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.

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?

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. This architecture consists of a set of design principles for creating "information-typed" modules at a topic level and for using that content in delivery modes such as online help and product support portals on the Web.

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.

Platypus Wiki is an enhanced Wiki Wiki Web with ideas taken from Semantic Web. We call it a Semantic Wiki Wiki Web. It offers a simple user interface to create a Wiki Page plus metadata according with W3C standards. It uses RDF (Resource Description Framework), RDF Schema, and OWL (Web Ontology Language) to create ontologies and manage metadata.

Contivo is the only company with a platform independent, model-based semantic server for designing and managing data integration. Contivo automates the design of data transformation between applications through model reuse and collaboration

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

ILRT's Semantic Web Research Group works in the area of making the information on the web more usable for machines, especially using technologies such as RDF. A useful summary of research projects, standards works and demonstrations in the area of Semantic Web

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.

This multidisciplinary project aims at offering methodological and software support (i.e. models, methods and tools) for knowledge management (i.e., for building, managing and distributing a corporate memory).

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.

An excellent one page overview of the Semantic Web. An ideal visual starting point which explains succinctly and in simple to understand language the key concepts of the Semantic Web

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.

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.

A semantic search engine that indexes pages marked up with SHOE, an ontology-based, XML-compatible, knowledge representation language for the Web.

Home page of the DARPA Agenet Markup Language and related technologies. The DAML language is being developed as an extension to XML and the Resource Description Framework (RDF). The latest release of the language (DAML+OIL) provides a rich set of constructs with which to create ontologies and to markup information so that it is machine readable and understandable.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

SHOE (Simple HTML Ontology Extensions) is an XML-compatible knowledge representation language for the Web. It allows web pages to be described in the context of one or more publicly available ontologies, which provide semantics for reasoning about the contents. This site contains tools for marking up and querying SHOE, sample ontologies, research publications, and a SHOE-based search engine.

The objective of the SEWASIE project is to assist SMEs (so-call Integrated Economies) in enhancing their inter- and intra- organisational information management through semantic enrichment, query techniques and better information presentation. Ultimately, the objectives are to make it easier for SMEs to find and be found by other economic agents within the economic fabric of local and international economies.