SEMANTIC WEB AND SOCIAL NETWORKS

[R15A0535]
LECTURE NOTES

B.TECH IV YEAR – I SEM(R15)

(2019-20)

DEPARTMENT OF
COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

MALLA REDDY COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING &

TECHNOLOGY
(Autonomous Institution – UGC, Govt. of India)
Recognized under 2(f) and 12 (B) of UGC ACT 1956
(Affiliated to JNTUH, Hyderabad, Approved by AICTE - Accredited by NBA & NAAC – ‘A’ Grade - ISO 9001:2015 Certified)
Maisammaguda, Dhulapally (Post Via. Hakimpet), Secunderabad – 500100, Telangana State, India IV
Year B. Tech. CSE –I Sem L T/P/D C
4 -/- / - 3
 (R15A0535) SEMANTIC WEB AND SOCIAL NETWORKS
(Core Elective-IV)

UNIT –I: Web Intelligence

Thinking and Intelligent Web Applications, The Information Age ,The World Wide
Web, Limitations of Today’s Web, The Next Generation Web, Machine Intelligence,
Artificial Intelligence, Ontology, Inference engines, Software Agents, Berners-Lee
www, Semantic Road Map, Logic on the semantic Web.

UNIT -II: Knowledge Representation for the Semantic Web

Ontologies and their role in the semantic web, Ontologies Languages for the Semantic
Web – Resource Description Framework(RDF) / RDF Schema, Ontology Web
Language(OWL), UML, XML/XML Schema.

UNIT-III: Ontology Engineering

Ontology Engineering, Constructing Ontology, Ontology Development Tools, Ontology
Methods, Ontology Sharing and Merging, Ontology Libraries and Ontology Mapping,
Logic, Rule and Inference Engines.

UNIT-IV: Semantic Web Applications, Services and Technology

Semantic Web applications and services, Semantic Search, e-learning, Semantic
Bioinformatics, Knowledge Base ,XML Based Web Services, Creating an OWL-S
Ontology for Web Services, Semantic Search Technology, Web Search Agents and
Semantic Methods

UNIT-V: .Social Network Analysis and semantic web

What is social Networks analysis, Development of the social networks analysis,
Electronic Sources for Network Analysis – Electronic Discussion networks, Blogs and
Online Communities, Web Based Networks. Building Semantic Web Applications with
social network features.

TEXT BOOKS:
1. Thinking on the Web - Berners Lee, Godel and Turing, Wiley inter science, 2008.
2. Social Networks and the Semantic Web, Peter Mika, Springer, 2007. REFERENCE
BOOKS:
1. Semantic Web Technologies, Trends and Research in Ontology Based Systems,
J.Davies, R.Studer, P.Warren, John Wiley & Sons.
2. Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services -Liyang Lu Chapman and Hall/CRC
Publishers,(Taylor & Francis Group)
3. Information Sharing on the semantic Web – Heiner Stuckenschmidt; Frank Van
Harmelen, Springer Publications.
4. Programming the Semantic Web, T.Segaran, C.Evans, J.Taylor, O’Reilly, SPD.
Course Objectives & Outcomes

Course Objectives
• To learn Web Intelligence
• To learn Knowledge Representation for the Semantic Web
• To learn Ontology Engineering
• To learn Semantic Web Applications, Services and Technology
• To learn Social Network Analysis and semantic web
• To understand the role of ontology and inference engines in semantic web
• To explain the analysis of the social Web and the design of a new class of
applications that combine human intelligence with machine processing.
• To describe how the Semantic Web provides the key in aggregating information
across heterogeneous sources.
• To understand the benefits of Semantic Web by incorporating usergenerated
metadata and other clues left behind by users.

Course Outcomes

After Completion of this course Students will be able to

• Ability to understand and knowledge representation for the semantic web Ability
to create ontology
• Ability to build a blogs and social networks
• Understand the basics of Semantic Web and Social Networks.
• Understand Electronic sources for network analysis and different Ontology
languages.
• Modeling and aggregating social network data.
• Develop social-semantic applications.
• Evaluate Web- based social network and Ontology.
 INDEX

UNIT TOPIC PAGE

NO NO
Thinking and Intelligent Web Applications 1

The Information Age & WWW Architecture 2-6

Limitations of Today‘s Web 7
The Next Generation Web 7-9
I
Applications of AI 10
Ontology, Inference engines, Software Agents 11-13
Berners-Lee www, Semantic Road Map, Logic on the
14-17
semantic Web.
Ontologies and their role in the semantic web 18-19
Ontologies Languages for the Semantic Web
Resource Description Framework(RDF) / RDF Schema 20-29
II

Ontology Web Language(OWL) 30-34

UML, XML/XML Schema 35-36
Ontology Engineering 37
Constructing Ontology, Ontology Development Tools
38-40

III Ontology Methods, Ontology Sharing and Merging,

41-44
Ontology Libraries
Ontology Mapping, Logic, Rule and Inference Engines
44-51

Semantic Web applications and services 52

Semantic Search 53-54
XML Based Web Services, Creating an OWL-S Ontology
IV 55
for Web Services
Semantic Search Technology 56
Web Search Agents and Semantic Methods 57-59
V What is social Networks analysis 60
Development of the social networks analysis 61
Electronic Sources for Network Analysis 63
Blogs and Online Communities 64
Web Based Networks. Building Semantic Web 65-68
Building Semantic Web Applications with social
69-73
network features.
 Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

Lecture Notes

UNIT - I
Thinking and Intelligent Web Applications, The Information Age ,The World Wide Web, Limitations
of Today‘s Web, The Next Generation Web, Machine Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, Ontology,
Inference engines, Software Agents, Berners-Lee www, Semantic Road Map, Logic on the semantic
Web.
THINKING AND INTELLIGENT WEB APPLICATIONS
The meaning of the term ―thinking‖ must be provided in the context of intelligent applications
on the World Wide Web as it is frequently loosely defined and ambiguously applied.

In general, thinking can be a complex process that uses concepts, their interrelationships, and
inference or deduction, to produce new knowledge. However, thinking is often used to describe
such disparate acts as memory recall, arithmetic calculations, creating stories, decision making,
puzzle solving, and so on.

A person or an individual is considered as an intelligent if he posses qualities like accurate

memory recall, the ability to apply valid and correct logic, and the capability to expand their
knowledge through learning and deduction.

The term ―intelligence‖ can be applied to nonhuman entities as we do in the field of Artificial
Intelligence (AI). But frequently we mean something somewhat different than in the case of
human intelligence. For example, a person who performs difficult arithmetic calculations quickly
and accurately would be considered as intelligent. But, a computer that could perform the same
calculations faster and with greater accuracy would not be considered as an intelligent.

Human thinking involves complicated interactions within the biological components of the brain,
and that the process of learning is also an important element of human intelligence.

Software applications perform tasks that are sufficiently complex and human-like that the term
―intelligent‖ may be appropriate. But, Artificial Intelligent (AI) is the science of
machines simulating intelligent behavior. The concept of intelligent application on the World
Wide Web takes the advantages of AI technologies in order to enhance applications and make
them to behave in more intelligent ways.

Here, question arises regarding Web intelligence or intelligent software applications on the World
Wide Web. The World Wide Web can be described as an interconnected network of networks.
The present day Web consists not only of the interconnected networks, servers, and clients, but
also the multimedia hypertext representation of vast quantities of information distributed over an
immense global collection of electronic devices with software services being provided over the
Web.

The current Web consists of static data representations that are designed for direct human access
and use.

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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15) THE INFORMATION

AGE:

We are accustomed to living in a world that is rapidly changing. This is true in all aspects of our
society and culture, but is especially true in the field of information technology. It is common to
observe such rapid change and comment simply that ―things change.‖

Over the past decades, humanbeings have experienced two global revolutionary changes: the
Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. Each revolutionary change not only
enhanced the access of humanresources but also freed the individuals to achieve higher level
cultural and social goals.

In addition, over the past half century, the technological inventions of the Information Age may in
fact be of such scope as to represent a third revolutionary change i.e., the Information
Revolution.

The issue that the ―rapidly changing world of the Information Age be considered a
global revolutionary change on the scale of earlier revolutions‖ can be solved by comparing the
changes associated with the Agricultural Revolution with the Industrial Revolution.

Before the agriculture revolution, human beings move to warmer regions in the winter season and
back to colder regions in the summer seasons. Human beings were able to migrate to all locations
on the earth as they have the flexibility of human species and the capability to create adaptable
human cultures.

The adaptable human‘s cultures survived and thrived in every environmental niche on the planet
by fishing, herding and foroging.

Human beings lived to stay permanently in a single location as soon as they discovered the
possibility of cultivating crops. The major implementation of a non migratory life style is that
small portion of land could be exploited intensively for long periods of time. Another implication
is the agricultural communities concentrated the activities into one or two cucle periodsassociated
with growing and harvesting the crops. This new life style allowed individuals to save their
resources and spend on their other activities. In additions it created a great focus on the primary
necessity of planting, nurturing and harvesting the crops. The individual become very conscious
of time. A part from these, they become reliant on the following:
1. Special skills and knowledge associated with agricultural production.
2. Storage and protection of food supplies.
3. Distribution of products within the community to ensure adequate substenance.
4. Sufficient seed for the near life cycle‘s planning. This life style is different from hunter-
gatherer life styles.
The agricultural revolution slowly moved across villages and regions introducing land cultivation
as well as a new way of life.

During agricultural revolution human and animal muscle were used to produce the energy
required to run the economy. As soon as the French revolution came into existence millions of
horses and oxen produced the power required to run the economy.
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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

The World Wide Web (WWW):

The World Wide Web (WWW) or the Web is a repository of information spread all over the
world and linked to gether. The WWW has a unique combination of flexibility, portability and
user friendly features that distinguish if forms other services provided by the internet.

The WWW project was initiated by CERN (European laboratory for particle physics) to create a
system to handle distributed resources necessary for Scientific Research. The WWW today is a
distributed client-server service, in which a client using a browser can be access a service using a
server. However, the service provided is distributed over many locations called Websites.

The web consists of many web pages that incorporate text, graphics, sound, animation and other
multimedia components. These web pages are connected to one another by hypertext. In a
hypertext environment the information is stored using the concept of pointers. WWW uses a
concept of HTTP which allows communicate between a web browser and web server. The web
page can be created by using a HTML. This language has some commands while which are used
to inform the web browser about the way of displaying the text, graphics and multimediafiles.
HTML also has some commands through which we can give links to the webpages.

The WWW today is a distributed client-server, in which a client using a web browser can access a
service using a server.

Working of a web:
Web page is a document available on World Wide Web. Web Pages are stored on web server and
can be viewed using a web browser.
WWW works on client- server approach. Following steps explains how the web works:
1. User enters the URL (say, http://www.mrcet.ac.in) of the web page in the address bar of web
browser.
2. Then browser requests the Domain Name Server for the IP address corresponding to
www.mrcet.ac.in.
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3. After receiving IP address, browser sends the request for web page to the web server using
HTTP protocol which specifies the way the browser and web server communicates.
4. Then web server receives request using HTTP protocol and checks its search for the requested
web page. If found it returns it back to the web browser and close the HTTP connection.
5. Now the web browser receives the web page, It interprets it and display the contents of web
page in web browser‘s window.

ARPANET
Licklider, a psychologist and computer scientist put out the idea in 1960 of a network of
computers connected together by "wide-band communication lines" through which they could
share data and information storage.

Licklider was hired as the head of computer research by the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA), and his small idea took off.

