This document discusses the Semantic Web and related technologies. It is comprised of several sections that describe key concepts such as the Semantic Web vision, Resource Description Framework (RDF), RDF Schema (RDFS), Web Ontology Language (OWL), and the Jena Semantic Web framework. The document provides examples and explanations of how these technologies relate to representing semantic data on the Web in a way that is accessible to machines.
HMCS Max Bernays Pre-Deployment Brief (May 2024).pptx
Semantic Web - Lecture 09 - Web Information Systems (4011474FNR)
1. 2 December 2005
Web Information Systems
Semantic Web
Prof. Beat Signer
Department of Computer Science
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
http://www.beatsigner.com
2. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 2
The Semantic Web
I have a dream for the Web [in which com-puters]
become capable of analyzing all the
data on the Web – the content, links, and
transactions between people and computers.
A 'Semantic Web', which should make this
possible, has yet to emerge, but when it
does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade,
bureaucracy and our daily lives will be
handled by machines talking to machines.
The 'intelligent agents' people have touted
for ages will finally materialize.
Weaving the Web - The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor,
Tim Berners-Lee, Harper San Francisco, September 1999
Tim Berners-Lee
3. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 3
The Semantic Web ...
The Semantic Web is a vision: the idea of having data on
the Web defined and linked in a way that it can be used by
machines not just for display purposes, but for auto-mation,
integration and reuse of data across various
applications. Metadata provides a means to make
statements and create machine-readable statements.
W3C, 2003
4. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 4
The Semantic Web ...
Meaning of data on the Web can not only be infered by
people but also discovered by machines without (or with
less) human intervention
Web of Data instead of Web of Documents
the Web as a huge decentralised database (knowledge base)
machine-accessible data
data may be interconnected similar to today's webpages
machine-readable metadata for existing web content
combination of data from different sources to derive new facts
machines (agents) may use logical reasoning to infer facts that
are not explicitly recorded
Crucial component of Web 3.0 or Giant Global Graph
5. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 5
Video: The Future Internet
6. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 6
Semantic Web Stack
The Semantic Web Stack
(or Semantic Web Cake)
describes the architecture
of the Semantic Web
URI/IRI
- unique identification of semantic
web resources
Unicode
- representing/manipulating text
in different languages
XML
- interchange of structured data
over the Web
Character set: UNICODE
Cryptography
Syntax: XML and XML Namespaces
Data interchange: RDF
Taxonomies: RDFS
Ontologies:
Querying: OWL
SPARQL
Unifying Logic
Trust
User interface and applications
Proof
Rules:
RIF/SWRL
Based on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Semantic-web-stack.png]
Identifiers:
URI/IRI
7. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 7
Semantic Web Stack ...
XML Namespaces
- uniquely qualify markup from
multiple sources (integration)
Resource Description
Framework (RDF)
- define RDF triples and repre-sent
resource information in
a graph structure
RDF Schema (RDFS)
- create hierarchies of classes
and properties
Character set: UNICODE
Cryptography
Syntax: XML and XML Namespaces
Data interchange: RDF
Taxonomies: RDFS
Ontologies:
Querying: OWL
SPARQL
Unifying Logic
Trust
User interface and applications
Proof
Rules:
RIF/SWRL
Based on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Semantic-web-stack.png]
Identifiers:
URI/IRI
8. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 8
Semantic Web Stack ...
Web Ontology Language
(OWL)
- language to define vocabularies
- extends RDFS with more ad-vanced
features (e.g. cardinality)
- enables reasoning based on
description logic
SPARQL
- query language to query any
RDF-based data
Rule Interchange Format
(RIF) and Semantic Web
Rule Language (SWRL)
- describe relations that cannot be
described in OWL
Character set: UNICODE
Cryptography
Syntax: XML and XML Namespaces
Data interchange: RDF
Taxonomies: RDFS
Ontologies:
Querying: OWL
SPARQL
Unifying Logic
Trust
User interface and applications
Proof
Rules:
RIF/SWRL
Based on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Semantic-web-stack.png]
Identifiers:
URI/IRI
9. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 9
Semantic Web Stack ...
