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Vol. VI,
issue no. 6,
December 2005
The Semantic Web
Published on behalf
of CEPIS by Novática
(ATI, Spain)
|
Guest
Editors:
Luis
Sánchez-Fernández, Michael Sintek, and Stefan Decker
|
Contents
|
Editions
of the monograph in other
languages
- Spanish,
by Novática (full
edition printed -- now available
--; summary, presentation and
abstracts
online **now available**)
|
Editorial
Team of Upgrade
Chief
Editor: Rafael
Fernández
Calvo, <rfcalvo AT ati DOT
es>
Associate Editors:
François
Louis Nicolet, <nicolet AT acm DOT org>; Roberto
Carniel, <rcarniel AT dgt DOT uniud DOT it>; Zakaria Maamar,
<Zakaria DOT Maamar AT zu DOT ac DOT ae>; Soraya Kouadri
Mostéfaoui, <soraya DOT kouadrimostefaoui AT unifr DOT
ch>
(E-mail
addresses
written with anti-spamming disguise)
Acrobat
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Monograph
The Semantic Web |
UPENET
(UPGRADE European
NETwork)
Papers
from the
Spanish journal "Novática" and
the Polish journal "Pro Dialog" |
Monograph: The Semantic Web
Published
on behalf
of CEPIS by Novática
(ATI, Spain)
Guest
Editors: Luis
Sánchez-Fernández, Michael Sintek, and Stefan Decker
Presentation
The Semantic Web or The Next Web
[HTML]
[PDF: 3 pages, 130 KB]
(Includes a list of Useful
References
for those
interested in knowing more about the subject, plus a Glossary
of terms commonly used in this field.)
Luis
Sánchez-Fernández, Michael Sintek, and Stefan Decker -
Guest Editors
Abstract: The
guest editors comment on the monograph of Novática and UPGRADE and
briefly introducing the papers it
consists of.
The Semantic Web:
Fundamentals and A Brief State-of-the-Art [PDF:
7 pages, 144 KB]
Luis
Sánchez-Fernández and Norberto
Fernández-García
Abstract: In this article we present an overview of the Semantic
Web.
We look at the some of the problems facing the Web today and by way of
a possible solution we propose an evolution of the current Web whereby
the content available on the Web would have associated formal,
machine-readable descriptions. We describe the fundamental components
of the Semantic Web and its state-of-the-art: semantic annotation,
ontologies, and logical reasoning.
Leveraging
Metadata Creation by Annotation for The Semantic Web [PDF:
7 pages, 268 KB]
Siegfried Handschuh
Abstract: The success of
the Semantic Web crucially depends on the easy creation of
ontology-based metadata by semantic annotation. We provide a framework,
CREAM, that allows for the creation of semantic metadata about static
and dynamic Web pages, i.e. for semantic annotation of the Shallow and
the Deep Web. CREAM supports the manual and the semi-automatic
annotation of static Web pages, the authoring of new web pages with the
simultaneous creation of metadata, and the deep annotation of Web pages
defined dynamically by database queries.
The Quest for Information
Retrieval on The Semantic Web [PDF:
5 pages, 183 KB]
David
Vallet-Weadon, Miriam Fernández-Sánchez, and Pablo
Castells-Azpilicueta
Abstract: Semantic
search has been one of the motivations of the Semantic Web since it was
envisioned. We propose a model for the exploitation of ontology-based
KBs (Knowledge Bases) to improve search over large document
repositories. The retrieval model is based on an adaptation of the
classic vector-space model, including an annotation weighting
algorithm, and a ranking algo-rithm. Semantic search is combined with
keyword-based search to achieve tolerance to KB in-completeness. Our
proposal has been tested on corpora of significant size, showing
promising results with respect to keyword-based search, and providing
ground for further analysis and research.
Functional RuIeML: From
Horn Logic with Equality to Lambda Calculus [PDF:
6 pages, 129 KB]
Harold Boley
Abstract:
Functions are introduced to RuleML via orthogonal dimensions
"constructor vs. user-defined", "single- vs. set-valued", "first- vs.
higher-order". This enables functional-logic programming for the
Semantic Web.