The first ARPANET link was made on October 29, 1969, between the University of California
and the Stanford Research Institute. Only two letters were sent before the system crashed, but that
was all the encouragement the computer researchers needed. The ARPANET became a high-
speed digital postoffice as people used it to collaborate on research projects. It was a distributed
system of ―many-to-many‖ connections.

Robert Kahn of DARPA and Vinton Cerf of Stanford University worked together on a solution,
and in 1977, the internet protocol suite was used to seamlessly link three different networks.

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), a suite of network communications

protocols used to connect hosts on the Internet was developed to connect separate networks into a
“network of networks” (e.g., the Internet). These protocols specified the framework for a few
basic services that everyone would need (file transfer, electronic mail, and remote logon) across a
very large number of client and server systems. Several computers linked in a local network can
use TCP/IP (along with other protocols) within the local network just as they can use the
protocols to provide services throughout the Internet.

The mid-1980s marked a boom in the personal computer and superminicomputer industries. The
combination of inexpensive desktop machines and powerful, network-ready servers allowed
many companies to join the Internet for the first time.Corporations began to use the Internet to
communicate with each other and with their customers.
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By 1990, the ARPANET was decommissioned, leaving only the vast network-of-networks called
the Internet with over 300,000 hosts. The stage was set for the final step to move beyond the
Internet, as three major events and forces converged, accelerating the development of
information technology.

These three events were the introduction of the World Wide Web, the widespread availability of
the graphical browser, and the unleashing of commercialization.

In 1991, World Wide Web was created by Timothy Berners Lee in 1989 at
CERN in Geneva. World Wide Web came into existence as a proposal by him, to allow
researchers to work together effectively and efficiently at CERN. Eventually it became World
Wide Web.
The following diagram briefly defines evolution of World Wide Web:

The Web combined words, pictures, and sounds on Internet pages and programmers saw the
potential for publishing information in a way that could be as easy as using a word processor, but
with the richness of multimedia.

Berners-Lee and his collaborators laid the groundwork for the open standardsof theWeb. Their
efforts included the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) linking Web documents, the Hypertext
Markup Language (HTML) for formatting Web documents, and the Universal Resource Locator
(URL) system for addressing Web documents.

The primary language for formatting Web pages is HTML. With HTML the author describes
what a page should look like, what types of fonts to use, what color the text should be, where
paragraph marks come, and many more aspects of the document. All HTML documents are
created by using tags.

In 1993, Marc Andreesen and a group of student programmers at NCSA (the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications located on the campus of University of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign) developed a graphical browser for the World Wide Web called Mosaic, which he
later reinvented commercially as Netscape Navigator.

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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

WWW Architecture
WWW architecture is divided into several layers as shown in the following diagram:

IDENTIFIERS AND CHARACTER SET

Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is used to uniquely identify resources on the web
and UNICODE makes it possible to built web pages that can be read and write in human
languages.
SYNTAX
XML (Extensible Markup Language) helps to define common syntax in semantic web.

DATA INTERCHANGE
Resource Description Framework (RDF) framework helps in defining core representation of
data for web. RDF represents data about resource in graph form.

TAXONOMIES
RDF Sc hema (RDFS) allows more standardized description of taxonomiesand
other ontological constructs.
ONTOLOGIES
Web Ontology Language (OWL) offers more constructs over RDFS. It comes in following
three versions:
 OWL Lite for taxonomies and simple constraints.
 OWL DL for full description logic support.
 OWL for more syntactic freedom of RDF
RULES
RIF and SWRL offers rules beyond the constructs that are available
from RDFs and OWL. Simple Protocol and RDF Query La nguage (SPARQL) is SQL like
language used for querying RDF data and OWL Ontologies.
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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

PROOF
All semantic and rules that are executed at layers below Proof and their result will be used to
prove deductions.

CRYPTOGRAPHY
Cryptography means such as digital signature for verification of the origin of sources is used.

USER INTERFACE AND APPLICATIONS

On the top of layer User interface and Applications layer is built for user interaction.

LIMITATIONS OF TODAY’S WEB:

1. The web of today still relies on HTML, which is responsibility for describing how
information is to be displayed and laid out on a web.

2. The web today donot have the ability of machine understanding and processing of web-
based information.

3. The web is characterized by textual data augmented web services as it involves human
assistance and relies on the intevoperation and inefficient exchange of the two competing
propritery server frameworks.

4. The web is characterized by textual data augmented by pictorial and audio-visual addition.

5. The web todau is limited to manual keyboard searches as HTML do not have the ability to
exploit by information retrieval techniques.

6. Web browsers are limited to access existing informationin a standard form.

7. On web, development of complex networks with meaningful content is difficult.

8. Today‘s web is restricted to search, database, support, intelligent, business logic,

automation, security and trust.

THE NEXT GENERATION WEB

A new Web architecture called the Semantic Web offers users the ability to work on shared
knowledge by constructing new meaningful representations on the Web. Semantic Web research
has developed from the traditions of AI and ontology languages. It offers automated processing
through machine-understandable metadata.

Semantic Web agents could utilize metadata, ontologies, and logic to carry out its tasks. Agents
are pieces of software that work autonomously and proactively on the Web to perform certain
tasks. In most cases, agents will simply collect and organize information. Agents on the Semantic
Web will receive some tasks to perform and seek information from Web resources, while
communicating with other Web agents, in order to fulfill its task.

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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

MACHINE INTELLIGENCE (Also called artificial or computational intelligence)

Combines a wide variety of advanced technologies to give machines the ability to learn, adapt,
make decisions, and display behaviors not explicitly programmed into their original
capabilities. Some of machine intelligence capabilities, such as neural networks, expert
systems, and self-organizing maps, are plug-in components – they learn and manage processes
at a very high level. Other capabilities, such as fuzzy logic, Bayes Theorem, and genetic
algorithms are building blocks – they often provide advanced reasoning and analysis capabilities
that are used by other machine reasoning components.
Machine Intelligence capabilities add powerful analytical, self-tuning, self-healing, and adaptive
behavior to client applications. They also comprise the core technologies for many of advanced
data mining and knowledge discovery services.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science
that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent
agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes
actions that maximize its chances of success. John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1955,
defines it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines." Intelligent agent:
Programs, used extensively on the Web, that perform tasks such as retrieving and delivering
information and automating repetition More than 50 companies are currently developing
intelligent agent software or services, including Firefly and WiseWire.
Agents are designed to make computing easier. Currently they are used as Web browsers, news
retrieval mechanisms, and shopping assistants. By specifying certain parameters, agents will
"search" the Internet and return the results directly back to your PC.

Branches of AI
Here's a list, but some branches are surely missing, because no-one has identified them yet.
Logical AI
What a program knows about the world in general the facts of the specific situation in which it
must act, and its goals are all represented by sentences of some mathematical logical language.
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The program decides what to do by inferring that certain actions are appropriate for achieving its
goals.
Search
AI programs often examine large numbers of possibilities, e.g. moves in a chess game or
inferences by a theorem proving program. Discoveries are continually made about how to do this
more efficiently in various domains.
Pattern recognition
When a program makes observations of some kind, it is often programmed to compare what it
sees with a pattern. For example, a vision program may try to match a pattern of eyes and a nose
in a scene in order to find a face.
Representation
Facts about the world have to be represented in some way. Usually languages of mathematical
logic are used.
Inference
From some facts, others can be inferred. Mathematical logical deduction is adequate for some
purposes, but new methods of non-monotonic inference have been added to logic since the 1970s.
The simplest kind of non-monotonic reasoning is default reasoning in which a conclusion is to be
inferred by default, but the conclusion can be withdrawn if there is evidence to the contrary
Common sense knowledge and reasoning
This is the area in which AI is farthest from human-level, in spite of the fact that it has been an
active research area since the 1950s. While there has been considerable progress, e.g. in
developing systems of non-monotonic reasoning and theories of action, yet more new ideas are
needed.
Learning from experience
Programs do that. Programs can only learn what facts or behaviors their formalisms can represent,
and unfortunately learning systems are almost all based on very limited abilities to represent
information.
Planning
Planning programs start with general facts about the world (especially facts about the effects of
actions), facts about the particular situation and a statement of a goal. From these, they generate a
strategy for achieving the goal. In the most common cases, the strategy is just a sequence of
actions.
Epistemology
This is a study of the kinds of knowledge that are required for solving problems in the world.
Ontology
Ontology is the study of the kinds of things that exist. In AI, the programs and sentences deal with
various kinds of objects, and we study what these kinds are and what their basic properties are.
Emphasis on ontology begins in the 1990s.
Genetic programming
Genetic programming is a technique for getting programs to solve a task by mating random Lisp
programs and selecting fittest in millions of generations.
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Applications of AI
Game playing
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You can buy machines that can play master level chess for a few hundred dollars. There is some
AI in them, but they play well against people mainly through brute force computation--looking at
hundreds of thousands of positions. To beat a world champion by brute force and known reliable
heuristics requires being able to look at 200 million positions per second.
Speech recognition
In the 1990s, computer speech recognition reached a practical level for limited purposes. Thus
United Airlines has replaced its keyboard tree for flight information by a system using speech
recognition of flight numbers and city names. It is quite convenient. On the the other hand, while
it is possible to instruct some computers using speech, most users have gone back to the keyboard
and the mouse as still more convenient.
Understanding natural language
Just getting a sequence of words into a computer is not enough. Parsing sentences is not enough
either. The computer has to be provided with an understanding of the domain the text is about,
and this is presently possible only for very limited domains.
Computer vision
The world is composed of three-dimensional objects, but the inputs to the human eye and
computers' TV cameras are two dimensional. Some useful programs can work solely in two
dimensions, but full computer vision requires partial three-dimensional information that is not just
a set of two-dimensional views. At present there are only limited ways of representing three-
dimensional information directly, and they are not as good as what humans evidently use.
Expert systems
A "knowledge engineer'' interviews experts in a certain domain and tries to embody their
knowledge in a computer program for carrying out some task. How well this works depends on
whether the intellectual mechanisms required for the task are within the present state of AI. When
this turned out not to be so, there were many disappointing results.

One of the first expert systems was MYCIN in 1974, which diagnosed bacterial infections of the
blood and suggested treatments. It did better than medical students or practicing doctors, provided
its limitations were observed. Namely, its ontology included bacteria, symptoms, and treatments
and did not include patients, doctors, hospitals, death, recovery, and events occurring in time. Its
interactions depended on a single patient being considered. Since the experts consulted by the
knowledge engineers knew about patients, doctors, death, recovery, etc., it is clear that the
knowledge engineers forced what the experts told them into a predetermined framework. In the
present state of AI, this has to be true. The usefulness of current expert systems depends on their
users having common sense.
Heuristic classification
One of the most feasible kinds of expert system given the present knowledge of AI is to put some
information in one of a fixed set of categories using several sources of information. An example
is advising whether to accept a proposed credit card purchase. Information is available about the
owner of the credit card, his record of payment and also about the item he is buying and about the
establishment from which he is buying it (e.g., about whether there have been previous credit card
frauds at this establishment).
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ONTOLOGY
Ontologies are considered one of the pillars of the Semantic Web, although they do not have a
universally accepted definition. A (Semantic Web) vocabulary can be considered as a special
form of (usually light-weight) ontology.
“Ontology is a formal specification of a shared conceptualization”
In the context of computer & information sciences, ontology defines a set of representational
primitives with which to model a domain of knowledge or discourse. The representational
primitives are typically classes (or sets), attributes (or properties), and relationships (or relations
among class members).
The definitions of the representational primitives include information about their meaning and
constraints on their logically consistent application. In the context of database systems, ontology
can be viewed as a level of abstraction of data models, analogous to hierarchical and relational
models, but intended for modeling knowledge about individuals, their attributes, and their
relationships to other individuals.
Ontologies are typically specified in languages that allow abstraction away from data structures
and implementation strategies;
In practice, the languages of ontologies are closer in expressive power to first-order logic than
languages used to model databases. For this reason, ontologies are said to be at the ―semantic‖
level, whereas database schema are models of data at the ―logical‖ or ―physical‖ level. Due to
their independence from lower level data models, ontologies are used for integrating
heterogeneous databases, enabling interoperability among disparate systems, and specifying
interfaces to independent, knowledge-based services.
In the technology stack of the Semantic Web standards, ontologies are called out as an explicit
layer. There are now standard languages and a variety of commercial and open source tools for
creating and working with ontologies.
• Ontology defines (specifies) the concepts, relationships, and other distinctions that are relevant
for modeling a domain.
• The specification takes the form of the definitions of representational vocabulary (classes,
relations, and so forth), which provide meanings for the vocabulary and formal constraints on
its coherent use.

