpi.edu, then they belong to the same
person.
– If Westin hotel is in Palo Alto, and Palo Alto is in
the Bay Area, then Westin hotel is in the Bay Area.
• OWL 1 (2004), OWL 2 (2009)
34
55. Financial Data
55
Perry Grossman, Devin Mcqueeney, Graham G Rong, Lorin Wilde, Danny Yuan, Jie Bao
(coach). FinanceSphere, MIT LinkedData IAP 2010 Project
56. Financial Data
56
Bao, J., Rong, G., Li, X., and Ding, L. Representing Financial Reports on the Semantic Web - A
Faithful Translation from XBRL to OWL. In The 4th International Web Rule Symposium (RuleML).
2010
XBRL= eXtensible Business Reporting Language
57. RPI Map
http://map.rpi.edu
Jie Bao , Jin Guang Zheng, Rui Huang & Li Ding. Mesh-up Map and Events on Semantic Wiki: Applications in e-Science and Campus Information
System. SemanticWiki mini-series Session-4. Jan. 22, 2009. ontolog.cim3.net
59. Data-gov Wiki
Li Ding and James Michaelis and Deborah L. McGuinness and Jim Hendler, Making Sense of
Open Government Data, in Proceedings of WebSci2010, 2010.
60. Data Mashup and Visualization
60
DiFranzo, D.: Developer Diary: CASTNET Ozone Map Demo. In WebSci 2010 poster.
http://data-gov.tw.rpi.edu/wiki/Demo:_Clean_Air_Status_and_Trends_-_Ozone
61. Data Mashup and Visualization
61
James Michaelis: http://data-gov.tw.rpi.edu/wiki/Demo:_Comparing_US-USAID_and_UK-DFID_Global_Foreign_Aid
63. Where are we?
63
Picture source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle)
Adapted from “Semantic Web Adoption and Applications”, Ivan Herman, W3C. 2010-10-07 Slide 5
2005
64. Where are we?
64
Picture source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle)
Adapted from “Semantic Web Adoption and Applications”, Ivan Herman, W3C. 2010-10-07 Slide 5
2010
65. The 2007 Gartner predictions
• By 2012, 80% of public Web sites will use some
level of semantic hypertext to create SW documents
[…] 15% of public Web sites will use more extensive
Semantic Web-based ontologies to create semantic
databases
• By 2017, we expect the vision of the Semantic Web
[…] to coalesce […] and the majority of Web pages
are decorated with some form of semantic hypertext.
65
“Finding and Exploiting Value in Semantic Web Technologies on the Web”, Gartner Report, May 2007
67. On ATM
67
You can check transactions by their categories, and the ATM knows that not all items
from BestBuy are electronics (e.g., office supplies), since it is connected to the BestBuy
product database.
68. On TV
68
It can generate a personalized program list of movies starred by Sean Connery,
since it is connected to IMDB
69. In Your Car
69
Picture from: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/automotive/car-gps-accidents.htm/printable
The in-car GPS tells you attractions of the revolutionary war era, since it can read a semantic
version of Wikipedia and a geo-location database from the US government.
One of the first examples of a killer application is generally agreed to be the VisiCalc spreadsheet on the Apple II platform.[1] The machine was purchased in the thousands by finance workers (in particular, bond traders) on the strength of this program
For Windows
Once the most popular browser
Promote WWW
The currently most successful Social Network
HTML, XML
Expedia, Mint, Zillow all provide different solutions
Reinvent the wheel
For this demo, we used RDF data derived from ozone and visibility readings provided by the EPA's Castnet project. This RDF combines raw data on Castnet readings (ozone and visibility) with corresponding geographic information on the sites of readings, which the raw Castnet data lacks. On the provided map of the US, every yellow dot represents a single Casetnet site and dot size corresponds to an average Ozone reading for that site, where larger dots represent larger averages. When a Castnet site is clicked, a small pop-up opens, displaying more information on that site, along with a link. This link takes the user to another page that displays in a timeline all the Ozone and Visibility data available for that site. This timeline uses the Google Visualization API giving users added functionality in how they view the data in the timeline. To allow users to filter through Castnet readings, a faceted browsing interface (from the MIT Simile Exhibit API) is provided.
This application presents a mashup of foreign aid data (represented in US Dollars) from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and UK Department for International Development (DFID) for the 2007 US Fiscal Year.
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company