David S. Read - Semantic Web

Semantic Web

The concepts behind the semantic web are of a great deal of interest to me. I believe that as the standards, technologies and processes become more formalized and mature that they will lead to a fundamental change in the way that we conceive, create and utilize computer-based solutions.

My personal goal at this point is to become fluent with the variety of semantic web technologies. Some are relatively mature and others require a significant aount of work to utilize due to a shortage of tools or established techniques. I will share sample data, programs, thoughts and lessons learned as I work with these concepts.

Step one is to gain expertise with the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the extensions, Resource Description Framework Schema (RDFS) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). These data and rule structures have matured and are capable of representing any arbitrary information collection. RDF storage technology is becoming available in commerical offerings (such as Oracle's database).

Of course having data, especially data containing rules, is not useful without programs to read the data and reason (infer) over the rules. Therefore, hand-in-hand with my learning RDF, I will be working with software tools and libraries that can process RDF data structures.

Example Programs

This is where I will place links to files and programs that might be of interest to others exploring semantic web concepts. They are listed starting with the most recent release.

Semantic UI: Java Program (Updated: September, 2010)

A Java program providing a Swing-based GUI for working with semantic models and SPARQL. Utilizes Jena and Pellet.

RdbToRdf: Java Program (August, 2010)

A Java program to export relational data to RDF triples using an OWL reasoner to infer additional information. Utilizes Jena and Pellet (along with JDBC).

DiffInferencing: Java Program (June, 2010)

A Java program to use different reasoning levels with an ontology. Utilizes Jena and Pellet.

Sites

Links to other web sites with useful information regarding semantic web technologies

Tools

Links to semantic web tools (software)

Jena: Java-based Semantic Web Framework
Pellet: Java-based OWL 2 Reasoner

Blog

I will create periodic blog entries describing my exploration of semantic web concepts. These entries can be found by following the link below.

Semantic Blog Entries

FOAF

Friend of a Friend (FOAF) is a well-known ontology for describing people and their relationships. FOAF-based contact information files are beginning to appear on the web. Mine is available as a link at the top of this page as well as my home and contact pages.

I have used one of the RDF Icons released by the W3C to serve as the graphical link to it.