Standards - semanticweb.com

The Future of E-Commerce Data Interpretation: Semantic Markup, or Computer Vision?

Marc Mezzacca — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:55:18 +0000

How will webpage data be interpreted in the next few years? The Semantic Web community has high hopes for ever evolving semantic standards to help systems identify and extract rich data found on the web, ultimately making it more useful. With the announcement of Schema.org support for GoodRelations in November, it seems clear semantic progress is now being made on the e-commerce front, and at an accelerated rate. Martin Hepp, founder of GoodRelations, estimates the rate of adoption of rich, structured e-commerce data to significantly increase this year.

However, Mike Tung, founder and CEO of a data parsing service called DiffBot, has less faith that the standards necessary for a true Semantic Web will ever be completely and effectively implemented. In an interview on Xconomy he states that for semantic standards to work correctly content owners must markup the content once for the web and a second time for the semantic standards. This requires extra work, and affords them the opportunity to perform content stuffing (SEO spam).

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Eleven SPARQL 1.1 Specifications are W3C Recommendations

Eric Franzon — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:55:34 +0000

The W3C has announced that eleven specifications of SPARQL 1.1 have been published as recommendations. SPARQL is the Semantic Web query language. We caught up with Lee Feigenbaum, VP Marketing & Technology at Cambridge Semantics Inc. to discuss the significance of this announcement. Feigenbaum is a SPARQL expert who currently serves as the Co-Chair of the W3C’s SPARQL Working Group, leading the design of SPARQL.

Feigenbaum says, “SPARQL 1.1 is a huge leap forward in providing a standard way to access and update Semantic Web data. By reaching W3C Recommendation status, Semantic Web developers, vendors, publishers and consumers have a stable, well-vetted, and interoperable set of standards they can rely on for the foreseeable future.”

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Latest Version of RDFLib Released

Angela Guess — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 13:00:47 +0000

Ivan Herman reports, “This has been in the works for a while, but it is done now: the latest (3.4.0 version) of the python RDFLib library has just been released, and it includes and RDFa 1.1, microdata, and turtle-in-HTML parser. In other words, the user can add structured data to an HTML file, and that will be parsed into RDF and added to an RDFLib Graph structure. This is a significant step, and thanks to Gunnar Aastrand Grimnes, who helped me adding those parsers into the main distribution.”

He goes on, “I have written a blog last summer on some of the technical details of those parsers; although there has been updates since then, essentially following the minor changes that the RDFa Working has defined for RDFa, as well as changes/updates on the microdata->RDF algorithm, the general approach described in that blog remains valid, and it is not necessary to repeat it here. continued…

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Introduction to: OWL Profiles

Juan Sequeda — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 15:55:44 +0000

OWL, the Web Ontology Language has been standardized by W3C as a powerful language to represent knowledge (i.e. ontologies) on the Web. OWL has two functionalities. The first functionality is to express knowledge in an unambiguous way. This is accomplished by representing knowledge as set of concepts within a particular domain and the relationship between these concepts. If we only take into account this functionality, then the goal is very similar to that of UML or Entity-Relationship diagrams. The second functionality is to be able to draw conclusions from the knowledge that has been expressed. In other words, be able to infer implicit knowledge from the explicit knowledge. We call this reasoning and this is what distinguishes OWL from UML or other modeling languages.

OWL evolved from several proposals and became a standard in 2004. This was subsequently extended in 2008 by a second standard version, OWL 2. With OWL, you have the possibility of expressing all kinds of knowledge. The basic building blocks of an ontology are concepts (a.k.a classes) and the relationships between the classes (a.k.a properties). For example, if we were to create an ontology about a university, the classes would include Student, Professor, Courses while the properties would be isEnrolled, because a Student is enrolled in a Course, and isTaughtBy, because a Professor teaches a Course.

