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Rating: 
Summary: The next step in the world wide web.
Review: It's hard to realize that the web is only about a dozen years old. Being so new, it is not surprising that dramatic, big jumps in the technology are taking place. At first the web was just static pages connected by hyperlinks. This evolved into dynamic pages where the data is in a database and displayed at will. But this is still presented to the user as a fixed page of data. This page you are reading came out of a database, but it's just a page, you can't do very much with it. All in all, it's kind of silly to use a powerful computer, like the one you probably have, just to display a page.
If you just want a small amount of data off the page, how do you get it. What if you just want to know how many pages are in a book. You have to download the whole page and practically speaking you have to read the material presented to find the number of pages. If you really want that number in a spreadsheet you are using, for all practical purcposes have to type it in or perhaps do a cut and paste. To do this automatically you're into some rather sophisticated programming. Making this work is the semantic web.
This book is a primer and overview of the current state of the art.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent introduction
Review: Readers will need a basic understanding of formal logic in order to get the most from this book. Also realize that some material, such as the discussion and presentation of monotonic and non-monotonic rules are still hotly contested in the semantic web community.This book starts out with an excellent introduction in Chapter 1, titled "The Semantic Web Vision". It next begins building towards the basic elements of a semantic web by starting in familiar territory - structured web documents in XML. Many readers will be intimately familiar with this material, but I recommend reading it because the authors lay a solid foundation for subsequent chapters here. The components and concepts of the topic are then covered in chapters devoted to:
- Describing Web Resources in RDF, which includes basic ideas, XML-based syntax, schema, and querying.
- Web Ontology Language (OWL), which introduces the OWL language, examples and future extensions. Appendix A contains Abstract OWL syntax, which augments this chapter.
- Logic and Inference, covers monotonic and non-monotonic rules, syntax, rule mark-up in XML and examples. This chapter will require an understanding of formal logic, and I also recommend additional research on the web regarding the debate about using non-monotonic rules, which has highly vocal proponents and detractors.
- Applications, a chapter of case studies from real companies, including Audi, and material on how semantic web concepts can be applied to E-learning, web services and other scenarios.
- Ontology Engineering (ontology is synonymous with taxonomy) using manual and semi-automatic methods. There is also an excellent discussion about reuse. The web site that supports this book is rich in content that will not only augment the book, but greatly expand it. Each chapter has an associated page on the site containing PowerPoint presentations, PDF documents, and other material. The site also has a section for errata, problems and quizs if you are basing a course on this book, and additional links to resources related to the material in the book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent introduction
Review: Readers will need a basic understanding of formal logic in order to get the most from this book. Also realize that some material, such as the discussion and presentation of monotonic and non-monotonic rules are still hotly contested in the semantic web community. This book starts out with an excellent introduction in Chapter 1, titled "The Semantic Web Vision". It next begins building towards the basic elements of a semantic web by starting in familiar territory - structured web documents in XML. Many readers will be intimately familiar with this material, but I recommend reading it because the authors lay a solid foundation for subsequent chapters here. The components and concepts of the topic are then covered in chapters devoted to:
- Describing Web Resources in RDF, which includes basic ideas, XML-based syntax, schema, and querying.
- Web Ontology Language (OWL), which introduces the OWL language, examples and future extensions. Appendix A contains Abstract OWL syntax, which augments this chapter.
- Logic and Inference, covers monotonic and non-monotonic rules, syntax, rule mark-up in XML and examples. This chapter will require an understanding of formal logic, and I also recommend additional research on the web regarding the debate about using non-monotonic rules, which has highly vocal proponents and detractors.
- Applications, a chapter of case studies from real companies, including Audi, and material on how semantic web concepts can be applied to E-learning, web services and other scenarios.
- Ontology Engineering (ontology is synonymous with taxonomy) using manual and semi-automatic methods. There is also an excellent discussion about reuse. The web site that supports this book is rich in content that will not only augment the book, but greatly expand it. Each chapter has an associated page on the site containing PowerPoint presentations, PDF documents, and other material. The site also has a section for errata, problems and quizs if you are basing a course on this book, and additional links to resources related to the material in the book.
Rating:
Summary: Take a look at the book's website:
Review: Take a look at the book's website: http://www.semanticwebprimer.org
Rating:
Summary: Making sense of the Semantic Web
Review: When I was writing my book "Semantics in Business Systems" ( a more general treatment of how Semantics pertains to building application systems) I wanted to include a chapter on the Semantic Web. At the time, most of the books and web sites were either impenetrable, with their focus on formal proofs of assertions, or superficial, with grand promises of the semantic future with little "how do we get there." "A Semantic Web Primer" finally fills in the gap.
It is very clearly written, and proceeds nicely from structured documents through to RDF/RDFS and OWL. Each topic is carefully layered on top of the previous.
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