KEY APPLICATIONS
Ontologies are part of the W3C standards stack for the Semantic Web, in which they are used to
specify standard conceptual vocabularies in which to exchange data among systems, provide
services for answering queries, publish reusable knowledge bases, and offer services to facilitate
interoperability across multiple, heterogeneous systems and databases.

The key role of ontologies with respect to database systems is to specify a data modeling
representation at a level of abstraction above specific database designs (logical or physical), so
that data can be exported, translated, queried, and unified across independently developed
systems and services. Successful applications to date include database interoperability, cross
database search, and the integration of web services.
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INFERENCE ENGINE
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Inference means A conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning.
In computer science, and specifically the branches of knowledge engineering and artificial
intelligence, an inference engine is a “computer program that tries to derive answers from a
knowledge base”. It is the "brain" that expert systems use to reason about the information in the
knowledge base for the ultimate purpose of formulating new conclusions. Inference engines are
considered to be a special case of reasoning engines, which can use more general methods of
reasoning.
Architecture
The separation of inference engines as a distinct software component stems from the typical
production system architecture. This architecture relies on a data store,
1. An interpreter. The interpreter executes the chosen agenda items by applying the
corresponding base rules.
2. A scheduler. The scheduler maintains control over the agenda by estimating the effects of
applying inference rules in light of item priorities or other criteria on the agenda.
3. A consistency enforcer. The consistency enforcer attempts to maintain a consistent
representation of the emerging solution.
Logic:
In logic, a rule of inference, inference rule, or transformation rule is the act of drawing a
conclusion based on the form of premises interpreted as a function which takes premises, analyses
their syntax, and returns a conclusion (or conclusions). For example, the rule of inference modus
ponens takes two premises, one in the form of "If p then q" and another in the form of "p" and
returns the conclusion "q". Popular rules of inference include modus ponens, modus tollens from
propositional logic and contraposition.
Expert System
In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system that emulates the decision-
making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by
reasoning about knowledge, like an expert, and not by following the procedure of a developer as
is the case in conventional programming.

SOFTWARE AGENT
In computer science, a software agent is a software program that acts for a user or other
program in a relationship of agency, which derives from the Latin agere (to do): an agreement
to act on one's behalf.
The basic attributes of a software agent are that
• Agents are not strictly invoked for a task, but activate themselves,
• Agents may reside in wait status on a host, perceiving context,
• Agents may get to run status on a host upon starting conditions,
• Agents do not require interaction of user,
• Agents may invoke other tasks including communication.

Various authors have proposed different definitions of agents; these commonly include concepts
such as
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
 Persistence (code is not executed on demand but runs continuously and decides for itself
when it should perform some activity)

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 Autonomy (agents have capabilities of task selection, prioritization, goal-directed behavior,
decision-making without human intervention)
 Social ability (agents are able to engage other components through some sort of
communication and coordination, they may collaborate on a task)
 Reactivity (agents perceive the context in which they operate and react to it appropriately).

Distinguishing agents from programs

Related and derived concepts include Intelligent agents (in particular exhibiting some aspect of
Artificial Intelligence, such as learning and reasoning), autonomous agents (capable of
modifying the way in which they achieve their objectives), distributed agents (being executed on
physically distinct computers), multi-agent systems (distributed agents that do not have the
capabilities to achieve an objective alone and thus must communicate), and mobile agents (agents
that can relocate their execution onto different processors).
Examples of intelligent software agents
Haag (2006) suggests that there are only four essential types of intelligent software agents:
1. Buyer agents or shopping bots
2. User or personal agents
3. Monitoring-and-surveillance agents
4. Data Mining agents
Buyer agents (shopping bots)
Buyer agents travel around a network (i.e. the internet) retrieving information about goods
and services. These agents, also known as 'shopping bots', work very efficiently for commodity
products such as CDs, books, electronic components, and other one-size-fits-all products.

User agents (personal agents)

User agents, or personal agents, are intelligent agents that take action on your behalf. In this
category belong those intelligent agents that already perform, or will shortly perform, the
following tasks:
 Check your e-mail, sort it according to the user's order of preference, and alert you when
important emails arrive.
 Play computer games as your opponent or patrol game areas for you.
 Assemble customized news reports for you.
 Find information for you on the subject of your choice.
 Fill out forms on the Web automatically for you, storing your information for future reference
 Scan Web pages looking for and highlighting text that constitutes the "important" part of the
information there
 "Discuss" topics with you ranging from your deepest fears to sports
 Facilitate with online job search duties by scanning known job boards and sending the
resume to opportunities who meet the desired criteria.
 Profile synchronization across heterogeneous social networks
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

Monitoring-and-surveillance (predictive) agents

Monitoring and Surveillance Agents are used to observe and report on equipment, usually
computer systems. The agents may keep track of company inventory levels, observe competitors'

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prices and relay them back to the company, watch stock manipulation by insider trading and
rumors, etc.
For example, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has an agent that monitors inventory,
planning, and scheduling equipment ordering to keep costs down, as well as food storage
facilities. These agents usually monitor complex computer networks that can keep track of the
configuration of each computer connected to the network.
Data mining agents
This agent uses information technology to find trends and patterns in an abundance of
information from many different sources. The user can sort through this information in order to
find whatever information they are seeking.
A data mining agent operates in a data warehouse discovering information. A 'data warehouse'
brings together information from lots of different sources. "Data mining" is the process of looking
through the data warehouse to find information that you can use to take action, such as ways to
increase sales or keep customers who are considering defecting.
'Classification' is one of the most common types of data mining, which finds patterns in
information and categorizes them into different classes.

TIM BERNERS-LEE WWW:

When Tim Berners-Lee was developing the key elements of the World Wide Web, he showed
great insight in providing Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) as a simple easy-to-use Web
development language.
The continuing evolution of the Web into a resource with intelligent features, however, presents
many new challenges. The solution of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to provide a
new Web architecture that uses additional layers of markup languages that can directly apply
logic. However, the addition of ontologies, logic, and rule systems for markup languages means
consideration of extremely difficult mathematic and logic consequences, such as paradox,
recursion, undecidability, and computational complexity on a global scale.
The impact of adding formal logic to Web architecture and present the new markup languages
leading to the future Web architecture: the Semantic Web. It concludes with a presentation of
complexity theory and rulebased inference engines followed by a discussion of what is solvable
on the Web.
THE WORLD WIDE WEB
By 1991, three major events converged to accelerate the development of the Information
Revolution. These three events were the introduction of the World Wide Web, the widespread
availability of the graphical browser, and the unleashing of commercialization on the Internet.
The essential power of the World Wide Web turned out to be its universality though the use of
HTML. The concept provided the ability to combine words, pictures, and sounds (i.e., to provide
multimedia content) on Internet pages.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
This excited many computer programmers who saw the potential for publishing information on
the Internet with the ease of using a word processor, but with the richness of multimedia forms.
Berners-Lee and his collaborators laid the groundwork for the open standards of the Web. Their
efforts included inventing and refining the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for linking
Web documents, the HTML for formatting Web documents and the Universal Resource
Locator (URL) system for addressing Web documents.
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TIM BERNERS-LEE
Tim Berners-Lee was born in London, England, in 1955. His parents were computer scientists
who met while working on the Ferranti Mark I, the world‘s first commercially sold computer. He
soon developed his parents‘ interest in computers, and at Queen‘s College, at Oxford University,
he built his first computer from an old television set and a leftover processor.
Berners-Lee studied physics at Oxford, graduated in 1976. Between 1976 and 1980, he worked at
Plessey Telecommunications Ltd. followed by D. G. Nash Ltd. In 1980, he was a software
engineer at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in Geneva, Switzerland where he
learned the laboratory‘s complicated information system. He wrote a computer program to store
information and use random associations that he called, “Enquire-Within-Upon- Everything,” or
“Enquire.” This system provided links between documents.
In 1989, Berners-Lee with a team of colleagues developed HTML, an easy-to-learn document
coding system that allows users to click onto a link in a document‘s text and connect to another
document. He also created an addressing plan that allowed each Web page to have a specific
location known as a URL. Finally, he completed HTTP a system for linking these documents
across the Internet. He also wrote the software for the first server and the first Web client browser
that would allow any computer user to view and navigate Web pages, as well as create and post
their own Web documents.
In the following years, Berners-Lee improved the specifications of URLs, HTTP, and HTML as
the technology spread across the Internet.
HyperText Markup Language is the primary language for formatting Web pages. The author of a
web page uses HTML to describe the attributes of the documents such as,
• what the web page should look like
• what types of fonts to use
• what color text should be
• where paragraphs begin
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HyperText Transfer Protocol is the network protocol used to deliver files and data on the Web
including: HTML files, image files, query results, or anything else. Usually, HTTP takes place
through TCP/IP sockets. Socket is the term for the package of subroutines that provide an access
path for data transfer through the network.
HTTP uses the client–server model: An HTTP client opens a connection and sends a request
message to an HTTP server; the server then returns a response message, usually containing the
resource that was requested. After delivering the response, the server closes the connection.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
The result of an implementation of XML is referred to as SOAP. Simple Object Access Protocol
(SOAP) is an implementation of XML that represents one common set of rules about how data
and commands are represented and extended.
It consists of three parts:
1. An envelope (a framework for describing what is in a message and how to process it)
2. Set of encoding rules (for expressing instances of application-defined data types)
3. A convention (It is used for identifying remote procedure calls and responses.)

