GRDDL Primer

"GRDDL is a mechanism for Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages. It is a technique for obtaining RDF data from XML documents and in particular XHTML pages. Authors may explicitly associate documents with transformation algorithms, typically represented in XSLT, using a link element in the head of the document. Alternatively, the information needed to obtain the transformation may be held in an associated metadata profile document or namespace document. Clients reading the document can follow links across the Web using techniques described in the GRDDL specification to discover the appropriate transformations. This document uses a number of examples from the GRDDL Use Cases document to illustrate, in detail, the techniques GRDDL provides for associating documents with appropriate instructions for extracting any embedded data."

GRDDL Use Cases: Scenarios of extracting RDF data from XML documents

"There are many dialects of XML in use by documents on the web. There are dialects of XHTML, XML and RDF that are used to represent everything from poetry to prose, purchase orders to invoices, spreadsheets to databases, schemas to scripts, and linked lists to ontologies. Some are formally defined and others allow for more freedom of interpretation. Recently, two progressive encoding techniques, RDFa and microformats, have emerged to overlay additional semantics onto valid XHTML documents. These techniques offer simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.

While this breadth of expression is quite liberating, inspiring new dialects to codify both common and customized meanings, it can prove to be a barrier to understanding across different domains or fields. How, for example, does software discover the author of a poem, a spreadsheet, or an ontology? And how can software determine whether any two of these authors in fact refer to the same person?

Any number of the XML documents on the web may contain data whose value would increase dramatically if they were accessible to systems which might not directly support such a wide variety of dialects but which do support RDF."

The Tech Lab: Bradley Horowitz

"Bradley Horowitz, responsible for novel technology development at search giant Yahoo, looks ahead to the 'internet of things'.

Imagine this scenario: I am in a supermarket and I pick up a can of tomatoes and I place it in the shopping trolley. Immediately my mobile phone flashes green to indicate to me that it is a good buy. I go down the aisle and choose a bottle of wine but this time my phone flashes red to suggest I reconsider.

This is only possible when we have a universal resolver for every entity in the world." Read more . . .

Beyond Concepts: Ontology as Reality Representation

"Abstract. There is an assumption commonly embraced by ontological engineers, an assumption which has its roots in the discipline of knowledge representation, to the effect that it is concepts which form the subject-matter of ontology. The term 'concept' is hereby rarely precisely defined, and the intended role of concepts within ontology is itself subject to a variety of conflicting (and sometimes intrinsically incoherent) interpretations. It seems, however, to be widely accepted that concepts are in some sense the products of human cognition.

The present essay is devoted to the application of ontology in support of research in the natural sciences. It defends the thesis that ontologies developed for such purposes should be understood as having as their subject matter, not concepts, but rather the universals and particulars which exist in reality and are captured in scientific laws. We outline the benefits of a view along these lines by showing how it yields rigorous formal definitions of the foundational relations used in many influential ontologies, illustrating our results by reference to examples drawn from the domain of the life sciences."

A novel ontology-based biomedical search engine

"When people search, they have questions in mind. GoPubMed allows to significantly faster find information needed through the use of background knowledge. GoPubMed:

• retrieves PubMed abstracts for your search query,
• detects terms from the Gene Ontology (GO) and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) in the abstracts,
• displays the subset of the GO and MeSH relevant to the keywords, and
• allows you to browse the ontologies and display only papers containing specific GO and MeSH terms."

Microformats: Everyperson's Semantic Web, 06/15/07

"Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. XHTML, blogging). . . . [microformats are] a set of simple open data format standards that many are actively developing and implementing for more/better structured blogging and web microcontent publishing in general."

Check out the microformats blog. This article published in Smashing Magazine is full of interesting resources regarding microformats.

Elsevier’s Inteleos Poised to Launch Integrating Technology for Drug Tracking and Analysis

Elsevier’s Inteleos Poised to Launch Integrating Technology for Drug Tracking and Analysis

"With the Inteleos UI, pharmaceutical and biotech professionals will be able to compare and contrast information from multiple data sources – both internal and external to their organization – streamlining the data collection, analysis and decision making process. The single, intuitive interface presents information from disparate sources in a comprehensive, integrated format that is quick and easy to use.

The Inteleos UI is the first product to offer the ability to conduct single searches across multiple databases. An expanded ontology of scientific terms gives users the ability to conduct an exhaustive search. Advanced functionality includes the ability to "drill down" to the desired level of detail and automatic alerts when there are changes in the data sources."