Unifying Logic
- logical reasoning (infer new
facts and check consistency)
Proof
- explain logical reasoning steps
Cryptography
- protect RDF data via encryption
- validate the source of facts by
digitally signing RDF data
Trust
- authentification of sources and
trustworthiness of derived facts
User Interface
- user interfaces for semantic web
applications
Character set: UNICODE
Cryptography
Syntax: XML and XML Namespaces
Data interchange: RDF
Taxonomies: RDFS
Ontologies:
Querying: OWL
SPARQL
Unifying Logic
Trust
User interface and applications
Proof
Rules:
RIF/SWRL
Based on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Semantic-web-stack.png]
Identifiers:
URI/IRI
10. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 10
Resource Description Framework
The Resource Description Framework (RDF) has
been designed to describe
data and metadata about specific subjects
structure of data sets
relationships between bits of data
An RDF statement (triple) consists of three parts
subject
predicate (property)
object (value)
{person-1, name, "Niklaus Wirth"}
subject predicate object
11. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 11
Resource Description Framework ...
Subjects, predicates and objects are all resources
Resource
anything that can be referenced by a URI
Literal
non-structured data (e.g. String, Integer, ...); is also a resource
a literal cannot be the subject of an RDF statement
Predicate
relation between two resources or between a resource and a
literal
RDF data is often stored in relational databases or so-called
triplestores (e.g. Apache Jena)
up to billions of triples
12. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 12
RDF Graph
A set of RDF statements can be represented as a
directed labelled graph
note that in RDF we can only define statements about specific
instances but not about generic concepts
- ontologies have to be used to define statements about generic concepts
Beat
Signer
hasFamilyName
hasGivenName
http://wise.vub.ac.be/beat-signer
13. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 13
RDF Graph ...
Anonymous resources have no explicit identifier
in the example, the "office" is an anonymous resource
anonymous resources are also called blank nodes or bnodes
blank nodes can only be used as subjects or objects
Beat Signer
hasGivenName hasFamilyName
http://wise.vub.ac.be hasDirector
http://wise.vub.ac.be/beat-signer
isMember
Lode
http://wise.vub.ac.be/lode-hoste
Hoste
hasFamily
Name
hasGivenName
isColleague
hasOffice
10F733 026293306
room phone
14. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 14
RDF Reification
An RDF triple is not a resource and can therefore not
become subject of another statement
we have to reify the original statement
- make a resource out of the statement
Beat Signer
hasGivenName hasFamilyName
http://wise.vub.ac.be hasDirector
http://wise.vub.ac.be/beat/
isMember
Lode
http://wise.vub.ac.be/lode/
Hoste
hasGivenName
rdf:subject rdf:object
rdf:statement isColleague
rdf:type
rdf:Property
1
forYears
hasFamily
Name
15. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 15
RDF Container Nodes
Special container resource types
bag
- number of unordered resources with potential duplicates
sequence
- ordered collection of resources
alternative
- one of the members can be selected
collection
- closed; once it has been defined, the
members can no longer be changed
http://wise.vub.ac.be/beat-signer
wearsShirt
http://shirt.org/shirt1
http://shirt.og/shirt2
RDF:_2
rdf:alternative
16. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 16
Advantages of RDF
Simple
Enables the combination (merging) of data from
different data models
not easily possible in a relational database (different schemas)
The same resource can be annotated by different people
resource referenced by URI
separation of data and metadata
Well-defined standard
many tools available
- triplestores, parsers, editors, frameworks, ...
17. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 17
RDF Schema (RDFS)
Vocabulary description language for RDF
domain vocabulary and structure
Define common concepts and relationships
classes (rdfs:Class) and subclasses (rdfs:subClassOf)
properties and sub-properties (rdfs:subPropertyOf)
domain (rdfs:domain) and range (rdfs:range) of a property
rdfs:seeAlso, rdfs:isDefinedBy (utility properties)
rdfs:label, rdfs:comment
...
Provides the basic elements for the definition of
ontologies
18. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 18
RDF Schema Example
Beat Signer
hasGivenName hasFamilyName
Researcher
http://wise.vub.ac.be/beat-signer
Lode
http://wise.vub.ac.be/lode-hoste
Hoste
isColleague
hasGivenName hasFamilyName
rdf:type rdf:type
Person isColleague
rdfs:Class rdf:Property
rdf:type rdf:type rdfs:domain
rdfs:range
rdfs:subClassOf
rdfs:Literal rdfs:Literal rdfs:Literal rdfs:Literal
rdf:type rdf:type rdf:type rdf:type
19. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 19
Advantages of RDFS
With RDFS we have a richer expressiveness
(e.g. subClassOf) than with RDF
Simple reasoning (e.g. type hierarchy)
Many existing tools to deal with RDFS
However, some things cannot be expressed; for example
"a person must have a family name"
"a person can have at most one family name" (cardinality)
"if Beat is a colleague of Lode then Lode is a colleague of Beat"
(transitivity)
these issues are addressed by the Web Ontology
Language (OWL)
20. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 20
RDF(S) / XML Serialisation
Syntax not so easy to learn
many different ways to construct the same statement
long URIs are hard to read
{http://wise.vub.ac.be/beat-signer, isColleague,
http://wise.vub.ac.be/lode-hoste}
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">
<rdf:Description rdf:about="http://wise.vub.ac.be/beat-signer">
<isColleague rdf:resource="http://wise.vub.ac.be/lode-hoste"/>
<hasGivenName>Beat</hasGivenName>
...