Errata Notice: The PDF of this article, edited by UPGRADE, contains several typos distorting the meaning of the formulas. You can retrieve the original PDF of the paper with the intact formulas by clicking here. Our apologies for the mistake.
Towards
Semantic Desktop Wikis [PDF:
5 pages, 113 KB]
Malte
Kiesel and Leo Sauermann
Abstract: To manage
information on a personal computer, tools are needed that allow easy
entering of new knowledge and that can relate ideas and concepts to
existing information. Wikis allow entering information in a quick and
easy way. They can be employed for both collaborative and personal
information management. Semantic Web standards such as RDF(S) (Resource
Description Framework) and OWL (Web Ontology Language) provide
means to represent formalized knowledge. Using these standards to
represent relations between individual desktop data sources, an
integrated view of the user's information can be realized, known as the
Semantic Desktop. In this paper, we propose combining information
represented using Semantic Web standards with the simple information
management known from wikis. The result is a Semantic Desktop Wiki,
which can form a melting pot for ideas and personal information
management.
Towards
Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities [PDF:
6
pages, 253
KB]
Uldis
Bojars, John G. Breslin, Andreas Harth, and Stefan Decker
Abstract: Online community sites have
replaced the traditional means of keeping a community informed via
libraries and publishing. At present, online communities are islands
that are not interlinked. Ontologies and Semantic Web technologies
offer an upgrade path to providing more complex services. We present
the SIOC (Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities) ontology which
combines terms from vocabularies that already exist with new terms
needed to describe the relationships between concepts in the realm of
online community sites.
A Semantic Search Engine for
the International Relation Sector [PDF:
7
pages, 542
KB]
Luis
Rodrigo-Aguado, V. Richard Benjamins, Jesús Contreras-Cino,
Diego-Javier Patón-Villahermosa, David Navarro-Arnao, Robert
Salla-Figuerol, Mercedes Blázquez-Cívico, Pilar
Tena-García, and Isabel Martos-Laborde
Abstract: The Royal Institute Elcano
(Real Instituto Elcano, RIE) is a prestigious independent political
Spanish institute whose mission is to comment on the geo-political
situation in the world focusing on its relation to Spain. As part of
its dissemination strategy it operates a public website. In this paper
we present and evaluate the application of a semantic search engine to
improve access to the Institute’s informational content: instead of
retrieving documents based on user queries of keywords, the system
accepts queries in natural language and returns answers rather than
links to documents. Topics that will be discussed include ontology
construction, automatic ontology population, semantic access through
and a natural language interface.
Semantic Search in Digital Image Archives: A Case Study [PDF:
7 pages, 149
KB]
Julio
Villena-Román, José-Carlos
González-Cristóbal, Cristina Moreno-García, and
José- Luis Martínez-Fernández.
Abstract: This paper describes a
commercial project which applies the concepts put forward by the
Semantic Web in order to improve image search in a website for selling
photographs through the Internet. The specific problem addressed here
concerns techniques for the semiautomatic creation of thesauri and the
normalization of image descriptors from a previous set of labels
showing free keywords with partial morphological expansion. The
ultimate goal of this project is to improve customer accessibility to a
collection of more than two million photographs. This project has been
developed by the Spanish company DAEDALUS-Data, Decisions and Language,
S.A. for the Internet website stockphotos.es, of the company Stock
Photos S.L.
Configuring e-Government
Services Using Ontologies [PDF:
8 pages, 321
KB]
Dimitris Apostolou, Ljiljana Stojanovic, Tomas
Pariente-Lobo, Joan Batlle-Montserrat, and Andreas E. Papadakis
Abstract: The increasing complexity of
e-Government services demands a correspondingly larger effort for
management. Today, many system management tasks, such as service
verification and re-configuration due to changes in the law, are often
performed manually. This can be time-consuming and error-prone. The
main objective of the OntoGov (IST-2002-507237) project,
<http://www.ontogov.com/>, is to overcome the above mentioned
problems by developing a semantically-enriched platform that will
facilitate the consistent configuration and re-configuration of
e-Government services. This paper outlines the overall OntoGov platform
and demonstrates how the Service Modeller can be used to consistently
model e-Government Services.