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‘Semantic Annotations in OGC Standards’ Adopted as OGC Best Practice

Angela Guess — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 14:30:14 +0000

The Open Geospatial Consortium reports that the organization has adopted Semantic annotations in OGC standards as an OGC Best Practice. The article states, “OGC standards provide standard ways of locating and transporting network-resident geospatial data and ways of locating and invoking geospatial services. Without proper descriptions of these resources, however, use of the resources is limited to small user groups. To make a geospatial resource more widely discoverable, assessable and useful, resource providers must annotate the resource with descriptive metadata that can be read and understood by a broad audience. Without such metadata, people will neither be able to find the resource using search engines nor will they be able to evaluate if the discovered resource satisfies their current information need.” continued…

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W3C Names Turtle a Candidate Recommendation

Angela Guess — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 13:00:56 +0000

Ivan Herman of the W3C reports, “The W3C RDF Working Group has published a Candidate Recommendation of Turtle – A Terse RDF Triple Language. This document defines a textual syntax for RDF called Turtle that allows an RDF graph to be completely written in a compact and natural text form, with abbreviations for common usage patterns and datatypes. Turtle provides levels of compatibility with the existing N-Triples format as well as the triple pattern syntax of the SPARQL W3C Recommendation.” continued…

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RDFa Working Group Publishes Last Call Draft of HTML + RDFa 1.1

Angela Guess — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 12:00:39 +0000

Ivan Herman of the W3C reports, “The W3C RDFa Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of HTML+RDFa 1.1. This specification defines rules and guidelines for adapting the RDFa Core 1.1 and RDFa Lite 1.1 specifications for use in HTML5 and XHTML5. The rules defined in this specification not only apply to HTML5 documents in non-XML and XML mode, but also to HTML4 and XHTML documents interpreted through the HTML5 parsing rules. Comments are welcome through 28 February.” continued…

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Manu Sporny on a Web Payment Standard

Angela Guess — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:30:37 +0000

PaySwarm advocate Manu Sporny recently spoke to Tom Simonite about a web standard for online payment. Simonite writes, “Over the past few decades, a handful of open standards for rendering and sharing text and imagery between computers—better known as the World Wide Web—have helped upend businesses worldwide. But these Web standards do not cover ways of transferring money or selling content, leaving us to fumble for credit cards and PayPal account details when it’s time to cough up. That could be set to change. A group affiliated with the body that maintains Web standards hopes to establish an open standard for transferring money online. If the plan is successful, Web browsers could come with features that make it much easier to buy and sell things or transfer funds over the Internet.” continued…

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HTML5 Definition Complete, W3C Moves to Interoperability Testing and Performance

Eric Franzon — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:01:05 +0000

First Draft of HTML 5.1 Offers Glimpse at Next Round of Standardization

(Press Release) 17 December 2012 — The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published today the complete definition of the HTML5 and Canvas 2D specifications. Though not yet W3C standards, these specifications are now feature complete, meaning businesses and developers have a stable target for implementation and planning. HTML5 is the cornerstone of the Open Web Platform, a full programming environment for cross-platform applications with access to device capabilities; video and animations; graphics; style, typography, and other tools for digital publishing; extensive network capabilities; and more.

“The broader the reach of Web technology, the more our stakeholders demand a stable standard,” said W3C CEO Jeff Jaffe. “As of today, businesses know what they can rely on for HTML5 in the coming years, and what their customers will demand. Likewise, developers will know what skills to cultivate to reach smart phones, cars, televisions, ebooks, digital signs, and devices not yet known.”

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A Tale of Agile Development… of a Standard

Eric Franzon — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 13:00:51 +0000

Some in the Semantic Technology community have pointed out that from a development perspective, Semantic Technologies are well suited for an agile approach to programming, and we will be discussing that idea more in future here at SemanticWeb.com. Today, however, we’re taking a look at some novel thoughts on agile development of a standard, thanks to guest contributor, Andreas Gebhard. He is Director, Editorial at Getty Images, and Board member of the IPTC.

