The large-scale and almost ubiquitous availability of information has become as much of a curse as it is a blessing. The more information is available, the harder it is to locate any particular piece of it. And even when it has been successfully found, it is even harder still to usefully combine it with other information we may already possess. This problem occurs at many different levels, ranging from the overcrowded disks of our own PCs to the mass of unstructured information on the World Wide Web.It is commonly understood that this problem of information sharing can only be solved by giving computers better access to the semantics of the information. While it has been recognized that ontologies play a crucial role in solving the open problems, most approaches rely on the existence of well-established data structures. To overcome these shortcomings, Stuckenschmidt and van Harmelen describe ontology-based approaches for resolving semantic heterogeneity in weakly structured environments, in particular the World Wide Web. Addressing problems like missing conceptual models, unclear system boundaries, and heterogeneous representations, they design a framework for ontology-based information sharing in weakly structured environments like the Semantic Web.For researchers and students in areas related to the Semantic Web, the authors provide not only a comprehensive overview of the State of the art, but also present in detail recent research in areas like ontology design for information integration, metadata generation and management, and representation and management of distributed ontologies. For professionals in areas such as e-commerce (e.g., the exchange of product knowledge) and knowledge management (e.g., in large and distributed organizations), the book provides decision support on the use of novel technologies, information about potential problems, and guidelines for the successful application of existing technologies.

Just like the industrial society of the last century depended on natural resources, today’s society depends on information and its exchange. Staab and Stuckenschmidt structured the selected contributions into four parts: Part I, "Data Storage and Access", prepares the semantic foundation, i.e. data modelling and querying in a flexible and yet scalable manner. These foundations allow for dealing with the organization of information at the individual peers. Part II, "Querying the Network", considers the routing of queries, as well as continuous queries and personalized queries under the conditions of the permanently changing topological structure of a peer-to-peer network. Part III, "Semantic Integration", deals with the mapping of heterogeneous data representations. Finally Part IV, "Methodology and Systems", reports experiences from case studies and sample applications. The overall result is a state-of-the-art description of the potential of Semantic Web and peer-to-peer technologies for information sharing and knowledge management when applied jointly.

The Social Web (including services such as MySpace, Flickr, last.fm, and WordPress) has captured the attention of millions of users as well as billions of dollars in investment and acquisition. Social websites, evolving around the connections between people and their objects of interest, are encountering boundaries in the areas of information integration, dissemination, reuse, portability, searchability, automation and demanding tasks like querying. The Semantic Web is an ideal platform for interlinking and performing operations on diverse person- and object-related data available from the Social Web, and has produced a variety of approaches to overcome the boundaries being experienced in Social Web application areas. After a short overview of both the Social Web and the Semantic Web, Breslin et al. describe some popular social media and social networking applications, list their strengths and limitations, and describe some applications of Semantic Web technology to address their current shortcomings by enhancing them with semantics. Across these social websites, they demonstrate a twofold approach for interconnecting the islands that are social websites with semantic technologies, and for powering semantic applications with rich community-created content. They conclude with observations on how the application of Semantic Web technologies to the Social Web is leading towards the "Social Semantic Web" (sometimes also called "Web 3.0"), forming a network of interlinked and semantically-rich content and knowledge. The book is intended for computer science professionals, researchers, and graduates interested in understanding the technologies and research issues involved in applying Semantic Web technologies to social software. Practitioners and developers interested in applications such as blogs, social networks or wikis will also learn about methods for increasing the levels of automation in these forms of Web communication.