</rdf:Description>
...
</rdf:RDF>
21. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 21
RDF Notation 3 (N3)
Short non-XML serialisation
separate predicates with a semicollon
finish subject definition with a full stop
Note that the N3 notation offers more features than are
necessary for RDF(S) serialisation
e.g. support for RDF-based rules
<http://wise.vub.ac.be/beat-signer> isColleague <http://wise.vub.ac.be/lode-hoste>;
...
hasGivenName "Beat".
22. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 22
RDF Turtle Notation
Terse RDF Triple Language
Subset of N3 language
only describes RDF features (RDF graph model)
Syntax looks similar to Notation 3
http://www.w3.org/TeamSubmission/turtle/
Many RDF frameworks (e.g. Jena) offer Turtle parser
and serialisation features
23. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 23
RDF Applications
Annotea project
defines an RDF schema for the types of annotations that can be
used to annote webpages
RSS
some RSS versions use RDF(S) / XML serialisation
Dublin Core
widely used to describe digital media (also in standard HTML)
- bibliographic metadata such a title, creator, description, ...
uses RDF(S) / XML serialisation as one possible representation
<head>
...
<meta name="DC.Subject" content="Interactive Paper, Cross-media ..."/>
<meta name="DC.Description" content="Beat Signer does research on ..."/>
</head>
24. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 24
SPARQL Query Language
RDF query language which can be used to
extract information as URIs, literals, blank nodes or subgraphs
SPARQL SELECT queries return variable bindings
SPARQL querying relies on graph pattern matching
Example
get the name and mbox of all subjects that have both of these
properties defined
SELECT ?name ?mbox
WHERE { ?x foaf:name ?name .
?x foaf:mbox ?mbox }
25. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 25
Web Ontology Language (OWL)
OWL evolved from DAML+OIL
DAML is the DARPA Agent Markup Language
OIL stands for Ontology Inference Layer
There exist 3 different OWL sublanguages (flavours) with
different expressivness
OWL Full
- maximum expressiveness (full language)
- no computational guarantee
OWL DL
- maximal OWL Full subset that is still computationally decidable
OWL Lite
- classification hierarchy and simple constraints (limited cardinality constraints)
- weakest of the three variants
26. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 26
Jena Semantic Web Framework
Open source Semantic Web framework for Java
create and access data from RDF graphs via an RDF API
offers an OWL API
data can be stored in files, databases or accessed via URLs
http://jena.sourceforge.net
RDF graphs can be serialised into different formats
RDF/XML
Notation 3
Turtle
relational database
SPARQL query interface
Multiple reasoners
27. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 27
Protégé
Free open source platform
to create, manipulate and
visualise ontologies
Two modelling tools
Protégé-Frames editor
- build and populate frame-based
ontologies
- Java API for plug-ins
Protégé-OWL editor
- build Semantic Web ontologies
28. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 28
Swoogle
Search engine for seman-tic
web data (RDF)
ontologies
instance data
single terms
Ranking of semantic web
documents
inspired by Google's
PageRank
Developed at the
University of Maryland
http://swoogle.umbc.edu
29. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 29
Friend of a Friend (FOAF)
Personal information and connections to friends in RDF
http://www.foaf-project.org
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#" xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/">
<foaf:Person>
<foaf:name>Beat Signer</foaf:name>
<foaf:title>Prof.</foaf:title>
<foaf:givenname>Beat</foaf:givenname>
<foaf:family_name>Signer</foaf:family_name>
<foaf:nick>Beat</foaf:nick>
<foaf:mbox_sha1sum>ce6d419869307d57839feef6445a9d64f784eb36</foaf:mbox_sha1sum>
...
<foaf:knows>
<foaf:Person>
<foaf:name>Moira C. Norrie</foaf:name>
<foaf:mbox_sha1sum>4cb61b36a6feaa48c78acbb51fcce7cb356afdd6</foaf:mbox_sha1sum>
<rdfs:seeAlso rdf:resource="http://www.globis.ethz.ch/people/norrie.rdf">
</foaf:Person>
</foaf:knows>
...
