W3C Semantic Web Activity

The Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries. It is a collaborative effort led by W3C with participation from a large number of researchers and industrial partners. It is based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF). See also the separate FAQ for further information.

Introduction

Specifications (Recommendations and Notes)

You may want to look at the collection of SW Case Studies and Use Cases to see how organizations are using these technologies today.

Resource Description Framework (RDF):

• RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised), W3C Recommendation, February 10, 2004, Dave Beckett, ed.
• RDF Vocabulary Description Language 1.0: RDF Schema, W3C Recommendation, February 10, 2004, Ramanathan V. Guha, Dan Brickley, eds.
• Resource Description Framework (RDF): Concepts and Abstract Syntax, W3C Recommendation, February 10, 2004, Graham Klyne, Jeremy J. Carroll, eds.
• RDF Semantics, W3C Recommendation, February 10, 2004, Patrick Hayes, ed.
• RDF Test Cases, W3C Recommendation, February 10, 2004, Jan Grant, Dave Beckett, eds.

Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages (GRDDL):

• Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages (GRDDL), W3C Recommendation, September 11, 2007, Dan Connolly, ed.
• GRDDL Test Cases, W3C Recommendation, September 11, 2007, Chimezie Ogbuji, ed.
• GRDDL Primer, W3C Working Group Note, June 28, 2007, Harry Halpin, Ian Davis, eds.
• GRDDL Use Cases: Scenarios of extracting RDF data from XML documents, W3C Working Group Note, April 6, 2007, Fabien Gandon, ed.

RDFa in XHTML: Syntax and Processing:

• RDFa in XHTML: Syntax and Processing, W3C Recommendation, October 18, 2008, Ben Adida, Mark Birbeck, Shane McCarron, Steven Pemberton, eds.
• RDFa Primer, W3C Working Group Note, October 14, 2008, Ben Adida, Mark Birbeck, eds.

SPARQL Query Language for RDF:

• SPARQL Query Language for RDF, W3C Recommendation, January 15, 2008, Andy Seaborne, Eric Prud'hommeaux, eds.
• SPARQL Protocol for RDF, W3C Recommendation, January 15, 2008, Elias Torres, Lee Feigenbaum, Kendall Grant Clark, eds.
• SPARQL Query Results XML Format, W3C Recommendation, January 15, 2008, Dave Beckett, Jeen Broekstra, eds.
• Serializing SPARQL Query Results in JSON, W3C Working Group Note, June 18, 2007, Kendall Grant Clark, Lee Feigenbaum, Elias Torres, eds.

Web Ontology Language (OWL):

• OWL Web Ontology Language Reference, W3C Recommendation, February 10, 2004, Guus Schreiber, Mike Dean, eds. Frank van Harmelen, Jim Hendler, Ian Horrocks, Deborah L. McGuinness, Peter F. Patel-Schneider, Lynn Andrea Stein, authors.
• OWL Web Ontology Language Use Cases and Requirements, W3C Recommendation, February 10, 2004, Jeff Heflin, ed.
• OWL Web Ontology Language Semantics and Abstract Syntax, W3C Recommendation, February 10, 2004, Peter F. Patel-Schneider, Patrick Hayes, Ian Horrocks, eds.
• OWL Web Ontology Language Overview, W3C Recommendation, February 10, 2004, Deborah L. McGuinness, Frank van Harmelen, eds.
• OWL Web Ontology Language Test Cases, W3C Recommendation, February 10, 2004, Jeremy J. Carroll, Jos De Roo, eds.
• OWL Web Ontology Language Guide, W3C Recommendation, February 10, 2004, Michael K. Smith, Deborah L. McGuinness, Chris Welty, eds.
• OWL Web Ontology Language Parsing OWL in RDF/XML, W3C Working Group Note, January 21, 2004, Sean Bechhofer, ed.
• OWL Web Ontology Language XML Presentation Syntax, W3C Working Group Note, June 11, 2003, Masahiro Hori, Jérôme Euzenat, Peter F. Patel-Schneider, eds.