With the current changes driven by the expansion of the World Wide Web, this book uses a different approach from other books on the market: it applies ontologies to electronically available information to improve the quality of knowledge management in large and distributed organizations. Ontologies are formal theories supporting knowledge sharing and reuse. They can be used to explicitly represent semantics of semi-structured information. These enable sophisticated automatic support for acquiring, maintaining and accessing information. Methodology and tools are developed for intelligent access to large volumes of semi-structured and textual information sources in intra- and extra-, and internet-based environments to employ the full power of ontologies in supporting knowledge management from the information client perspective and the information provider. The aim of the book is to support efficient and effective knowledge management and focuses on weakly-structured online information sources. It is aimed primarily at researchers in the area of knowledge management and information retrieval and will also be a useful reference for students in computer science at the postgraduate level and for business managers who are aiming to increase the corporations' information infrastructure. The Semantic Web is a very important initiative affecting the future of the WWW that is currently generating huge interest. The book covers several highly significant contributions to the semantic web research effort, including a new language for defining ontologies, several novel software tools and a coherent methodology for the application of the tools for business advantage. It also provides 3 case studies which give examples of the real benefits to be derived from the adoption of semantic-web based ontologies in "real world" situations. As such, the book is an excellent mixture of theory, tools and applications in an important area of WWW research. * Provides guidelines for introducing knowledge management concepts and tools into enterprises, to help knowledge providers present their knowledge efficiently and effectively. * Introduces an intelligent search tool that supports users in accessing information and a tool environment for maintenance, conversion and acquisition of information sources. * Discusses three large case studies which will help to develop the technology according to the actual needs of large and or virtual organisations and will provide a testbed for evaluating tools and methods. The book is aimed at people with at least a good understanding of existing WWW technology and some level of technical understanding of the underpinning technologies (XML/RDF). It will be of interest to graduate students, academic and industrial researchers in the field, and the many industrial personnel who are tracking WWW technology developments in order to understand the business implications. It could also be used to support undergraduate courses in the area but is not itself an introductory text.

"This book discusses the new technologies of semantic Web, transforming the way we use information and knowledge"--Provided by publisher.

According to the W3C Semantic Web Activity [1]: The Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across appli- tion, enterprise, and community boundaries. This statement clearly explains that the Semantic Web is about data sharing. Currently, the Web uses hyperlinks to connect Web pages. The Semantic Web goes beyond that and focuses on data and envisions the creation of the web of data. On the Semantic Web, anyone can say anything about any resource on the Web. This is fully based on the concept of semantic - notations, where each resource on the Web can have an assigned meaning. This is done through the use of ontologies as a formal and explicit representation of domain concepts and their relationships [2]. Ontologies are formally based on description logics. This enables agents and applications to reason over the data when searching the Web, which has not previously been possible. Web 2. 0 has gradually evolved from letting the Web users play a more active role. Unlike the initial version of the Web, where the users mainly “consumed” content, users are now offered easy-to-use services for content production and publication. Mashups, blogs, wikis, feeds, interface remixes, and social networking/tagging s- tems are examples of these well-known services. The success and wide adoption of Web 2. 0 was in its reliance on social interactions as an inevitable characteristic of the use and life of the Web. In particular, Web 2.

The promise of the Semantic Web to provide a universal medium to exchange data information and knowledge has been well publicized. There are many sources too for basic information on the extensions to the WWW that permit content to be expressed in natural language yet used by software agents to easily find, share and integrate information. Until now individuals engaged in creating ontologies-- formal descriptions of the concepts, terms, and relationships within a given knowledge domain-- have had no sources beyond the technical standards documents. Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist transforms this information into the practical knowledge that programmers and subject domain experts need. Authors Allemang and Hendler begin with solutions to the basic problems, but don’t stop there: they demonstrate how to develop your own solutions to problems of increasing complexity and ensure that your skills will keep pace with the continued evolution of the Semantic Web. • Provides practical information for all programmers and subject matter experts engaged in modeling data to fit the requirements of the Semantic Web.• De-emphasizes algorithms and proofs, focusing instead on real-world problems, creative solutions, and highly illustrative examples. • Presents detailed, ready-to-apply “recipes for use in many specific situations.• Shows how to create new recipes from RDF, RDFS, and OWL constructs.