The Guest
Editors
Luis Sánchez-Fernández graduated as
a telecommunications
engineer from the Universidad
Politécnica de Madrid,
Spain, in 1992 and
received his doctorate in Telecommunications Engineering, from the same
university in 1997. In October 1997 he joined the Universidad Carlos III de
Madrid where he is currently a
full professor in the Dept. of Telematic
Engineering, holding the post of Assistant Director. He is Director at
the Web
Technologies Lab, <http://www.it.uc3m.es/infoflex/techweb/es/>,
which
forms part of the research group Grupo
de Aplicaciones y Servicios
Telemáticos (Telematic
Applications and Services Group) of the Universidad
Carlos III de Madrid. He has
participated and/or led a number of national
research projects and one European project related to web technologies,
including Semantic Web technologies, and has authored more than 50
publications
in national and international conferences and journals as well as a
number of
chapters in scientific books. His current research activities are
focused on
the Semantic Web (semantic annotation, ontologies, semantic Web
services). He
is also interested in other technologies related to Web applications,
such as
XML. He is a member of the Spanish CEPIS society ATI (Asociación de Técnicos
de Informática) and a
frequent contributor to its journal Novática.
<luiss AT uc3m DOT es>
Michael
Sintek
studied
Computer Science and Economics at the University of Kaiserslautern,
Germany,
and received the Diplom (Master's degree) in 1996. Since then, he is
working as
a research scientist at the German Research Center for Artificial
Intelligence
(DFKI GmbH) Kaiserslautern. In the research department for Intelligent
Engineering Systems he investigated in the VEGA project logic
programming and
machine learning approaches for the maintenance of knowledge-bases. In
2000 and
2001, he was project leader of the FRODO project (DFKI Knowledge
Management
Group) where we develop a framework for building distributed
organizational
memories. As a visiting researcher at the Stanford Medical Informatics
department (August - October 1999 and November 2000 - February 2001) he
developed
various plugins for the frame-based knowledge acquisition tool
Protégé-2000,
including the OntoViz ontology visualization tab and the RDFS and OIL
backends.
In 2002, he was a visiting researcher at the Stanford Database Group
and at
ISI, working on the Edutella project and the Semantic Web rule language
TRIPLE.
Currently, he is cohead of the Competence Center Semantic Web (CCSW) at
DFKI.
<sintek AT dfki DOT uni-kl DOT de>
Stefan Decker received
his PhD at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. He is working
as a Senior Research Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer at the National
University of
Ireland, Galway, and is executive director of the Digital Enterprise
Research
Institute (DERI) and Cluster Leader of the Semantic Web Cluster within
the
institute. Previously he worked at ISI, University of Southern
California (2
years, as Research Assistant Professor and Computer Scientist),
Stanford
University, Computer Science Department (Database Group) (3 Years,
PostDoc and
Research Fellow), and Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe (4 years,
PhD
Student and Junior Researcher). He has initiated or participated in
several
projects and activities regarding the Semantic Web, such as Ontobroker,
Protégé, XML-based OIL, Edutella, and the Semantic Web
Working Symposium at
Stanford University (USA). His research interests include the Semantic
Web and
P2P technologies and his current and future objective is the creation
and wide
dissemination of the next generation collaboration and augmentation
infrastructure - the Social Semantic Desktop. <Stefan DOT Decker AT deri DOT org>
UPENET
(UPGRADE
European NETwork) [PDF:
11 pages, 472 KB]
From Novática (ATI, Spain)
ICT for Education
An Educational Modernization Initiative: The Ponte dos Brozos Project
Simón
Neira-Dueñas and Felipe Gómez-Pallete Rivas
This paper was first published, in Spanish, by Novática
(issue no. 177, Sep.-Oct. 2005, pp. 61-67). Novática, a founding member
of UPENET, is a bimonthly
journal published, in Spanish, by the Spanish CEPIS society ATI
(Asociación de Técnicos
de Informática – Association of Computer Professionals).