Semantic Web Deployment:

• Best Practice Recipes for Publishing RDF Vocabularies, W3C Working Group Note, August 28, 2008, Diego Berrueta, Jon Phipps, eds.
• Cool URIs for the Semantic Web, W3C Interest Group Note, March 3, 2008, Leo Sauermann, Richard Cyganiak, eds.
• Defining N-ary Relations on the Semantic Web, W3C Working Group Note, April 12, 2006, Natasha Noy, Alan Rector, eds.
• XML Schema Datatypes in RDF and OWL, W3C Working Group Note, March 14, 2006, Jeremy J. Carroll, Jeff Z. Pan, eds.
• A Survey of RDF/Topic Maps Interoperability Proposals, W3C Working Group Note, March 9, 2006, Steve Pepper, Fabio Vitali, Lars Marius Garshol, Nicola Gessa, Valentina Presutti, eds.
• A Semantic Web Primer for Object-Oriented Software Developers, W3C Working Group Note, March 9, 2006, Holger Knublauch, Daniel Oberle, Phil Tetlow, Evan Wallace, eds.
• Representing Specified Values in OWL: "value partitions" and "value sets", W3C Working Group Note, May 17, 2005, Alan Rector, ed.
• Representing Classes As Property Values on the Semantic Web, W3C Working Group Note, April 5, 2005, Natasha Noy, ed.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• A Prototype Knowledge Base for the Life Sciences, W3C Interest Group Note, June 4, 2008, Alan Ruttenberg, Jonathan Rees, Susie Stephens, Matthias Samwald, Kei-Hoi Cheung, eds.
• Experiences with the conversion of SenseLab databases to RDF/OWL, W3C Interest Group Note, Matthias Samwald, Kei-Hoi Cheung, eds.
• POWDER: Use Cases and Requirements, W3C Interest Group Note, October 31, 2007, Phil Archer, ed.
• LBase: Semantics for Languages of the Semantic Web, W3C Working Group Note, October 3, 2003, R.V.Guha, Patrick Hayes, eds.
• An RDF Schema for P3P, W3C Note, January 25, 2002, Brian McBride, Rigo Wenning, Lorrie Cranor, eds.
• An RDF Schema for the XML Information Set, W3C Note, April 6, 2001, Richard Tobin, ed.
• Harvesting RDF Statements from XLinks, W3C Note, September 29, 2000, Ron Daniel Jr., ed.
• The Cambridge Communiqué, W3C Note, October 6, 1999, Ralph R. Swick, Henry S. Thompson, eds.
• A Discussion of the Relationship Between RDF-Schema and UML , W3C Note, August 4, 1998, Walter W. Chang,, eds.

See also the list of translations for RDF, GRDDL, RDFa, SPARQL, and OWL

Publications / Articles / Interviews

The following is a partial list of various publications and or interviews by the W3C Staff that help explain the goals and objectives of the Semantic Web.

• “What is the future of the internet”, BBC Radio 4 Interview (9 July 2008).
• “Sir Tim Berners-Lee Talks About the Semantic Web”, Transcript of the Podcast Interview with Paul Miller (February 2008); the sound version can also be accessed on-line.
• The Semantic Web in Action, by Lee Feigenbaum, Ivan Herman, Tonya Hongsermeier, Eric Neumann, and Susie Stephens, Scientific American, 297(6), pp. 90-97, (December 2007).
• Interview with Tim Berners-Lee, Business Week, April 2007.
• Tim Berners-Lee on the Semantic Web, Video on MIT Technology Review, March 2007 (the video of the interview can also be accessed).
• The Semantic Web Revisited, by Nigel Shadbolt, Tim Berners-Lee and Wendy Hall, IEEE Intelligent Systems 21(3) pp. 96-101, May/June 2006.
• Le Web Sémantique: un interview avec Ivan Herman , by Xavier Borderie at Journal du Net, développeurs, June 2006. (Interview in French.)
• The Semantic Web: an Interview with Tim Berners-Lee, by Andrew Updegrove at ConsortiumInfo.org, June 2005.
• The Semantic Web, Scientific American, May 2001, Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila.

See the archive for earlier entries on this list.

Presentations

Details of recent and upcoming Semantic Web related talks, given by the W3C Staff, the staff of the W3C Offices, and members of the W3C Working Groups are available separately. A list of all Semantic Web related talks since 2004 is also available. References to a small subset of these presentations are provided here for convenience.

