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Much like in the music industry where there are so-called "overnight sensations" that toiled for years to create their success, web technology seems to sprout the "next big thing" out of nowhere. At least that is how it feels to me with the semantic web.

What is the semantic web, you say? According to Wikipedia, the semantic web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a format that can be read and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share, and integrate information more easily. It is a vision of information that is understandable by computers, so that they can perform more of the tedious work involved in finding, sharing, and combining information on the web. The semantic web derives from Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the Web as a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange.

What does that really mean?

There are basically two types of information -- data stored in some sort of database and information stored in unstructured ways (think -- desktop applications, audio, video, etc.). Currently web applications can query databases effectively to bring back information stored in databases. If the query matches the data, viola, you have the right results. Unstructured data is more difficult for machines. Sure we have a variety of search technologies that help to manage that informational space, but anyone who follows the developments in the search game knows that there remain many challenges to a strictly machine-based approach. (After all, if it were simple and accurate for machines, why would a company like Mahalo www.mahalo.com even get started?)

With the semantic web, in theory, technology will be able to bridge the gap between all forms of data. The secret is in the metadata and the namespaces that tell the machines what the markup in another document really means.

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The Business Case for Semantic Web The Semantic Web: Are You Scared Yet? BSM and the Semantic Web: Parallel Courses If you want to comment on these or any other articles you see on Intranet Journal, we'd like to hear from you in our IT Management Forum. Thanks for reading. - Tom Dunlap, Managing Editor. FREE IT Management Newsletters bITa Planet CIO Update Intranet Journal Update Datamation IT Management Careers Datamation IT Management Update Grid Computing Planet HTML E-Security Planet HTML DRM Watch HTML

What technology is involved?

The foundational pieces for the semantic web include URI's (which identify resources) along with XML and namespaces. These drive the engine behind locating, marking up, and interpreting information so that machines can read and understand the data.

The OWL Web Ontology Language provides the construct for defining and instantiating web data models that need to be read and presented to machines rather than humans. What that means is that it provides the vocabulary for describing objects and how they relate.

Resource Description Framework (RDF) provides the metadata model which is a major component of the semantic web. Think of RDF as an XML-based language to describe resources. Using a subject -- predicate -- object format (called triples) it is used to express relationships between objects. Since the semantic web is all about defining relationships between disparate objects that can be read and interpreted by machines and presented to humans in a meaningful way you can see how RDF will drive the success (or lack thereof) of this new web.

What is the business case for semantic web?

In the article "The Business Case for Semantic Web," the author talks about how organizations have tons of information but often don't know how to find it, interpret it, or make meaningful connections with other, related information. This is not news as anyone involved with the web and with complex corporate intranets knows how challenging it can be to find something you need.

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