Abstract:
This article
describes the technical solutions adopted by the Amancio Ortega
Foundation for the development of an educational change project
involving three public education centres in Arteixo (A Coruña,
Spain). This is a pilot project. Thus, in terms of its technical,
organizational and economic aspects, the final result is an educational
modernization model which could be replicated by any public agency or
private organization.
From Pro Dialog (PIPS, Poland)
ICT for Education
On The Superiority of
Internet-Based Mass Enrolment to High Schools over Traditional
Andrzej P. Urbański
This paper
was first published, in English, by Pro Dialog
(issue no. 20, 2005, pp. 43-50). Pro
Dialog, a
founding member of UPENET, is
a journal copublished, in Polish or English, by the Polish CEPIS
society PTI-PIPS (Polskie Towarzystwo Informatyczne –
Polish Information Processing Society) and the Poznan University of
Technology, Institute of Computing Science.
Abstract: Fairness in educational
enrolment means that a student with better previous educational results
is preferred to a worse student in every school they apply to. In this
paper we show that in the case of mass enrolment it is difficult to
make it entirely fair. This observation has lead us to the design and
implementation of a client-server enrolment system working over the
Internet. We make an attempt to formally prove that computer support is
necessary to achieve fair mass enrolment. First, we formally define
enrolment and its fairness. Second, we formally criticize mass
enrolment performed with the use of traditional methods, and third, we
introduce algorithms coordinating computerized mass enrolment
coordination and prove their correctness.
Monograph: The Semantic Web
Presentation
The Semantic Web
or The Next Web
Wave [PDF:
3 pages, 130 KB]
Luis
Sánchez-Fernández, Michael Sintek, and Stefan Decker -
Guest Editors
The
Semantic Web vision – that of a Web in which software agents can access
and
process web page content and automatically perform tasks that today
require
tedious interaction – was proposed by Tim Berners-Lee,
the
inventor of the current Web, towards the end of the last century. Since
that
moment, there has been a flurry of research activity in this field, and
applications based on Semantic Web technologies are already beginning
to
appear. Interested readers are referred to “Semantic Web Challenge”,
<http://challenge.semanticweb.org/>.
This UPGRADE
and Novática monograph devoted to the Semantic
Web (also called
the Next-Generation Web) is made up of articles intended to
provide a
broad overview of the different activities being carried out in this
field. In
addition to the regular article on the state-of-the-art (“The Semantic Web:
Fundamentals and A Brief State-of-the-Art”, by Luis
Sánchez-Fernández
and Norberto Fernández-García),
the monograph will cover the
following key areas:
- Fundamental
Semantic Web technologies: “Leveraging Metadata
Creation by Annotation for
The Semantic Web”, by Siegfried Handschuh ; “The Quest for
Information Retrieval on The Semantic Web”, by David
Vallet-Weadon, Miriam Fernández-Sánchez
and Pablo
Castells-Azpilicueta;
and “Functional RuIeML: From Horn Logic with
Equality to Lambda Calculus”,
by Harold Boley.
- Systems
that in some way allow us to get more out of the Web: “Towards Semantic Desktop Wikis”, de Malte
Kiesel and Leo Sauermann; and “Towards Semantically-Interlinked
Online Communities”, by Uldis Bojars, John
G. Breslin, Andreas Harth and Stefan
Decker.
- Specific
applications based on Semantic Web technologies: “A Semantic Search
Engine
for The International Relation Sector”, by Luis Rodrigo-Aguado,
V. Richard Benjamins, Jesús Contreras-Cino,
Diego-Javier Patón-Villahermosa,
David Navarro-Arnao,
Robert Salla-Figuerol, Mercedes Blázquez-Cívico,
Pilar Tena-García and Isabel Martos-Laborde; “Semantic
Search in Digital Image Archives: A Case Study”, by
Julio
Villena-Román, José-Carlos
González-Cristóbal,
Cristina Moreno-García and
José-Luis
Martínez-Fernández;
and “Configuring
e-Government Services Using Ontologies”, by Dimitris
Apostolou, Ljiljana Stojanovic, Tomás
Pariente-Lobo, Joan Batlle-Montserrat, and Andreas E. Papadakis.