</foaf:Person>
</rdf:RDF>
30. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 30
Friend of a Friend (FOAF) ...
First social Semantic Web
application
Miller and Brickley, 2000
Describe a social network
without a central database
links can be followed by
spiders (data mining)
no unique identifier
- identification by description
(pedicates and objects)
"six degrees of separation" or
"small world phenomenon"
FOAFNaut browser
[http://rdfweb.org/images/foaf/foafnaut-screenshot-path.jpg]
31. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 31
Semantic Wikis
Use Semantic Web
technologies to provide
machine-processable
Wiki content
page content
link metadata
Ontology reasoning
much richer query interface
Existing semantic Wikis
DBPedia
Semantic MediaWiki
...
32. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 32
Linked Data
Link different data sources (URIs) on the Web
provide metadata about the resources via RDF/XML, N3, etc.
provide links to resources in other data sets on the Web
Linked Open Data community project
RDF tripes from DBPedia, GeneID, ACM, etc. (>30 billion triples)
links between those triples (>500 million links)
http://lod-cloud.net/versions/2014-08-30/lod-cloud.svg
33. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 33
Semantic Desktops
Apply Semantic Web tech-nologies
to personal infor-mation
management (PIM)
inter-application data sharing
enhancement of limited
filesystem functionality
- add document metadata
Examples
Haystack
Nepomuk
Nepomuk Integration with Dolphin (KDE 4.0)
34. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 34
GoodRelations
Lightweight ontology for expressing
product information in e-commerce web applications
Product features
offers
prices
units
...
Adopted by various companies
Yahoo
BestBuy
...
Leads to enhanced product search functionality
35. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 35
Microformats
Add semantics to (X)HTML pages
Makes use of specific (X)HTML tag attributes
class and rel attributes
- e.g. rel="nofollow" for search engines
Specific microformats
hCard: contact information
hCalendar: event information
hProduct: product information
Alternative solutions
semantic web (RDFa)
GRDDL
- Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Language
- can convert from microformats to semantic web data (RDF)
36. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 36
hCard Microformat Example
Some search engines (e.g. Google and Yahoo) start to
pay attention to different types of microformats
<head profile="http://www.w3.org/2006/03/hcard">
...
</head>
...
<div class="vcard">
<div class="fn">Lode Hoste</div>
<div class="org">Vrije Universiteit Brussel</div>
<div class="tel">32 2629 3306</div>
<a class="url" href="http://wise.vub.ac.be/members/lode-hoste">
http://wise.vub.ac.be/members/lode-hoste</a>
</div>
37. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 37
RDF in Attributes (RDFa)
Add a set of attribute extensions to XHTML for
embedding RDF metadata
Different vocabularies
FOAF, video, audio, commerce, …
Search engines (e.g. Yahoo and Google) process certain
RDFa metadata (e.g. product information)
<p xmlns:dc=http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
about="http://www.amazon.com/...">
and the will to live. <span property="dc:creator">Simpson</span>
dedicates the book <cite property="dc:title">Touching the Void</cite> to
the... The book was published in <span property="dc:date"
content="1989-12-01">December 1989</span>.
</p>
38. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 38
Microdata
Add machine readable metadata (semantics) to
HTML5 documents in the form of key/value pairs
can be used by crawlers, search engines (SEO) and browsers to
provide a richer browsing experience
alternative to Microformats and RDFa
W3C Working Draft
<section itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Person">
Hello, my name is <span itemprop="name">Beat Signer</span> and I am a
<span itemprop="title">Professor</span> at the
<span itemprop="affiliation">Vrije Universiteit Brussel. </span>
<section itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://data
-vocabulary.org/Address">My address is:
<span itemprop="street-address">Pleinlaan 2</span>,
<span itemprop="postal-code">1050 </span>
<span itemprop="locality">Brussels</span>,
<span itemprop="country-name">Belgium</span>.
</section>
</section>
39. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 39
Exercise 9
Semantic Web
working with linked data
40. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 40
References
Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora
Lassila, The Semantic Web, Scientific American
Magazine, May 2001
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-semantic-
web
The Future Internet: Service Web 3.0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=off08As3siM
Resource Description Framework (RDF)
http://www.w3.org/RDF/
Thomas B. Passin, Explorer's Guide to the Semantic
Web, Manning Publications, March 2004
41. November 28, 2014 Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be 41
References ...
Linked Data
http://linkeddata.org