Building the Semantic Web
“Better things for Better Living
Through Metadata”
Frank Manola
781-271-8147 • fmanola@mitre.org
MITRE Sponsored Research
© 2001,
2002, The MITRE Corporation
Problem

The World Wide Web was originally aimed at
providing information to people, not other
software

Web resources don’t have descriptions of
their meanings or capabilities that programs
can understand
– These meanings often involve talking about
non-Web things (e.g., people)

Result: software can’t provide relevant
information or services with precision,
reflecting user intent and needs
© 2002, The MITRE Corporation
“Semantic” = “Esoteric AI”?

“Semantic Web my behind! I just want to
order a pizza, not have mozarella explained
to me.”

Many Semantic Web applications can be
rather straightforward, e.g.:
–
–
–
–
–
–
Simple content metadata (provenance, ratings)
Privacy policies
Subject-based catalogs
Site maps
Digitally-signed metadata
Description-based service brokering
© 2002, The MITRE Corporation
What is the Semantic Web?

The Semantic Web is about making the Web
machine-processable
– It’s important for the machines to have the
semantics, but it doesn’t matter how the
machines acquire the semantics

The Semantic Web is an evolution of the Web
– Universal connectivity is an important
aspect of the problem, and the solution
– It won’t happen everywhere, all at once
– Don’t discount the effects of thousands of
smart non-researchers working on it
© 2002, The MITRE Corporation
RDF in the Semantic Web
Semantic Web Architecture
(Tim Berners-Lee, W3C)
Trust
KR
Rules
KR
Data
Structured
docs.
Metadata
Proof
Logic
Ontology support (OWL)
Resource Description Framework
+ RDF Schema
Tagged data: XML + Namespaces + XML Schema
Unicode
URIs
© 2002, The MITRE Corporation
RDF Statement Model
“The creator of page http://www.foobar.org/index.html is
http://www.foobar.org/staffid/85740”
http://www.foobar.org/index.html
predicate
subject
http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/creator
http://www.foobar.org/staffid/85740
object
Ntriple:
http://www.foobar.org/index.html http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/creator
http://www.foobar.org/staffid/85740.
© 2002, The MITRE Corporation
Getting Involved

“you can’t beat something with nothing”
– Be in the right places

“the Internet is based on rough consensus
and running code”
– Show stuff people can use (in places they
can use it)
© 2002, The MITRE Corporation