From
another point of view the articles can be broken down into those from
industry
sources, those produced by research institutes linked (to a greater or
lesser
extent) to universities or coming directly from the university world,
plus one
from a European research project, the consortium of which includes both
universities and companies. The presence of the university world is
important,
but there is also clear evidence of interest from industry.
As is
normal in monographs published by this journal, the reader can also
find a
number of useful references in this
presentation, complemented on this occasion
by a glossary of terms commonly used in this
field.
We would
not like to end this presentation without thanking UPGRADE
and Novática for their support
during the editing process, and we trust that this edition will be of
interest
and use to the readers of both journals.
Translation
by Steve Turpin
Useful References on The
Semantic Web
This
section provides a lists of some of the most important references
related to
the Semantic Web, which are intended to complement those appearing in
the
articles making up this monograph.
Websites
- W3C (World
Wide Web Consortium): <http://www.w3.org/>.
- W3C
Semantic Web: <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/>.
- Semantic
Web ORG: <http://semanticweb.org/>.Semantic
Web Science Association: <http://www.iswsa.org/index.html>.
-
AIS
SIGSEMIS (Semantic Web and Information Systems):
<ttp://www.sigsemis.org/>.
- OMWG (Ontology
Management Working Group): <http://www.omwg.org/>.
- SWSI (Semantic
Web Services Initiative): <http://www.swsi.org/>.
Conferences
- 1st
Asian Semantic Web Conference, 2006: <http://www.aswc2006.org/>.
- European
Semantic Web Conference, 2005: <http://www.eswc2005.org/>.
- International
Semantic Web Conference, 2005: <http://iswc2005.semanticweb.org/>.
- International
Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems, 2004:
<http://fois2004.di.unito.it/>
- International
World Wide Web Conference, 2005. <http://www2005.org/>.
- International
Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ICAI, 2005:
<http://www.world-academy-of-science.org/IMCSE2005/ws/ICAI>.
- IEEE/WIC/ACM
International Conference on Web Intelligence, 2005:
<http://www.hds.utc.fr/WI05/>.
- Atlantic
Web Intelligence Conference, 2005:
<http://wic.ics.p.lodz.pl/awic/>.
Journals
- Journal
of Web Semantics, Elsevier:
<http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/671322/description>.
- IEEE
Intelligent Systems, IEEE:
<http://www.computer.org/portal/site/intelligent/>.
- Applied
Ontology, IOS Press: <http://www.iospress.nl/html/15705838.php>.
- International
Journal of Knowledge and Learning, Inderscience:
<https://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=42>.
Books
- John
Davies, Dieter Fensel, Frank van Harmelen. Towards the Semantic
Web: Ontology-Driven
Knowledge Management, John Wiley & Son, 2003. ISBN
0-470-84867-7.
- Dieter Fensel, Wolfgang Wahlster, Henry Lieberman, James
Hendler. Spinning the Semantic Web: Bringing the World Wide Web to Its
Full Potential. The MIT Press, 2002. ISBN 0-262-06232-1.
- Grigoris Antoniou, Frank van Harmelen. A Semantic Web
Primer, The MIT Press, 2004. ISBN 0-262-01210-3.
- Siegfried Handschuh, Steffen Staab. Annotation for the
Semantic Web. IOS Press, 2004. ISBN 158603345X.
- Asunción Gómez-Pérez, Mariano
Fernández-López, Oscar Corcho. Ontological engineering:
with examples from the areas of knowledge management, e-commerce and
the semantic web, Springer Verlag, 2004. ISBN 1852335513.Steffen Staab,
Rudi Studer. Handbook on Ontologies. Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 2004.