We caught up with Gebhard at the recent Semantic Technology & Business Conference in New York, where he initially shared this idea with us.

He has expanded on these ideas in a post on the Getty Images blog. As Gebhard says, “I want to tell you the story of how we got there in just about a year — tremendously fast, in the world of standards.”

We re-print the post in its entirety below with thanks to the author and Getty Images.

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Getting Big Data On Board with RDF

Angela Guess — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 11:07:29 +0000

Bob DuCharme recently wrote on his blog, “I think I’ve figured it out… Here’s how to sell the Semantic Web and Linked Data visions to the Big Data folk: don’t. Sell them on RDF technology. The process of selling a set of technologies usually means selling a vision, getting people psyched about that vision, and then telling them about the technology that implements that vision. For RDF technology (by which I mean RDF, SPARQL, and optionally, RDFS and OWL), the vision for many years was the Semantic Web. Some people in that community eventually decided that an easier vision to sell was Linked Data. (Linked Data may not always include RDF technology—when Tim Berners-Lee added ‘(RDF*, SPARQL)’ to his list of Linked Data principles, it became the filioque controversy of the Linked Data community—but the boundaries of this or other sets of technologies I’m discussing are not the issue here. The point is, it’s very common to use the Linked Data vision to sell people on the value of using URIs, triples, and SPARQL together.)” continued…

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Introduction to: Open World Assumption vs Closed World Assumption

Juan Sequeda — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 13:55:23 +0000

If you are learning about the Semantic Web, one of the things you will hear is that the Semantic Web assumes the Open World. In this post, I will clarify the distinction between the Open World Assumption and the Closed World Assumption.

The Closed World Assumption (CWA) is the assumption that what is not known to be true must be false.

The Open World Assumption (OWA) is the opposite. In other words, it is the assumption that what is not known to be true is simply unknown.

Consider the following statement: “Juan is a citizen of the USA.” Now, what if we were to ask “Is Juan a citizen of Colombia?” Under a CWA, the answer is no. Under the OWA, it is I don’t know.

When do CWA and OWA apply?

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Should Microdata Become a W3C Standard?

Angela Guess — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 13:00:25 +0000

Manu Sporny recently voiced his personal objection to the W3C microdata candidate recommendation. He writes, “The HTML Working Group at the W3C is currently trying to decide if they should transition the Microdata specification to the next stage in the standardization process. There has been a call for consensus to transition the spec to the Candidate Recommendation stage. From a standards perspective, this is a huge mistake and sends the wrong signal to Web developers everywhere. The problem is that we already have a set of specifications that are official W3C recommendations that do what Microdata does and more. RDFa 1.1 became an official W3C Recommendation last summer.”

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Latest W3C Provenance Working Group Report

Angela Guess — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 11:00:42 +0000

Paul Groth of the W3C has shared a new report out of the Provenance Working Group: “After an intense and fun week at the International Semantic Web Conference, I wanted to bring you up to date with the fourth face-to-face meeting of the Provenance Working Group. The meeting was held the two days before the start of ISWC and hosted by the W3C in their offices. We had 12 in-person participants and several who attended remotely on the phone.” continued…

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W3C Advances SPARQL 1.1 to ‘Proposed Recommendation’

Angela Guess — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:00:27 +0000

Ivan Herman reports, “The W3C SPARQL Working Group has published today a set of eleven documents, advancing most of SPARQL 1.1 to Proposed Recommendation. Building on the success of SPARQL 1.0, SPARQL 1.1 is a full-featured standard system for working with RDF data, including a query/update language, two HTTP protocols (one full-featured, one using basic HTTP verbs), three result formats, and other features which allow SPARQL endpoints to be combined and work together. Most features of SPARQL 1.1 have already been implemented by a range of SPARQL suppliers, as shown in our table of implementations and test results.” continued…

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