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SEMANTIC ROADMAP:
Tim Berners - Lee, and his World Wide Web constortium (W3C) team are working
collaboratively to develop, extend, and standardize the Web‘s markup languages and tools. In
addition, what they are designing is the next generation Web architecture: the Semantic Web.
The goal of the Semantic Web architecture is to provide a knowledge representation of linked
data in order to allow machine processing on a global scale. This involves moving the Web from
a repository of data without logic to a level where it is possible to express logic through
knowledgerepresentation systems.
The vision of the Semantic Web is to expand or increased the existing Web with resources more
easily interpreted by programs and intelligent agents.
The existing web involves two methods to gain information regarding documents.
The first is to use a directory, or portal site
The directory is constructed manually by searching the Web and then categorizing pages and
links. The problem with this approach is that directories take a tremendous effort to maintain.
Finding new links, updating old ones, and maintaining the database technology, all add to a
portal‘s administrative burden and operating costs.
The second method uses automatic Web crawling and indexing systems.
The future semantic web approaches can produce effective results by using a system that
combines the reasoning engine as well as search engine. It will be able to reach out to indexes that
contain very complete lists of all occurrences of a given term, and then use logic to weed out all
the terms of items that can be used to solve a given problem.
Hence, if the Semantic Web can produce such a structure and meaningful content to the Web,
then an environment is created where software agents can perform sophisticated tasks for users.
Logic on the semantic Web
The goal of the Semantic Web is different from most systems of logic. Th eSemantic Web‘s goal
is to create a unifying system where a subset is constrained to provide the tractability and
efficiency necessary for real applications. However, the Semantic Web itself does not actually
define a reasoning engine, but rather follows a proof of a theorem.
This mimics an important comparison between conventional hypertext systems and the original
Web design. The original Web design dropped link consistency in favor of expressive flexibility
and scalability. The result allowed individual Web sites to have a strict hierarchical order or
matrix structure, but it did not require it of the Web as a whole.
As a result, a Semantic Web would actually be a proof validator rather than a theorem prover.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
In other words, the Semantic Web cannot find answers, it cannot even check that an answer is
correct, but it can follow a simple explanation that an answer is correct. The Semantic Web as a
source of data would permit many kinds of automated reasoning systems to function, but it would
not be a reasoning system itself.
The objective of the Semantic Web therefore, is to provide a framework that expresses both data
and rules for reasoning for Web-based knowledge representation. Adding logic to the Web means
using rules to make inferences, choose courses of action, and answering questions. A combination
of mathematical and engineering issues complicates this task. The logic must be powerful enough

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 to describe complex properties of objects, but not so powerful that agents can be tricked by being
asked to consider a paradox.
The logic of the SemanticWeb is proceeding in a step-by-step approach building one layer on top
of another. Three important technologies for developing the Semantic Web are,
1) Resource Description Framework 2) Ontology 3) Web Ontology Language

1. Resource Description Framework

Resource Description Framework is a model of statements made about resources and associated
URI. Its statements have a uniform structure of three parts: subject, predicate, and object.
Using RDF, the statements can be formulated in a structured manner. This allows software agents
to read as well as act on such statements. The set of statements can be expressed as a graph; a
series of (subject, predicate, object) triples, or even in XML forms.
• The first form is the most convenient for communication between people
• The second for efficient processing
• The third one allows as flexible communication with agent software.

2. Ontology
Ontology is an agreement between software agents that exchange information. Thus, the required
information is obtained by such an agreement in order to interpret the structure as well as
understand the exchanged data and a vocabulary that is used in the exchanges.
Using ontology, agents can exchange new information can be inferred by applying and extending
the logical rules present in the ontology.
An ontology that is complex enough to the useful for complex exchanges of information will
suffer from the possibility of logical inconsistencies. This is considered as a basic consequence of
the insights of Godel‘s incompleteness theorem.

3. Web Ontology Language [OWL]

This language is a vocabulary extension of RDF and is currently evolving into the semantic
markup language for publishing and sharing ontologies on the World Wide Web. Web Ontology
Language facilitates greater machine readability of Web content than that supported by XML,
RDF, and RDFS by providing additional vocabulary along with formal semantics.
OWL can be expressed in three sublanguages: OWL Lite, OWL DL, and OWL Full.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

UNIT - II
Knowledge Representation for the Semantic Web
Ontologies and their role in the semantic web, Ontologies Languages for the Semantic Web –
Resource Description Framework(RDF) / RDF Schema, Ontology Web Language(OWL), UML,
XML/XML Schema.

ONTOLOGIES AND THEIR ROLE IN THE SEMANTIC WEB

Ontology based Knowledge Representation:

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The ontology and ontology languages may be viewed as one of the important technology in
semantic web. Ontology can be described as formal allotment of conceptualization band to
domain. This implies it provides the description of concepts and their corresponding
relationships. In particular, the ontologies are designed as domain models that broadly appease or
satisfy two special characteristics signifying the semantics. They are,

1. Ontologies are expressed in formal languages with a well-defined semantics.

The first point underlines that ontology needs to be modelled using languages with a formal
semantics such languages include RDF and OWL. These languages are treated as most frequently
used languages in semantic web. These languages contain those models which are prefferred by
term ontology.

2. Ontologies build upon a shared understanding within a community.

This understanding represents an agreement among members of the community over the concepts
and relationships that are present in a domain and their usage.
RDF and OWL, the ontology languages, have standardized syntaxes and logic-based formal
semantics. RDF and OWL are the languages most commonly used on the Semantic Web, and in
fact when using the term ontology many practitioners refer to domain models described in one of
these two languages. The second point reminds as that there is no such thing as a
―personal ontology‖. For example, the schema of a database or a UML class diagram that we
have created for the design of our own application is not an ontology. It is a conceptual model of
a domain, but it is not shared: there is no commitment toward this schema from anyone else but
us.
The simplest structures are glossaries or controlled vocabularies, in essence an agreement on the
meaning of a set of terms.
Semantic networks are essentially graphs that show also how terms are related to each other.
Thesauri are richer structures in that they describe a hierarchy between concepts and typically
also allow describing related terms and aliases. Thesauri are also the simplest structures where
logic-based reasoning can be applied: the broadernarrower relationships of these hierarchies are
transitive, in that an item that belongs to a narrower category also belongs to its direct parent and
all of its ancestors.

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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
Folksonomy structures are regarded as weaker models that do not contain any explicit
hierarchies, often compries extra corresponding to the social context of tags, i.e. the set of users
who have been using them. These structures again success in extracting hierarchies and also
relationship among the tags.
The term lightweight ontology is typically applied to ontologies that make a distinction between
classes, instances and properties, but contain minimal descriptions of them.
On the other hand, heavyweight ontologies allow to describe more precisely how classes are
composed of other classes, and provide a richer set of constructs to constrain how properties can
be applied to classes. At the far end of the spectrum are complex knowledge bases that use the
full expressivity of first order logic (FOL) to de fine to a great detail the kind of instances a
concept may have and in which cases two instances may be related using a certain relationship.
The more constrained the descriptions of concepts are, the less likely that their meaning will be
misinterpreted by human readers.

In practice, the most commonWeb ontologies are all lightweight ontologies due to the need of
serving the needs of many applications with divergent goals. Widely shared Web ontologies also
tend to be small as they contain only the terms tha t are agreed on by a broad user base. Large,
heavyweight ontologies are more commonly found in targeted expert systems used in focused
domains with a tradition of formalized processes and vocabularies such as the area of life
sciences and engineering.
Ontologies and ontology languages for the SemanticWeb:
Although the notion of ontologies is independent of the Web, ontologies play a special role in the
architecture of the Semantic Web.

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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
This architecture provides the main motivation for the design of ontology languages for the
SemanticWeb: RDF and OWL are both prepared for the distributed and open environment of the
Web.
The Semantic Web will be realized by annotating existing Web resources with ontology-based
metadata and by exposing the content of databases by publishing the data and the schema in one
of the standard ontology languages.
Ontology languages designed for the SemanticWeb provide themeans to identify concepts in
ontologies using globally unique identifiers (URIs). These identifiers can be used in data sources
to point to a concept or relationship from an external, public ontology. Similar to creating HTML
pages and linking them to existing ones, anyone can create and publish an ontology, which may
reference the concepts in remote ontologies. Much like the hyperlinks among web pages, it is
expected that these references will form a contiguousweb linking all knowledge sources across
theWeb.
As URLs are also URIs, ontologies can also reference existing Web resources and describe their
characteristics.
Semantic Web applications collect or query such data sources, aggregate and reason with the
results. Information described according to a single schema that is known by the application
developer can be directly consumed: by committing to ontology the parties involved have already
implicitly agreed on the meaning of the information.
When annotating Web content or exposing the content of a database, one may choose to create
ontology from scratch, or reuse an existing ontology while possibly extending it. However, as
there is no coordination of any kind in reusing ontologies, it may happen that two communities
develop ontologies that cover the same or overlapping domains. Ontologies Languages for
the Semantic Web:
We introduce the ontology languages RDF and OWL, which have been standardized in recent
years by the World Wide Web Consortium.
The Resource Description Framework (RDF) / RDF Schema:
The Resource Description Framework (RDF) was originally created to describe resources on the
World Wide Web. In reality, RDF is domain-independent and can be used to model both real
world objects and information resources. RDF itself is a very primitive modeling language, but it
is the basis of more complex languages such as OWL.
There are two kinds of primitives in RDF: resources and literals
The definition of a resource is intentionally vague; in general everything is modelled as a resource
that can be (potentially) identified and described. Resources are either identified by a URI or left
blank. Blank resources (blank nodes) are the existential quantifiers of the language: they are
resources with an identity, but whose identifier is not known or irrelevant.Literals are strings
(character literals) with optional language and datatype identifiers.
Expressions are formed bymaking statements (triples) of the form (subject, predicate, and object).
The subject of a statement must be a resource (blank or with a URI), the predicate must be a URI
and the object can be either kind of resource or a literal. Literals are thus only allowed at the end
of a statement.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
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The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is a universal meta-language for defining markup. It
provides a uniform framework for exchanging data between applications. It builds upon the
original and most basic layer of the Web, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). However, XML
does not provide a mechanism to deal with the semantics (the meaning) of data.
Resource Description Framework (RDF) was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) for Web-based metadata in order to build and extend XML. The goal of RDF is to make
work easier for autonomous agents and automated services by supplying a rudimentary semantic
capability.
The RDF is a format for data that uses a simple relational model that allows structured and
semistructured data to be mixed, exported, and shared across different applications. It is a data
model for objects and relationships between them and is constructed with an object-attribute-
value triple called a statement. While XML provides interoperability within one application (e.g.,
producing and exchanging bank statements) using a given schema, RDF provides interoperability
across applications (e.g., importing bank statements into a tax calculating program).
HTML LANGUAGE
In 1990, when Tim Berners-Lee laid the foundation for the World Wide Web, he included three
primary components: HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), URLs (Universal Resource Locators),
and HTML (Hypertext Markup Language).
These three components represented the essential ingredients leading to the explosive growth of
the World Wide Web. The original idea behind HTML was a modest one. Browsers, such as
Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, could view information on Web pages written in
HTML. The HTML program can be written to a simple text file that is recognized by a browser
application and can also be called embedded script programming.
The following listing of HTML markup tags is a HTML ―Hello World‖ example consisting of
root tags (<HTML>), head tags (<HEAD>), and body tags (<BODY>) with the displayed
information wedged in between the appropriate tags:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>My Title</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
Hello World
</BODY>
</HTML>
In particular, Web applications, such as Web Services, required a means to explicitly manipulate
data. This motivated the development of XML.
XML LANGUAGE
The HTML program is not extensible. That is, it has specifically designed tags that require
universal agreement before changes can be made. Although over the years, Microsoft was able to
add tags that work only in Internet Explorer, and Netscape was able to add tags that work only in
Navigator, Web site developers had no way of adding their own tags. The solution was XML.
Proposed in late 1996 by the W3C, it offered developers a way to identify and manipulate their
own structured data.
The XML document simplified the process of defining and using metadata.
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XML is not a replacement, but rather a complementary technology to HTML. While XML is
already widely used across the Web today, it is still a relatively new technology. The XML is a
meta language, which means it is a language used to create other languages. It can provide a basic
structure and set of rules for developing other markup languages.
The XML document lets you name the tags anything you want, unlike HTML, which limits you
to predefined tag names. You can choose element names that make sense in the context of the
document. Tag names are case-sensitive, although either case may be used as long as the opening
and closing tag names are consistent.
The text between the tags is the content of the document, raw information that may be the body of
a message, a title, or a field of data. In its simplest form, an XML document is comprised of one
or more named elements organized into a nested hierarchy. An element consists of an opening
tag, some data, and a closing tag. For any given element, the name of the opening tag must match
that of the closing tag. A closing tag is identical to an opening tag except that the less-than
symbol (<) is immediately followed by a forward-slash (/). Keeping this simple view, we can
construct the major portions of the XML document to include the following six ingredients: (1)
XML declaration (required), (2) Document Type Definition (or XML Schema), (3) elements
(required), (4) attributes, (5) entity, and (6) notations.
An example of a well-formed XML declaration is
<?xml version=―1.0‖ encoding=―iso-8859-1‖ standalone="yes"?>
Following the XML declaration is a document type declaration that links to a DTD in a separate
file. This is followed by a set of declarations. These parts together comprise the prolog. A simple
XML ―Hello World‖ example follows:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE message [
<!ELEMENT message (#PCDATA)>
]>
<message> Hello
World!
</message>
In addition, XML is both a powerful and essential language for Web Services. It is the open
standard that allows data to be exchanged between applications and databases over the Web.
XML does not offer semantics and logic capabilities. The next step up the markup language
pyramid is RDF, which begins to establish a basis for semantics on the Web.
RDF LANGUAGE
The XML tags can often add meaning to data, however, actually understanding the tags is
meaningful only to humans. For example, given the following segment of XML markup tags:
<book>
<title>G¨odel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid<title>
</book>
A human might infer that: ―The book has the title G¨odel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal
Golden
Braid.‖ This simple grammatical sentence is understood to contain three basic parts: a subject
[The book], a predicate [has title], and an object [G¨odel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden
Braid].
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Regardless, the computer would not take action based upon this string (e.g., checking to see
related titles, prices, availability, etc.) without additional explicit programming.
For machines to do more automatically, it is necessary to go beyond the notion of the HTML
display model, or XML data model, toward a ―meaning‖ model. This is where RDF and
metadata can provide new machine-processing capabilities built upon XML technology.
What is metadata? It is information about other data. Building upon XML, the W3C developed
the RDF metadata standard. The goal was to add semantics defined on top of XML.
While RDF is actually built upon a very simple model and it can support very large-scale
information processing. An RDF document can delineate precise relationships between
vocabulary items by constructing a grammatical representation.
RDF Triple
The RDF model is based on statements made about resources that can be anything with an
associated URI (Universal Resource Identifier). The basic RDF model produces a triple, where a
resource (the subject) is linked through an arc labeled with a property (the predicate) to a value
(the object).
The RDF statements can be represented as - A resource[subject] has a property[predicate] with a
specific value[object].
This can be reduced to a triple: (subject, predicate, object)
Subject, predicate, and object can be defined in terms of resources, properties, and value as:
Subject: The resource (a person, place, or thing) that the statement describes. A RDF resource
can be anything in the data model (document, user, product, etc) and is uniquely identified by a
URI. A URI can be a URL (Universal Resource Locator).
Predicate: The property (name, city, title, color, shape, characteristic) of the subject (person,
place, or thing) and is uniquely identified by a URI.
Object: The value (Douglas R. Hofstadter, San Jose, ―G¨odel, Escher,Bach: An Eternal Golden
Braid,‖ blue, circle, strong) can be specified for the property (name, city, title, color, shape,
characteristic), which describes the subject (person, place, or thing). This value can be any valid
RDF data type. (RDF supports all of the XML data types.)
This simple model of the triple with URIs used by RDF to describe information has many
advantages. One of the most important is that any data model can be reduced to a common
storage format based on a triple.
This makes RDF ideal for aggregating disparate data models because all the data from all models
can be treated the same. This means that information can be combined from many sources and
processed as if it came from a single source.
The RDF relationships can be between two resources or between a resource and a literal. These
relationships form arcs. The RDF arc can be graphically represented where the subject is shown
as an oval, the predicate as a connecting arc or line, and the object as an oval. Graphs are easy to
read and the directed arc removes any possibility of confusion over what are the subject and the
objects.
Let us examine a very simple statement and identify the components that comprise an RDF
model:
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Ex: Consider this sentence as an RDF Statement