ISBN 3-540-40834-7.
- Asunción Gómez-Pérez, Mariano
Fernández-López, Oscar Corcho. Ontological engineering:
with examples from the areas of knowledge management, e-commerce and
the semantic web, Springer Verlag, 2004. ISBN 1852335513.Steffen Staab,
Rudi Studer. Handbook on Ontologies. Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 2004.
ISBN 3-540-40834-7.
- Franz Baader, Peter Patel-Schneider, Diego Calvanese,
Deborah L. McGuinness, Daniele Nardi. The Description Logic Handbook:
Theory, Implementation, and Applications, Cambridge University Press,
2003. ISBN 0521781760.
Research
Projects,
Excellence Networks
-
KnowledgeWeb:
<http://knowledgeweb.semanticweb.org/>.
- SEKT (Semantically
Enabled Knowledge Technologies):
<http://www.sekt-project.com/>.
- DIP (DIP-Data,
Information, and Process Integration with Semantic Web Services):
<http://dip.semanticweb.org/>.
- SWAP (Semantic
Web and Peer to peer):
<http://swap.semanticweb.org/public/index.htm>.
- AceMedia:
<http://www.acemedia.org/aceMedia>.
- REWERSE
(Reasoning on the Web with Rules and Semantics):
<http://rewerse.net/>.
- OntoWeb:
<http://ontoweb.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/>.
- SEWASIE (SEmantic Webs and AgentS in Integrated
Economies):<http://www.sewasie.org/index.html>.
- SWWS
(Semantic Web Enabled Web Services):
<http://swws.semanticweb.org/>.
- WonderWeb:
<http://wonderweb.semanticweb.org/index.shtml>.
- NEWS:
<http://www.news-project.com>
Ontologies
-
SUMO (Suggested
Upper Merged Ontology): <http://www.ontologyportal.org/>.
- MILO (MId
Level Ontology): <http://www.ontologyportal.org/>.
- KIMO
(Knowledge and Information Management Ontology):
<http://www.ontotext.com/kim/kimo.rdfs>.
- PROTON
(PROTO ONtology): <http://proton.semanticweb.org/>.
- OpenCyC:
<http://www.cyc.com/opencyc>.
- TAP
Knowlege Base: <http://tap.stanford.edu/>.
- WordNet:
<http://wordnet.princeton.edu/>.
- EuroWordNet:
<http://www.illc.uva.nl/EuroWordNet/>.
Glossary
of terms
Annotation: the process of associating
metadata to a resource in order to describe it fully or partially.
Semantic
annotation:
annotation in which the metadata are formally defined and machine
readable.
Metadata:
data that describes other data. In
the field of Semantic Web, metadata are used to describe resources.
Ontology:
a formal vocabulary of relevant
concepts in a domain, the properties that relate them and perhaps also
the rules
that govern the functioning of that domain. A more detailed definition
of what
an ontology is can be found in the “state-of-the-art” article.
OWL:
Ontology Web Language. An ontology
definition language for W3C Semantic Web standards (see below).
RDF:
Resource Description Framework. It
is a W3C standard language for formally describing resources. Formal
resource
descriptions form the basis of the Semantic Web.
RDF
Schema: the
ontology definition language for W3C Semantic Web standards. It has
less expressiveness
than OWL.
Resource:
anything that may be interesting
to describe in a Semantic Web application. A Web page, an e-mail, a
file, ...
are all resources, but so might be a person, a car, even an idea.
Resources are
identified by URIs.
RDF
Triple: this is the
basic element of an RDF model. It is also called an RDF statement. It
comprises
a subject, a predicate, and an object. An RDF triple indicates that the
resource identified by the subject has a property indicated by the
predicate
whose value is the object.
URI:
Uniform Resource Identifier. It is
the format used in the Semantic Web to assign identifiers to resources.
W3C:
World Wide Web Consortium. It is
the organization responsible for developing Web standards.
Copyright
© CEPIS
2005/2006. All rights reserved unless otherwise stated.