SAP unveils Co-Innovation Lab and envisions Web 3.0

SAP unveils Co-Innovation Lab and envisions Web 3.0

"During his remarks, Kagermann discussed his notion of Web 3.0. "Web 2.0 is coming up in value. We want to take Web 2.0 to 3.0." It’s a version of the semantic Web theme, but focused on business software. "If you look to the services that we are defining with our enterprise SOA and things a bit beyond, we know that these type of enterprise services over time, in collaboration with many customers, associations and partners, a kind of standard can bring the Internet of business services," Kagermann said. "We don’t have the semantics today that go beyond Web 2.0 and will allow software to to speak to each other."

Using the Semantic Web in the Real World

Using the Semantic Web in the Real World

"Here is a visual list of some good examples of public technology deployments that use Semantic Web technology. In the first few slides I do a head-to-head comparison of a search using traditional Web search technology and a query using Semantic Web technology.

Semantic Web Technology Gains Steam

Semantic Web Technology Gains Steam

"For those companies looking for commercial Semantic Web products, the market is finally beginning to gain steam as more vendors from the traditional web and web service development, search, data analysis and management fields are releasing products dedicated to creating and managing applications and data for the Semantic Web.

eWEEK Labs took a look at three products designed to help businesses build and manage Semantic Web solutions; Altova's SemanticWorks 2007, Intellidimension's RDF Gateway 2.3.4 and TopQuadrant's TopBraid Composer 2.0. All three of these programs are available in free evaluation versions and are worth checking out for any business interested in building Semantic Web solutions."

Ontology and the Semantic Web

"Ontology and the Semantic Web
Zhang, Jane (2007) Ontology and the Semantic Web. In Tennis, Joseph T., Eds. Proceedings North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization 2007 1, pages pp. 9-20, Toronto, Ontario.

Full text available as:PDF - Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewer.
Abstract

This paper discusses the development of a new information representation system embodied in ontology and the Semantic Web. The new system differs from other representation systems in that it is based on a more sophisticated semantic representation of information, aims to go well beyond the document level, and designed to be understood and processed by machine. A common theme underlying these three features, i.e., turning documents into meaningful interchangeable data, reflects a rising use expectation nurtured by modern technology and, at the same time, presents a unique challenge for its enabling technologies."

Haiku: An Introduction to the Semantic Web

An Introduction to the hard Semantic Web......in simple Haiku.

The Challenges of the Semantic Web

"The Challenges of the Semantic Web
Click here to download the podcast or Click here to listen to it using the integrated eWEEK podcast player.
In this Tech Rising podcast, eWEEK Chief Technology Analyst Jim Rapoza speaks to Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the Web and head of the World Wide Web Consortium, about the current status of the Semantic Web, the challenges it faces and its future. Jim also speaks to Eric Miller, president of Zepheira, a company that helps businesses deploy and leverage Semantic Web technologies, and to Stephen Downes, a researcher at the National Research Council's Institute for Information Technology in Canada, who believes that the Semantic Web will ultimately fail because of proprietary data protections."

Semantic Web Case Studies and Use Cases Published

"Semantic Web Case Studies and Use Cases Published
The Semantic Web Education and Outreach (SWEO) Interest Group is pleased to announce the first set of Case Studies and Use Cases giving some examples of how the Semantic Web of machine readable data is used today. Applications are presented in areas ranging from automotive to health care, and from B2B systems to geographical information systems. The SWEO Interest Group will continue to publish new Case Studies and Use Cases in the future; an RSS feed for new submissions is available. A short overview is also available in Open Document Format, PDF, and HTML formats."

Dow Jones Introduces Synaptica 6.4 for Improved Business Semantic Management

"Dow Jones Introduces Synaptica 6.4 for Improved Business Semantic Management
— its latest semantic Web-enabled knowledge organization system for the enterprise. Synaptica 6.4 simplifies and standardizes vocabulary and metadata management in order to unlock valuable business intelligence."

W3C Semantic Web Frequently Asked Questions

W3C Semantic Web Frequently Asked Questions is an excellent resource for overview answers to the following questions:

• What is the Semantic Web?
• How does the Semantic Web relate to…
• How do I participate in the Semantic Web?
• Questions on RDF, Ontologies, SPARQL, Rules . . . .