W3C Delivers On Semantic Web Vision

By Richard Karpinski

The World Wide Web Consortium this week released working drafts of some key new technologies for enabling its vision of the "Semantic Web."

The Semantic Web is the W3C's grand vision of a more structured and machine-readable Web content and application environment, thanks largely to the benefits of XML, RDF, and new related specs.

W3C director Tim Berners-Lee has called the Semantic Web "an extension of the current Web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation."

The Web Ontology Working Group, whose work will drive the underpinnings of the Semantic Web, released this week its first three Working Drafts.

The Feature Synopsis, Abstract Syntax, and Language Reference describe the OWL Web Ontology Language 1.0 and its subset OWL Lite.

Once implemented, automated tools will be able to use common sets of terms called ontologies to power services such as more accurate Web search, intelligent software agents, and knowledge management. OWL is used to publish and share ontologies on the Web.

The W3C this week also released a working draft of its Web Services Architecture Usage Scenarios collection. The document provides usage cases and scenarios for the deployment of Web services.

Much of the standards work for emerging Web services has been occurring at the W3C and fellow standards body the OASIS Group. The two groups will hold a joint event next month focusing on Web services security.

Links to the ontology and Web services documents can be found on the W3C news page.