• 2008-11-28, Introduction to the W3C for Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group (tutorial), M. Scott Marshall and Susie Stephens, Semantic Web Applications and Tools for Life Sciences (SWAT4LS Workshop), in Edinburgh, United Kingdom
• 2008-10-26, RDFa—Bridging the Web of Documents and the Web of Data (tutorial), Michael Hausenblas, Ivan Herman, and Ben Adida, 7th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2008), in Karlsruhe, Germany
• 2008-10-09, Semantic Web, and Other Technologies to Watch, Steve Bratt, Dickinson College Seminar, in Carlisle, PA, USA
• 2008-10-07, W3C Semantic Web technologies for the OKS, Ossi Nykänen, The 2nd International OPAALS Conference on Digital Ecosystems: OPAALS 2008, in Tampere, Finland
• 2008-10-02, On the Way to the Semantic Web, Klaus Birkenbihl and Ivan Herman, Rio Info 2008, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• 2008-09-24, Introduction to the Semantic Web (tutorial) Ivan Herman, 2nd European Semantic Technology Conference in Vienna, Austria
• 2008-06-19, États des lieux du Web sémantique (State of the Semantic Web), Ivan Herman, 19èmes Journées Francophones d’Ingénierie des Connaissances in Nancy, France
• 2008-06-17, Web of Data, Tim Berners-Lee, Linked Data Planet Conference, in New York, NY, USA
• 2008-05-18, State of the Semantic Web, Ivan Herman, 2008 Semantic Technology Conference, in San Jose, CA, USA

Groups

The following groups are part of the Semantic Web Activity.

Active Groups

Semantic Web Coordination Group

The Semantic Web Coordination Group is tasked to provide a forum for managing the interrelationships and interdependencies among groups focusing on standards and technologies that relate to this goals of the Semantic Web Activity. This group is designed to coordinate, facilitate and (where possible) help shape the efforts of other related groups to avoid duplication of effort and fragmentation of the Semantic Web by way of incompatible standards and technologies.

Rules Interchange Format Working Group

This Working Group is chartered to produce a core rule language plus extensions which together allow rules to be translated between rule languages and thus transferred between rule systems. The Working Group will have to balance the needs of a community diverse including Business Rules and Semantic users Web specifying extensions for which it can articulate a consensus design and which are sufficiently motivated by use cases.

OWL Working Group

The mission of the OWL Working Group, is to produce a W3C Recommendation that refines and extends the 2004 version of OWL. The proposed extensions are a small set that: have been identified by users as widely needed, and have been identified by tool implementers as reasonable and feasible extensions to current tools.

Semantic Web Deployment Working Group

The mission of this Working Group is to provide guidance in the form of W3C Technical Reports on issues of practical RDF development and deployment practices in the areas of publishing vocabularies, OWL usage, and integrating RDF with HTML documents.

This group is also responsible for the development of the RDFa and SKOS specifications.

Semantic Web Interest Group

The Semantic Web Interest Group is a forum for W3C Members and non-Members to discuss innovative applications of the Semantic Web. The Interest Group also initiates discussion on potential future work items related to enabling technologies that support the Semantic Web, and the relationship of that work to other activities of W3C and to the broader social and legal context in which the Web is situated.

Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group

The Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group is designed to improve collaboration, research and development, and innovation adoption in the health care and life science industries. Aiding decision-making in clinical research, Semantic Web technologies will bridge many forms of biological and medical information across institutions.

Completed Groups

The following groups have completed their deliverables and are no longer expected to hold regular meetings.

RDF Data Access Working Group

The focus of the RDF Data Access Working Group was to evaluate the requirements for an query language and network protocol for RDF and define formal specifications and test cases for supporting such requirements.

Past Groups

RDF Core Working Group

The RDF Core Working Group was chartered to consider update to the RDF Model and Syntax Recommendation, and to a few revisions to the RDF Schema specification.

Web Ontology Working Group

The Web Ontology Working Group was chartered to build upon the RDF Core work a language for defining structured web based ontologies which will provide richer integration and interoperability of data among descriptive communities.

Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group

The focus of the Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group was to provide hands-on support for developers of Semantic Web applications.

Semantic Web Education and Outreach Interest Group

The Semantic Web Education and Outreach Interest Group (SWEO) was chartered to collect proof-of-concept business cases, demonstration prototypes, etc, based on successful implementations of Semantic Web technologies, collect user experiences, develop and facilitate community outreach strategies, training and educational resources.

Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages Working Group

The mission of this Working Group was to complement the concrete RDF/XML syntax with a mechanism to relate other XML syntaxes (especially XHTML dialects or “microformats”) to the RDF abstract syntax via transformations identified by URIs.

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