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―The book has the title G¨odel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.‖
―The book [subject] has the title [predicate] G¨odel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden
Braid [object].‖
This can be represented as the triple:
(The book has the title, G¨odel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid).
It is a directed graph with labeled nodes and labeled arcs. The arc is directed from the resource
(the subject) to the value (the object), and this kind of graph is recognized in the AI community as
a semantic net.
We can think of the triple (x,P,y) as a logical formula P(x,y) where the binary predicate P relates
the object x to the object y.
Applying this to our triple:
(The book, has the title, G¨odel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid)
Produces a logical formula:
‗has the title‘ (The book, G¨odel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid) Where
the binary predicate (P): ‗has the title‘

Fig: Graphical representation of the RDF statement

relates the object (x): The book to the object (y): G¨odel, Escher,
Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.
Think of a collection of interrelated RDF statements represented as a graph of interconnected
nodes. The nodes are connected via various relationships. For example, let us say each node
represents a person. Each person might be related to another person because they are siblings,
parents, spouses, friends, or employees.
Each interconnection is labeled with the relationship name.
The RDF is used in this manner to describe these relationships. It does not actually include the
nodes directly, but it does indirectly since the relationships point to the nodes. At any time, we
could introduce a new node, such as a newborn child, and all that is needed is for us to add the
appropriate relationship for the two parents.
BASIC ELEMENTS
Most of the elements of RDF concern classes, properties, and instances of classes.
Syntax
Both RDF and RDF Schema (RDFS) use XML-based syntax.
The RDF system provides a means of describing the relationships among resources in terms of
named properties and values. Since RDF and XML were developed about the same time, RDF
was defined as an excellent complement to XML. Encoding RDF triples in XML makes an
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
object portable across platforms and interoperable among applications. Because RDF data can be
expressed using XML syntax, it can be passed over the Web as a document and parsed using
Dept. of CSE, MRCET Page|24
existing XML-based software. This combination of RDF and XML enables individuals or
programs to locate, retrieve, process, store, or manage the information objects that comprise a
Semantic Web site.
Header
An RDF Document looks very much like all XML documents in terms of elements, tags, and
namespaces. An RDF document starts with a header including the root element as an “rdf:RDF”
element that also specifies a number of namespaces. It then defines properties and classes.

Table: RDF document parts (header, XML syntax, root element, namespace, the RDF
triple, and the end element)

Namespaces
The namespace mechanism of XML is also used in RDF. However, in XML, namespaces are only
used to remove ambiguities. In RDF, external namespaces are expected to be RDF documents
defining resources, which are used to import RDF documents.
To add a namespace to an RDF document, a namespace attribute can be added anywhere in the
document, but is usually added to the RDF tag itself. The namespace declaration for RDF
vocabularies usually points to a URI of the RDF Schema document for the vocabulary. We can
add a namespace as:
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">
Note, the prefix for the RDF Syntax is given as ―rdf,‖ the RDF Schema is given as ―rdfs,‖ and
the Dublin Core schema (a special publication ontology) is given as ―dc.‖ DC is a well-
established RDF vocabulary for publications.
Description
The “rdf:about” attribute of the element ―rdf:Description‖ is equivalent to that of an ID
attribute, but is often used to suggest the object may be defined elsewhere. A set of RDF
statements form a large graph relating things to other things through their properties. The content
of “rdf:Description” elements are called property elements. The “rdf:resource” attribute and
the “rdf:type” element introduces structure to the rdf document.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
While RDF is required to be well formed, it does not require XML-style validation. The RDF
parsers do not use Document Type Definitions (DTDs) or XML Schema to ensure that the RDF is
valid.
Data Types
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Sometimes it is useful to be able to identify what kind of thing a resource is, much like how
object-oriented systems use classes. The RDF system uses a type for this purpose. While there are
two very general types, a resource and a literal, every resource may be given a precise type.
For example, the resource ―John‖ might be given a type of ―Person.‖ The value of the
type should be another resource that would mean that more information could be associated with
the type itself.

As with other properties, types can be specified with a triple:

<http://www.web-iq.com/people/John>, rdf:type,
http://xmlns.com/wordnet/1.6/Person

EX: ―The book has the title

G¨odel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid,‖ as:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rdf:RDF
xmlns:rdf=http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<rdf:Description rdf:about=―http://www.amazon.com/books‖>
<dc:title>G¨odel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid</dc:title>
</rdf:Description></rdf:RDF>
Vocabularies
Any kind of business resource vocabularies can be used to model business resources using the
syntax of RDF.
Because RDF creates domain-specific vocabularies that are then used to model resources, we can
use RDF to model business-specific resources. The only limitation is the need for industry
cooperation in developing an interoperable vocabulary. We can consider RDF as a way of
recording information about resources.
The RDF recorded in XML is a powerful tool. By using XML we have access to a great number
of existing XML applications, such as parsers and APIs.
Classes and Properties
The RDF and RDF Schema (RDFS) classes and properties can be found at: RDF W3C
specifications
RDF Model and Syntax Specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-rdf-syntax-19990222/
RDFS Specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-rdf-schema-20030123/
Collections
A collection is considered to be a finite grouping of items with a given terminator.

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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
Within RDF, a collection is defined through the use of rdf:parseType = "Collection" and
through listing the collected resources within the collection block.
Reification
The RDF allows us to make statements about statements using a reification mechanism. This is
particularly useful to describe belief or trust in other statements.
The following example discusses the interpretation of multiple statements in relationship to RDF
statements.
Interpreting Multiple Sentences as RDF Statement:
Let us start with five simple facts that we wish to represent as RDF triplets.
1. The name of this URI (mailto: [email protected]) is Douglas
R. Hofstadter. (It is the name)
2. The type of this URI (mailto: [email protected]) is a type of person.
3. The author of this URI (mailto: [email protected]) is an author of
isbn:0465026567.
4. The id of this URI (isbn:0465026567) is the identity of a book.
5. The title of this URI (isbn:0465026567) has the title of G¨odel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal
Golden Braid.

RDF Triplet Data Table

Fig: Individual graphs for each triplet statement of above Example

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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

Merged RDF graph

The serialized form of the RDF document for this example can be written as:
Serialization of RDF Statement as
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Class rdf:ID="book"
xmlns:rdf= mlns="uri">
<title>G¨odel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid</title>
...
</Class>
In any RDF graph, a subgraph would be a subset of the triples contained in the graph. Each triple
is its own unique RDF graph. The union of two or more graphs is a new graph called a merged
graph.
RDF SCHEMA
The RDF provides a s imple yet powerful model for describing information including a basic
directed graph, but the semantics (meaning of the information) is described using RDFS. The
purpose of RDFS is to provide an XML vocabulary that can express classes and their (subclass)
relationships, as well as to define properties associated with classes. This Schema is actually a
primitive ontology language.
Classes and Properties
To describe a specific domain, we specify the ― things‖ we want to talk about. We can talk about
either individual objects (resources) or classes that define types of objects.
A class can be considered as a set of elements. Individual objects that belong to a class are
instances of the class. The relationship between instances and classes in RDF is expressed by
“rdf:type.”
The three most important RDF concepts are “Resource” (rdfs:Resource), “Class” (rdfs:Class),
and “Property” (rdf:Property).
These are all ―
classes. ‖ Class is in the rdfs namespace. Property is in the rdf namespace.

