Web Services Directory

Round up of current Semantic Web standards and development activity authored by Tim Berners-Lee and Eric Miller. Good introduction to the rapidly evolving standards.

The CoMMA project Corporate Memory Management through Agents aims at developing an open, agent based platform for the management of a corporate memory by using the most advanced results on the technical, the content, and the user interaction level.

The Portable Information Access (PIA) project aims to develop a domain adaptable information extraction (IE) system for annotating semantic content in texts. IE systems basically aim to extract proto-typical facts from large collections of texts such as the activations between proteins in molecular biology or the merging and acquisitions of companies in business news. In contrast to other Web-based technologies such as information retrieval (IR) which are characterized by strong portability, no such system as yet exists for IE.

RDQL is an implementation of an SQL-like query language for RDF. It treats RDF as data and provides query with triple patterns and constraints over a single RDF model. Part of the HP Labs Semantic Web resources.

RDFWeb is an experimental linked information system, where the linked items are machine-understandable documents in the World Wide Web. These documents, written in the XML, RDF and XHTML languages, are harvested by our Web indexing programs, which then merge the resulting information to form one big database. By exploiting various features of the RDF technology alongside related tools such as digital signature, we can use the Web to retrieve structured information that machines can process and act upon. RDFWeb is best understood as an exploration of the question: what would it be like if machines could read what we say in our Web homepages?

Semantic World is a web community dedicated to the use of semantic information management methods in industry. Semantic World contains relevant news and analysis, a comprehensive resource center, and interactive forums for practitioners of semantic methodologies to share experiences, problems, and initiatives. Semantic World aims to support and influence developing standards for ontology modeling, semantic mapping, and the use of semantic information management methods in IT.

Protégé-2000 is an integrated ontology and knowledge-base editing environment. It provides an open-source, extensible architecture for the creation of customized knowledge-based tools in Java. Protégé-2000 is available as free software under the open-source Mozilla Public License.

OpenCyc is the open source version of the Cyc technology, the worlds largest and most complete general knowledge base and commonsense reasonging engine. Cycorp, the builders of Cyc, have set up an independent organization, OpenCyc.org, to disseminate and administer OpenCyc, and have committed to a pipeline through which all current and future Cyc technology will flow into ResearchCyc (available for R&D in academia and industry) and then OpenCyc.

The Corese platform implements an RDF/RDFS processor based on Conceptual Graphs (CG). It enables the processing of RDF Schemas and RDF statements within the CG formalism (see a note from T. Berners-Lee on the subject). The graph matching algorithm, called projection, enables to retrieve RDF statements according to a query and hence implements a search engine. The projection operation takes advantage of the class and property type hierarchies. When querying on a given resource type, the projection find instances of the given type as well as instances of the specializations of that type. This is also true with property types.

FEF supports the conceptual model proposed in Financial Exchange Theory. Financial Exchange Theory provides a basis for the definition of financial entities such as international financial products, financial transactions, financial services and monitoring positions. Financial components, relating to generic functions within international financial markets, are put together following a simple set of rules to create all the above financial entities. FEF is defined as classes, relationships and constraints; actual international financial market entities are recorded as instances. The structure and nature of all financial entities can thus be seen and compared. FEF was created using Stanford University's ontology defining tool, "Protege 2000". FEF is an initiative by International Financial Information Publishing Ltd (Ifip) and has been created based upon the proprietary ‘I-Format’ data model marketed by Ifip for enterprise-wide publication of financial transaction processing data (www.financial-format.com). FEF only contains those components and attributes required to describe Financial Exchange Theory. Initially only a limited number of financial entities will be defined within FEF. FEF is available free of charge.

HP Labs home page for semantic web activity. HP have developed the Jenna Sematic Web Toolkit, a java API for manipulating RDF models. Site includes white papers and a list of leading individuals working on Semantic Web related activities.

An Intelligent Brokering Service for Knowledge-Component Reuse on the World-Wide Web. The objective of IBROW is to develop intelligent brokers that are able to distributively configure reusable components into knowledge systems through the World-Wide Web. The WWW is changing the nature of software development to a distributive plug & play process, which requires a new kind of managing software: intelligent software brokers. IBROW will integrate research on heterogeneous DB, interoperability and Web technology with knowledge-system technology and ontologies.

The goal of the Rule Markup Initiative is to develop RuleML as the canonical Web language for rules using XML markup, formal semantics, and efficient implementations. RuleML can thus specify queries and inferences in Web ontologies, mappings between Web ontologies, and dynamic Web behaviors of workflows, services, and agents.

Modulant - The Interoperability Company. Modulant is an enterprise software developer of semantics-based information interoperability solutions.

SMORE is a tool that allows users to markup their documents in RDF using web ontologies in association with user-specific terms and elements.

Very comprehensive information site concentrating on XML,RDF and OWL. Contains tutorials, worked examples and news. Excellent resources and starting point.

Semantic Web community portal with news, information and demonstrations of the evolving concepts and technology.

The Karlsruhe Ontology (KAON) tool suite builds on RDF and provides specialized tools including: SDK, engineering, discovery, management and presentation of ontologies and metadata. Site includes middleware downloads, whitepapers, specifications and demonstrations. A practical web resource for Semantic web development.

TRIPLE is an RDF query, inference, and transformation language for the Semantic Web. Instead of having a built-in semantics for RDF Schema (as many other RDF query languages have), TRIPLE allows the semantics of languages on top of RDF (like RDF Schema, Topic Maps, UML, etc.) to be defined with rules. For languages where this is not easily possible (e.g., DAML+OIL), access to external programs (like description logics classifiers) is provided. As a result, TRIPLE allows RDF reasoning and transformation under several different semantics, which is necessary if you need to access multiple data source in one application (e.g., for data integration).

Summary of existing resources, articles and references on the OWL Web Ontology Language

This site is the home page of Ontology.Org, the consortium of organisations and individuals developing knowledge level models and representations of electronic marketplaces.

Home page for the W3C Semantic Web project. Starting point for information, articles and the summary of W3C projects and activities.

The objective of Esperonto is to form a bridge between the actual Web and the Semantic Web by providing a service to "upgrade" existing content to semantic Web content. Ontologies play a key role in this effort, aiming at unifying, bridging and integrating multiple heterogeneous, international and multilingual digital content.

The Web Ontology Working Group is chartered to build upon the RDF Core work a language for defining structured web based ontologies which will provide richer integration and interoperability of data among descriptive communities.

In accord with Tim Berners-Lee's vision of a Semantic Web as "an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation", the OntoWeb Network has been set up to provide support for, disseminate information on, and encourage development of, ontologies as the essential technology for the Semantic Web.