Semantic Web Tutorial

The Semantic Web = a Web with a meaning. "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

What Is The Semantic Web?

The word semantic stands for the meaning of. The semantic of something is the meaning of something.

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.
• The record "Hey Jude" was recorded by the Beatles.

Sentences like these 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.

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 Resource Description Framework

RDF (Resource Description Framework) is a markup 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 (and everything else) 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)
• Who is who
• 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.

In the following pages of this tutorial we will concentrate on using RDF to discover the potentials of the semantic web.

Please move on to the next chapter to see a simple semantic web application example.

Ektron CMS400.NET Version 7.6 delivers all of the flexibility and features you need to deploy the Web site you want, quickly and efficiently. learn more...       6 ways to take your site to the next level with Ektron: Create site stickiness through social networking. Keep it personal, relevant and interactive and they'll come back for more. Keep it open. Your site needs to be ready and able to connect to outside services. Ektron's open API gives you maximum flexibility. Streamline content and document management. Users need to quickly and intuitively find and add information. Empower your content authors. Reduce IT bottlenecks by allowing business users to create and edit Web content and forms. Climb to the top of search rankings. SEO tools, URL aliasing and eCommerce for your digital marketing strategy Add powerful Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, forums, geo-mapping, rating systems and RSS feeds easily. See why there are 20,000+ Ektron integrations worldwide. Request an INSTANT DEMO or download a FREE TRIAL today.