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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
We just use the rdf:type property, to declare that something is a ―
type‖ of something else as
following:
rdfs:Resource rdf:type rdfs:Class.
rdfs:Class rdf:type rdfs:Class.
rdf:Property rdf:type rdfs:Class.
rdf:type rdf:type rdf:Property.
This means that ― Resource is a type of Class, Class is a type of Class, Property is a type of Class,
and type is a type of Property.‖
For example, the rdf:ID provides a name for the class while the conjunction (AND) of two
subClassOf statements is a subset of the intersection of the classes:
<rdfs:Class rdf:ID="Set1 AND Set 2">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#Set1"/>
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#Set2"/>
</rdfs:Class>
RDF and RDFS Classes

RDF and RDFS Properties

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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

1. quadrilaterals(X)→ polygons(X)
2. polygons(X) → shapes(X)
3. quadrilaterals (squares)
And now from this knowledge the following conclusions can be deduced:
1. polygons (squares)
2. shapes (squares)
3. quadrilateral(X)→ shapes(X)
The hierarchy relationship of classes is shown in Figure

Fig: Hierarchy of Classes

Ontology Web Language(OWL)

For machines to perform useful automatic reasoning tasks on Web documents, the language
machines use must go beyond the basic semantics of XML Schema and RDF Schema. They will
require a more expressive and reasoning ontology language; as a result, the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) has defined Web Ontology Language (called OWL).
Web Ontology Language enhances RDF with more vocabulary for describing properties and
classes, including relations between classes (e.g., disjointedness), cardinality (e.g., exactly one),
equality, richer typing of properties, characteristics of properties (e.g., symmetry), and
enumerated classes.
Ontologies are usually expressed in a logic-based language, so that accurate, consistent, and
meaningful distinctions can be made among the classes, properties, and relations. Some ontology
tools can perform automated reasoning using the ontologies, and thus provide advanced services
to intelligent applications, such as conceptual (semantic) search and retrieval, software agents,
speech understanding, knowledge management, intelligent databases, and e-commerce.
OWL was developed in 2003, when the W3C began final unification of the disparate international
ontology efforts into a standardized ontology. Web Ontology Language is designed to express a
wide variety of knowledge, as well as provide for an efficient means to reason with it in order to
express the most important kinds of knowledge. Using an ontology with a rule- based system, we
can reach logic inferences about Web information.
OWL can be used to describe the classes and relations between classes that are inherent in Web
documents and applications.
A set of XML statements by itself does not allow us to reach a conclusion about any other XML
statements. To employ XML to generate new data, we need knowledge embedded in some
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
Dept. of CSE, MRCET Page|30
proprietary procedural code that exists as a server page on a remote server. However, a set of
OWL statements by itself can allow us to reach a conclusion about another OWL statement.
OWL ontology documents are designed to be modular and independent. They can be combined
dynamically to provide additional meaning if required.
Web Ontology Language ontology documents have a logical consistency to them. They provide
machine-based systems with the ability to interpret the declared relationships within them. More
importantly, they also allow mathematical techniques to be applied that can interpret and
calculate the relationships that are implied within the logical formulations. These inferences make
the use of OWL ontologies tractable and realistic for organizations, drastically reducing the
amount of information that has to be modeled, encoded, or worked around by systems engineers
and integrators.

COMPATIBILITY OF OWL AND RDF/RDFS

The layered architecture of the Semantic Web would suggest that one way to develop the
necessary ontology language is to extend RDF Schema by using the RDF meaning of classes and
properties (rdfs:classes, etc.) and adding primitives to support richer expressiveness.
The W3C has defined OWL to include three different sublanguages (OWL Full, OWL DL, OWL
Lite) in order to offer different balances of expressive power and efficient reasoning.
OWL Full
The entire language is called OWL Full and it uses all the primitives and allows their combination
with RDF and RDFS. The OWL Full supports maximum expressiveness and the syntactic
freedom of RDF, but has no computational guarantees. For example, in OWL Full, a class can be
treated simultaneously as a collection of individuals and as an individual in its own right.
The advantage of OWL Full is that it is fully compatible with RDF syntax and semantics. Any
legal RDF document is also a legal OWL Full document. Any valid RDF–RDFS conclusion is
also a valid OWL Full conclusion. The disadvantage of OWL Full is that the language is
undecidable, and therefore cannot provide complete (or efficient) reasoning support.

OWL DL
Web Ontology Language DL (Descriptive Logic) is a sublanguage of OWL Full that restricts how
the constructors from OWL and RDF can be used. This ensures that the language is related to
description logic. Description Logics are a decidable fragment of First-Order Logic (FOL).
The OWL DL supports strong expressiveness while retaining computational completeness and
decidability. It is therefore possible to automatically compute the classification hierarchy and
check for inconsistencies in an ontology that conforms to OWL DL.
The advantage of this sublanguage is efficient reasoning support. The disadvantage is the loss of
full compatibility with RDF. However, every legal OWL DL document is a legal RDF document.

OWL Lite
Further restricting OWL DL produces a subset of the language called OWL Lite, which excludes
enumerated classes, disjointness statements, and arbitrary cardinality. The OWL Lite supports a
classification hierarchy and simple constraints.

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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

Fig: The OWL and RDF-RDFS subclass relationships

An OWL document identifies:
• Class hierarchy: Defines class–subclass relationships.
• Synonym: Identifies equivalent classes and equivalent properties.
• Class association: Maps one or more classes to one or more classes, through the use of a
property (i.e., domain/range).
• Property metadata: Contains metadata for properties.
• Class definition: Specifies the composition of classes.
The OWL Syntax Specification
Web Ontology Language defines the classes and properties, as well as their relationship to each
other in the document; consequently, they are extremely similar to RDF Schema.
Unlike RDF, the OWL vocabulary is quite large. Like RDF, OWL makes use of elements from
RDFS. However, OWL has several concepts unique to it, such as Boolean combinatio n of class
expressions and property restrictions, which add a layer of reasoning to applications. Both the
RDFS and OWL are compatible.
BASIC ELEMENTS
Most of the elements of an OWL ontology concern classes, properties, instances of classes, and
relationships between these instances.
Syntax
The OWL builds on RDF and RDFS and uses RDFs XML-based syntax.
OWL Document Parts

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 Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

Header
An OWL document contains an OWL ontology and is an RDF document with elements, tags,
and namespaces. An OWL document starts with a header that identifies the root element as an
rdf:RDF element, which also specifies a number of namespaces.
Class Elements
Classes are defined using an owl:Class element. An example of an OWL class
―computer‖ is defined with a subclass ―laptop‖ as
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Computer">
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#laptop"/></owl:Class>
Equivalence of classes is defined with owl:equivelentClass.

Property
A property in RDF provides information about the entity it is describing. Property characteristics
increase our ability to understand the inferred information within the data.
The following special identifiers can be used to provide information concerning properties
and their values:
• inverseOf: One property may be stated to be the inverse of another property.
• TransitiveProperty:Properties may be stated to be transitive.
• SymmetricProperty: Properties may be stated to be symmetric.
• FunctionalProperty: Properties may be stated to have a unique value.
• InverseFunctionalProperty: Properties may be stated to be inverse functional.
The OWL Lite allows restrictions to be placed on how properties can be used by instances of a
class.
• allValuesFrom: The restriction allValuesFrom is stated on a property with respect to a class.
• someValuesFrom: The restriction someValuesFrom is stated on a property with respect to a
class. A particular class may have a restriction on a property that at least one value for that
property is of a certain type.
• minCardinality: Cardinality is stated on a property with respect to a particular class. If a
minCardinality of 1 is stated on a property with respect to a class, then any instance of that
class will be related to at least one individual by that property.
• maxCardinality: Cardinality is stated on a property with respect to a particular class. If a
maxCardinality of 1 is stated on a property with respect to a class, then any instance of that
class will be related to at most one.
• cardinality: Cardinality is provided as a convenience when it is useful to state that a property
on a class has both minCardinality 0 and maxCardinality 0 or both minCardinality 1 and
maxCardinality 1.
• intersectionOf: OWL Lite allows intersections of named classes and restrictions.

Fig: Classes and subclasses of the computer

ontology

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 IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

Semantic Web and Social Networks

OWL EXAMPLE: COMPUTE ONTOLOGY

The serialization for the computer ontology is
<[DOCTYPE owl [
<!ENTITY xsd ―http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#‖>
]>
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf=‖http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#‖
xmlns:rdfs=‖http://www.w3.org/200/01/rdf-schema#‖
xmlns:xsd=‖http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#‖
xmlns:owl=‖http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#‖ xmlns=‖http://www.web-
iq.com/computer.owl#‖>
<owl:Ontology rdf:about=‖‖>
<owl:versionInfo>
</owl:versionInfo>
</owl:Ontology>
<owl:Class rdf:ID=―Product‖>
</owl:Class>
<owl:Class rdf:ID=―Workstation‖>
<rdfs:label>Device</rdfs:label>
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource=―#product‖/>
</owl:Class>
<owl:Class rdf:ID=―DellProducts‖>
<rdfs:label>Dell Devices</rdfs:label>
<owl:intersectionOf rdf:parseType=―Collection‖>
<owl:Class rdf:about ―#product‖/>
<owl:Restriction>
<owl:onProperty rdf:resource=―#manufactured by‖/>
<owl:hasValue rdf:datatype=―&xsd;string‖>
DELL
</owl:hasValue>
</owl:Restriction>
</owl:Intersection>
</owl:Class>
<owl:Class rdf:ID=―PersonalComputer‖>
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource=―#workstation‖/>
</owl:Class>
<owl:Class rdf:ID=―Laptop‖>
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource=―#personalcomputer‖/>
</owl:Class>
<owl:Class rdf:ID=―DesktopComputer‖>
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource=―#personalcomputer‖/>
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource=―#dellproduct‖/>
</owl:Class>
<owl:Class rdf:ID=―Pen‖>
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource=―#personalcomputer‖/>
</owl:Class>
<owl:DatatypeProperty rdf:ID= ―manufactured by‖>
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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

<rdf:domain rdf:resource= ―#product‖/>
<rdf:range rdf:resource =―&xsd:string‖/>
</owl:DatatypeProperty>
<owl:DatatypeProperty rdf:ID=
―price‖><rdf:domain rdf:resource=
―#product‖/><rdf:range rdf:resource
=‖&xsd:string‖/>
</owl:DatatypeProperty></rdf:RDF>
This onotology demonstrates siblings in a hierarchy may not be disjoint.
Owl Capabilities and Limitations
The OWL language offers the following features: less chance of misinterpretation, understanding
each other‘s data‘s semantics, and OWL uses existing XML syntax to express semantics. The
OWL document can be extensible, reusable, and avoids misinterpretation.
Additional OWL problems include no ad hoc discovery and exploitation, thus an application may
not be able to effectively process new data when it is encountered.

Comparison to the Unified Modelling Language (UML)

UML is most commonly used in the requirements specification and design of objectoriented
software in the middle tier of enterprise applications.
The chief difference between UML and RDF(S)/OWL is their modelling scope: UML contains
modelling primitives specific for a special kind of information resource, namely objects in an
information system characterized by their static attributes and associations, but also their
dynamic behavior. Many of the modelling primitives of UML are thus specific to objects and
their role in OO systems; interfaces, functions etc.

Unique features of RDF/OWL

– In general, the modelling of RDF is less constrained than that of UML, which means that many
RDF models have no equivalent in UML. OWL DL also provides more primitives than UML
such as the disjointness, union, intersection and equivalence of classes.
– OWL allows to describe defined classes, i.e. definitions that give necessary and sufficient
conditions for an instance to be considered as a member of the class.
– RDF/OWL gives high priority to its properties. They traet the Properties are global: they do not
belong to any class, while UML attributes and associations are defined as part of the
description of a certain class. In other words, the same property can be used with multiple
classes.
– Properties can be defined as subproperties of other properties.
– Classes can be treated as instances, allowing for meta-modelling.

