Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies
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Book Description
With more substantial funding from research organizations and industry, numerous large-scale applications, and recently developed technologies, the Semantic Web is quickly emerging as a well-recognized and important area of computer science. While Semantic Web technologies are still rapidly evolving, Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies focuses on the established foundations in this area that have become relatively stable over time. It thoroughly covers basic introductions and intuitions, technical details, and formal foundations.
The book concentrates on Semantic Web technologies standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium: RDF and SPARQL enable data exchange and querying, RDFS and OWL provide expressive ontology modeling, and RIF supports rule-based modeling. The text also describes methods for specifying, querying, and reasoning with ontological information. In addition, it explores topics that are clearly beyond foundations, such as tools, applications, and engineering aspects.
Written by highly respected researchers with a deep understanding of the material, this text centers on the formal specifications of the subject and supplies many pointers that are useful for employing Semantic Web technologies in practice.
The book has an accompanying website with supplemental information.Table of Contents
The Quest for Semantics
Building Models
Calculating with Knowledge
Exchanging Information
Semanic Web Technologies
RESOURCE DESCRIPTION LANGUAGE (RDF)
Simple Ontologies in RDF and RDF Schema
Introduction to RDF
Syntax for RDF
Advanced Features
Simple Ontologies in RDF Schema
Encoding of Special Data Structures
An Example
RDF Formal Semantics
Why Semantics?
Model-Theoretic Semantics for RDF(S)
Syntactic Reasoning with Deduction Rules
The Semantic Limits of RDF(S)
WEB ONTOLOGY LANGUAGE (OWL)
Ontologies in OWL
OWL Syntax and Intuitive Semantics
OWL Species
The Forthcoming OWL 2 Standard
OWL Formal Semantics
Description Logics
Model-Theoretic Semantics of OWL
Automated Reasoning with OWL
RULES AND QUERIES
Ontologies and Rules
What Is a Rule?
Datalog as a First-Order Rule Language
Combining Rules with OWL DL
Rule Interchange Format (RIF)
Query Languages
SPARQL: Query Language for RDF
Conjunctive Queries for OWL DL
BEYOND FOUNDATIONS
Ontology Engineering
Requirement Analysis
Ontology Creation: Where Is Your Knowledge?
Quality Assurance of Ontologies
Modular Ontologies: Divide and Conquer
Software Tools
Applications
Web Data Exchange and Syndication
Semantic Wikis
Semantic Portals
Semantic Metadata in Data Formats
Semantic Web in Life Sciences
Ontologies for Standardizations
RIF Applications
Toward Future Applications
APPENDICES
Extensible Markup Language (XML)
XML in a Nutshell
Syntax of XML
XML Schema
Set Theory
Basic Notions
Set Operations
Relations and Functions
Logic
Syntax
Semantics
Proof Theory and Decidability
Solutions to the Exercises
References
Index
A Summary, Exercises, and Further Reading appear at the end of most chapters.
Author(s)
Biography
Pascal Hitzler works in the Kno.e.sis Center at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, USA.
Markus Krötzsch and Sebastian Rudolph work in the institute AIFB at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany.
Reviews
A 2010 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
… The nine chapters of the book guide the reader through the major foundational languages for the semantic Web and highlight the formal semantics. … the book has very interesting supporting material and exercises, is oriented to W3C standards, and provides the necessary foundations for the semantic Web. It will be easy to follow by the computer scientist who already has a basic background on semantic Web issues; it will also be helpful for both self-study and teaching purposes. I recommend this book primarily as a complementary textbook for a graduate or undergraduate course in a computer science or a Web science academic program.
—Computing Reviews, February 2010This book is unique in several respects. It contains an in-depth treatment of all the major foundational languages for the Semantic Web and provides a full treatment of the underlying formal semantics, which is central to the Semantic Web effort. It is also the very first textbook that addresses the forthcoming W3C recommended standards OWL 2 and RIF. Furthermore, the covered topics and underlying concepts are easily accessible for the reader due to a clear separation of syntax and semantics … I am confident this book will be well received and play an important role in training a larger number of students who will seek to become proficient in this growing discipline.
—From the Foreword, Amit Sheth, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, USA