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– RDF reification is more flexible than the association class mechanism of UML. For example,
statements concerning literal values can also be reified in RDF
– All non-blank RDF resources are identified with a URI, UML classes, instances, attributes etc.
– Instances can and usually have multiple types.
 Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

Unique features of UML

– UML has the notion of relationship roles, which is not present in RDF/OWL.
– UML allows n-ary relations, which are not part of RDF, although they can bere-represented in a
number of ways.
– Two common types of part-whole relations are available in UML (aggregation and
composition). These can be remodelled in OWL to some extent.
– UML makes a clear differentiation between attributes and associations. This is also different
from the distinction between datatype and object-properties in OWL. On the one hand,
attributes can have instances as values, while datatype properties can only have literal values.

Comparison to the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and XML Schema

Up to date XML is the most commonly used technology for the exchange of structured
information between systems and services. From all languages discussed the role of XML is thus
the most similar to RDF in its purpose.
The most commonly observed similarity between XML and RDF is a similarity between the data
models: a directed graph for RDF, and a directed, ordered tree for XML. In XML, the tree is
defined by the nesting of elements starting with a single root node. This model originates from the
predecessor of XML called SGML which was primarily used for marking up large text
documents. Text documents follow the tree structure themselves as paragraphs are nested in
subsections, subsections are nested in sections, sections are nested chapters etc. The ordering of
the children of an element matters, which is again inherited from the text processing tradition.
Namely, schemas written in XML schema languages not only define the types of elements and
their attributes but also prescribe syntax i.e. the way elements are allowed to be nested in the tree.
XML documents can be validated against a schema on a purely syntactic level.
RDF models are based on arbitrary directed graphs. They are developed from single edges
between the nodes of classes or instances.
XML has a variety of schema languages like XMLSchema and Relax NG. Schemas in XML
schema language define the elements type, their attributes and the syntax validation of XML
document against a schema is done syntactically. RDF Schema language does not introduce
constraints directly on the graph model rather they effect the interpretations of data.

RDF for web based data exchanges has an advantage that agreement on shared XML format
needs a stronger commitment than the agreement mode by using RDF. This agreement of
exchanging RDF documents considering only the individual statements like a simple subject,
predicate and object model.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

UNIT - III
Ontology Engineering , Constructing Ontology, Ontology Development Tools, Ontology Methods,
Ontology Sharing and Merging, Ontology Libraries and Ontology Mapping, Logic, Rule and
Inference Engines.

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ONTOLOGY ENGINEERING:
Ontology is the formal specification of terms within a domain and their relationships. It defines a
common vocabulary for the sharing of information that can be used by both humans and
computers. Ontologies can be in the form of lists of words; taxonomies, database schema, frame
languages and logics. The main difference between these forms is their expressive power.
Ontology together with a set of concept instances constitutes a knowledge base. If a program is
designed to compare conceptual information across two knowledge bases on the Web, it must
know when any two terms are being used to mean the same thing. Ideally, the program must have
a way to discover common meanings for whatever knowledge bases it encounters. Typically, an
ontology on the Web will combine a taxonomy with a set of inference rules.
Taxonomy is defined as a set of classes of objects and their relationships. These classes,
subclasses, and their relationships are important tools for manipulating information. Their
relations are described by assigning properties to classes and allowing subclasses to inherit these
properties. An ontology then is a taxonomy plus inference.
Ontology inference rules allow manipulation of conceptual information. The most important
ontology relationship is the subsumption link (e.g., subtype and supertype link).
When a network of concepts is represented by a tree, it rigorously defines the taxonomy. While
ontology can sometimes be modularized as a set of trees, some advocate that all ontology should
be taxonomic, but others favor a lattice structure.
Ontology engineering seeks a common vocabulary through a data collection process that includes
discussions, interviews, document analysis, and questionnaires.
Existing ontologies on a subject are discovered, assessed, and reused as much as possible to avoid
―reinventing the wheel.‖ As part of this process, ontologies are designed as living objects with a
maintenance cycle.
Ontology Applications:
The simplest ontology consists of a simple taxonomy with a single relation. Categories of
ontology applications can be grouped as
• Neutral Authoring: The author of an object in a single language translates into a different
format for use in alternative applications.
• Ontology as Specification: Ontology of a given domain is created and used as a basis for
specification and development of some software. This approach allows documentation,
maintenance, reliability and knowledge (re)use.
• Common Access to Information: Information in an inaccessible format becomes intelligible by
providing a shared understanding of the terms, or by mapping between sets of terms.
• Ontology-Based Search: Ontology is used for searching an information repository.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

CONSTRUCTING ONTOLOGY:

Ontology permits sharing common understanding of the structure of information among people
and software agents. Since there is no unique model for a particular domain, ontology
development is best achieved through an iterative process. Objects and their relationships reflect
the basic concepts within an ontology.
An iterative approach for building ontologies starts with a rough first pass through the main
processes as follows:
Dept. of CSE, MRCET Page|38
• First, set the scope. The development of an ontology should start by defining its domain and
scope.
Several basic questions are helpful at this point:
What will the ontology cover?
How will the ontology be used?
What questions does the ontology answer?
Who will use and maintain the ontology?
The answers may change as we proceed, but they help limit the scope of the model.
• Second, evaluate reuse. Check to see if existing ontologies can be refined and extended.
Reusing existing ontologies will help to interact with other applications and vocabularies. Many
knowledge-representation systems can import and export ontologies directly for reuse.
• Third, enumerate terms. It is useful to list all terms, what they address, & what properties they
have. Initially, a comprehensive list of terms is useful without regard for overlapping concepts.
Nouns can form the basis for class names & verbs can form the basis for property names.
• Fourth, define the taxonomy. There are several possible approaches in developing a class
hierarchy: a top-down process starts by defining general concepts in the domain. A bottom-up
development process starts with the definition of the most specific classes, the levels of the
hierarchy, with subsequent grouping of these classes into more general concepts.
• Fifth, define properties. The classes alone will not provide enough information to answer
questions. We must also describe the internal structure of concepts. While attaching properties
to classes one should establish the domain and range. Property constraints (facets) describe or
limit the set of possible values for a frame slot.
• Sixth, define facets. Up to this point the ontology resembles a RDFS without any primitives
from OWL. In this step, the properties add cardinality, values, and characteristics that will
enrich their definitions.
• Seventh, the slots can have different facets describing the value type, allowed values, the
number of the values (cardinality), and other features of the values.
Slot cardinality: the number of values a slot has. Slot value type: the type of values a slot has.
Minimum and maximum value: a range of values for a numeric slot.
Default value: the value a slot has unless explicitly specified otherwise.
• Eighth, define instances. The next step is to create individual instances of classes in the
hierarchy.
• Finally, check for anomalies. The Web-Ontology Language allows the possibility of detecting
inconsistencies within the ontology. Anomalies, such as incompatible domain and range
definitions for transitive, symmetric, or inverse properties may occur.

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Dept. of CSE, MRCET Page|40
 Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

Fig: Ellipse definition

x-Position: An x-position is an owl:Datatype property that has a domain of Point. Its value (of type
xsd:double) is the distance from the origin on the x-axis of the coordinate system.
y-Position: A y-position is a owl:Datatype property that has a domain of Point. Its value (of type
xsd:double) is the distance from the origin on the y-axis of the coordinate system.
x-Radius: x-radius is a owl:Datatype property that has a rdfs:domain of Ellipse. It is the radius
parallel to the x-axis of the coordinate system.
y-Radius:A y-radius is a owl:Datatype property that has a rdfs:domain of Ellipse. It is the radius
parallel to the y-axis of the coordinate system.
The OWL file for this ontology example
(http://www.charlestoncore.org/ont/example/index.html) is as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>
<!DOCTYPE rdf:RDF (...)><rdf:RDF xmlns="http://
example#" xmlns:example="http:// example#"
xmlns:rdf= "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-
ns#" xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-
schema#"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#"
xmlns:owl="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xml:base="http:// /example"><owl:Ontology
rdf:about="">
<rdfs:isDefinedBy rdf:resource="http:// example/" />
<dc:author>Smith</dc:author>
<dc:title>Example Ontology</dc:title>
<rdfs:comment>This file defines a partial ontology in
OWL</rdfs:comment>
<owl:versionInfo>2005</owl:versionInfo>
</owl:Ontology>
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Spot" />
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Ellipse" />
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

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<owl:Class rdf:ID="Point" />
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="shape">
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Spot" />
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="#Ellipse" />
</owl:ObjectProperty>
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="center">
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Ellipse" />
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="#Point" />
</owl:ObjectProperty>
<owl:DatatypeProperty rdf:ID="x-radius">
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Ellipse" />
<rdfs:range rdf:resource= "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#double"/>
</owl:DatatypeProperty>
<owl:DatatypeProperty rdf:ID="y-radius">
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Ellipse" />

<rdfs:range rdf:resource= "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#double"/>

</owl:DatatypeProperty>
<owl:DatatypeProperty rdf:ID="x-position">
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Point" />
<rdfs:range rdf:resource= "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#double"/>
</owl:DatatypeProperty>
<owl:DatatypeProperty rdf:ID="y-position">
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Point" />
<rdfs:range rdf:resource= "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#double"/>
</owl:DatatypeProperty>
</rdf:RDF>

ONTOLOGY METHODS
Several approaches for developing ontologies have been attempted in the last two decades. In
1990, Lenat and Guha proposed the general process steps. In 1995, the first guidelines were
proposed on the basis of the Enterprise Ontology and the TOVE (TOronto Virtual Enterprise)
project. A few years later, the On-To-Knowledge methodology was developed.
The Cyc Knowledge Base (see http://www.cyc.com/) was designed to accommodate all of human
knowledge and contains about 100,000 concept types used in the rules and facts encoded in its
knowledge base. The method used to build the Cyc consisted of three phases.
The first phase manually codified articles and pieces of knowledge containing common sense
knowledge implicit in different sources.
The second and third phase consisted of acquiring new common sense knowledge using natural
language or machine learning tools.
The Electronic Dictionary Research (ERD) project in Japan has developed a dictionary with
over 400,000 concepts, with their mappings to both English and Japanese words. Although the
EDR project has many more concepts than Cyc, it does not provide as much detail for each one
(see http://www.iijnet.or.jp/edr/).
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
WordNet is a hierarchy of 166,000 word form and sense pairs. WordNet does not have as much
detail as Cyc or as broad coverage as EDR, but it is the most widely used ontology for natural

Dept. of CSE, MRCET Page|42

language processing, largely because it has long been easily accessible over the Internet (see
http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/ wn/).
Cyc has the most detailed axioms and definitions; it is an example of an axiomatized or formal
ontology. Both EDR and WordNet are usually considered terminological ontologies. The
difference between a terminological ontology and a formal ontology is one of degree: as more
axioms are added to a terminological ontology, it may evolve into a formal or axiomatized
ontology.
The main concepts in the ontology development include: a top-down approach, in which the
most abstract concepts are identified first, and then, specialized into more specific concepts; a
bottom-up approach, in which the most specific. Concepts are identified first and then generalized
into more abstract concepts; and a middle-out approach, in which the most important concepts are
identified first and then generalized and specialized into other concepts.
Methontology was created in the Artificial Intelligence Lab from the Technical University of
Madrid (UPM). It was designed to build ontologies either from scratch, reusing other ontologies
as they are, or by a process of reengineering them. The Methontology framework enables the
construction of ontologies at the knowledge level. It includes the identification of the ontology
development process, a life cycle based on evolving prototypes, and particular techniques to carry
out each activity. The ontology development process identifies which tasks should be performed
when building ontologies (scheduling, control, quality assurance, specification, knowledge
acquisition, conceptualization, integration, formalization, implementation, evaluation,
maintenance, documentation, and configuration management).
The main phase in the ontology development process using the Methontology approach is the
conceptualization phase.
By comparison, the On-To-Knowledge methodology includes the identification of goals that
should be achieved by knowledge management tools and is based on an analysis of usage
scenarios.
The steps proposed by the methodology are kickoff: where ontology requirements are captured
and specified, competency questions are identified, potentially reusable ontologies are studied,
and a first draft version of the ontology is built; refinement: where a mature and application
oriented ontology is produced; evaluation: where the requirements and competency questions are
checked, and the ontology is tested in the application environment; and finally ontology
maintenance.

ONTOLOGY SHARING AND MERGING

Knowledge representation is the application of logic and ontology to the task of constructing
automated models.
Each of the following three fields contributes to knowledge representation:
• Logic: Different implementations support different subsets and variations of logic.
Sharing information between implementations can usually be done automatically if the
information can be expressed a common subset.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
• Ontology: Different systems may use different names for the same kinds of objects; or
they may use the same names for different kinds.

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• Computation: Even when the names and definitions are identical, computational or
implementation side effects may produce different behaviors indifferent systems. In some
implementations, the order of entering rules may have inferences that impact computations.
Sometimes, the side effects may cause an endless loop.
Although these three aspects of knowledge representation pose different kinds of problems, they
are interdependent. Standardizing the terminology used to classify and find the information is
important.
For artificial intelligence, where the emphasis is on computer processing, effort has been directed
to precise axioms suitable for extended computation and deduction.

ONTOLOGY LIBRARIES
Scientists should be able to access a global, distributed knowledge base of scientific data that
appears to be integrated, locally available, and is easy to search.
Data is obtained by multiple instruments, using various protocols in differing vocabularies using
assumptions that may be inconsistent, incomplete, evolving, and distributed. Currently, there are
existing ontology libraries including
• DAML ontology library (www.daml.org/ontologies).
• Ontolingua ontology library (www.ksl.stanford.edu/software/ontolingua/).
• Prot´eg´e ontology library (protege.stanford.edu/plugins.html).
Available upper ontologies include
• IEEE Standard Upper Ontology (suo.ieee.org).
• Cyc (www.cyc.com).
Available general ontologies include
•(www.dmoz.org).
• WordNet (www.cogsci.princeton.edu/ wn/).
• Domain-specific ontologies.
• UMLS Semantic Net.
• GO (Gene Ontology) (www.geneontology.org).
• Chemical Markup Language, CML.

ONTOLOGY MATCHING
Ontology provides a vocabulary and specification of the meaning of objects that encompasses
several conceptual models: including classifications, databases, and axiom theories. However, in
the open Semantic Web environment different ontologies may be defined.
Ontology matching finds correspondences between ontology objects. These include ontology
merging, query answering, and data translation. Thus, ontology matching enables data
interoperate.
Today ontology matching is still largely labor-intensive and error-prone. As a result, manual
matching has become a key bottleneck.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

String Matching
String matching can help in processing ontology matching. String matching is used in text
processing, information retrieval, and pattern matching. There are many string matching methods
including ―edit distance‖ for measuring the similarities of two strings.
Dept. of CSE, MRCET Page|44
Let us consider two strings; S1 and S2.
If we use limited steps of character edit operations (insertions, deletions, and substitutions), S1
can be transformed into S2 in an edit sequence. The edit distance defines the weight of an edit
sequence.
The existing ontology files on the Web (e.g., http://www.daml.org/ontologies) show that people
usually use similar elements to build ontologies, although the complexity and terminology may be
different. This is because there are established names and properties to describe a concept. The
value of string matching lies in its utility to estimate the lexical similarity.
However, we also need to consider the real meaning of the words and the context.
In addition, there are some words that are similar in alphabet form while they have different
meaning such as, ―too‖ and ―to.‖ Hence, it is not enough to use only string matching.

ONTOLOGY MAPPING
Ontology mapping enables interoperability among different sources in the Semantic Web. It is
required for combing distributed and heterogeneous ontologies.
Ontology mapping transforms the source ontology into the target ontology based on semantic
relations. There are three mapping approaches for combing distributed and heterogeneous
ontologies:
1. Mapping between local ontologies.
2. Mapping between integrated global ontology and local ontologies.
3. Mapping for ontology merging, integration, or alignment.
Ontology merge, integration, and alignment can be considered as ontology reuse processes.
Ontology merge is the process of generating a single, coherent ontology from two or more
existing and different ontologies on the same subject.
Ontology integrationis the process of generating a single ontology from two or more differing
ontologies in different subjects. Ontology alignment creates links between two original
ontologies.
ONTOLOGY MAPPING TOOLS
There are three types of ontology mapping tools and provide an example of each:
For ontology mapping between local ontologies, an example mapping tool is GLUE. GLUE is a
system that semiautomatically creates ontology mapping using machine learning techniques.
Given two ontologies, GLUE finds the most similar concept in the other ontology.
For similarity measurement between two concepts, GLUE calculates the joint probability
distribution of the concepts. The GLUE uses a multistrategy learning approach for finding joint
probability distribution.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
For ontology mappings between source ontology and integrated global ontology, an example tool
is Learning Source Description (LSD). In LSD, Schema can be viewed as ontologies with
restricted relationship types. This process can be considered as ontology mapping between
information sources and a global ontology.

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For ontology mapping in ontology merging, alignment, and integration, an example tool is
OntoMorph. OntoMorph provides a powerful rule language for specifying mappings, and
facilitates ontology merging and the rapid generation of knowledge base translators. It combines
two syntactic rewriting and semantic rewriting. Syntactic rewriting is done through pattern-
directed rewrite rules for sentence-level transformation based on pattern matching. Semantic
rewriting is done through semantic models and logical inference.
LOGIC:
Logic is the study of the principles of reasoning. As such, it constructs formal languages for
expressing knowledge, semantics, and automatic reasoners to deduce (infer) conclusions.
Logic forms the foundation of Knowledge-Representation (KR), which has been applied to
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in general and the World Wide Web in particular. Logic provides a
high-level language for expressing knowledge and has high expressive power. In addition, KR
has a well-understood formal semantics for assigning unambiguous meaning to logic statements.
Predicate (or first-order) logic, as a mathematical construct, offers a complete proof system with
consequences. Predicate logic is formulated as a set of axioms and rules that can be used to derive
a complete set of true statements (or proofs).
As a result, with predicate logic we can track proofs to reach their consequences and also
logically analyze hypothetical answers or statements of truth to determine their validity.
Proof systems can be used to automatically derive statements syntactically from premises. Given
a set of premises, such systems can analyze the logical consequences that arise within the system.
Both RDF and OWL (DL and Lite) incorporate capabilities to express predicate logic that provide
a syntax that fits well with Web languages.
RULE:
Inference Rules
In logic, a rule is a scheme for constructing valid inferences. These schemes establish syntactic
relations between a set of formulas called premises and an assertion called a conclusion. New true
assertions can be reached from already known ones.
There are two forms of deductively valid argument:
1.modus ponens (Latin for ―the affirming mode‖)
2.modus tollens (the denying mode).
For first-order predicate logic, rules of inference are needed to deal with logical quantifiers.
Related proof systems are formed from a set of rules, which can be chained together to form
proofs, or derivations. If premises are left unsatisfied in the derivation, then the derivation is a
proof of a conditional statement: ―if the premises hold, then the conclusion holds.‖
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

Inference rules may also be stated in this form:

(1) some premises; (2) a turnstile symbol , which means ―infers,‖ ―proves,‖ or ―concludes‖;
and
(3) a conclusion.
The turnstile symbolizes the executive power.
The implication symbol → indicates potential inference and it is a logical operator.

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For the Semantic Web, logic can be used by software agents to make decisions and select a path
of action. For example, a shopping agent may approve a discount for a customer because of the
rule:
RepeatCustomer(X)→ discount(25%) where repeat customers are
identified from the company database.

This involves rules of the form ―IF (condition), THEN (conclusion).‖ With only a finite number
of comparisons, we are required to reach a conclusion.
Axioms of a theory are assertions that are assumed to be true without proof. In terms of
semantics, axioms are valid assertions. Axioms are usually regarded as starting points for
applying rules of inference and generating a set of conclusions.
Rules of inference, or transformation rules, are rules that one can use to infer a conclusion from a
premise to create an argument. A set of rules can be used to infer any valid conclusion if it is
complete, while never inferring an invalid conclusion, if it is sound.
Rules can be either conditional or biconditional. Conditional rules, or rules of inference, are
rules that one can use to infer the first type of statement from the second, but where the second
cannot be inferred from the first. With biconditional rules, in contrast, both inference directions
are valid.
Conditional Transformation Rules
We will use letters p, q, r, s, etc. as propositional variables.
An argument is Modus ponens if it has the following form (P1 refers to the first premise; P2 to
the second premise: C to the conclusion):
(P1) if p then q
(P2) p (C)
q
Example:
(P1) If Socrates is human then Socrates is mortal.
(P2) Socrates is human. (C)
Socrates is mortal.
Which can be represented as Modus ponens:
[(p → q) ∧ p] → [q]
An argument is Modus tollens if it has the following form:
(P1) if p then q
(P2) not-q
(C) not-p
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

Example:
(P1) If Socrates is human then Socrates is mortal.
(P2) Socrates is not mortal. (C)
Socrates is not human.
In both cases, the order of the premises is immaterial (e.g., in modus tollens ―not- q‖ could come
first instead of ―if p then q‖).

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Modus tollens [(p → q)∧ ￢q] → [￢p]
An argument is a disjunctive syllogism if it has either of the following forms:
(P1) p or q (P1) p or q
(P2) not-p (P2) not-q (C)
q (C) p
The order of the premises is immaterial (e.g., ―not-q‖ could come first instead of ―p or q‖).
This argument form derives its name from the fact that its major premise is a ―disjunction,‖ that
is, a proposition of the form ―p or q.‖ The propositions p and q are called the ―disjuncts‖ of the
disjunction ―p or q.‖
In logic, the disjunction ―p or q‖ is interpreted as the claim that not both p and q are false; that is,
that at least one of them is true. Thus a disjunction is held to be true even when both its disjuncts
are true.
Biconditional Transformation Rules
Biconditional rules, or rules of replacement, are rules that one can use to infer the first type of
statement from the second, or vice versa. Double negative elimination is represented as
[￢￢p] ↔ [p]

[p ∨ p]
Tautology is represented as [p] ↔

MONOTONIC AND NONMONOTONIC RULES

If a conclusion remains valid after new information becomes available within predicate logic,
then we refer to this case as a monotonic rule. If, however, the conclusion may become invalid
with the introduction of new knowledge, then the case is called a nonmonotonic rule.
Nonmonotonic rules are useful where information is unavailable. These rules can be overridden
by contrary evidence presented by other rules. Priorities are helpful to resolve some conflicts
between nonmonotonic rules. The XML-based languages can be used to represent rules.
DESCRIPTIVE LOGIC
Descriptive logic is a family of logic based on knowledge-representation formalisms that is a
descendant of semantic networks. It can describe the domain in terms of concepts (classes), roles
(properties, relationships), and individuals.
Inference and Classes
We can make inferences about relationships between classes, in particular subsumption between
classes. Recall that A subsumes B when it is the case that any instance of B must necessarily be
an instance of A.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

INFERENCE ENGINES
An expert system has three levels of organization: a working memory, an inference engine, and a
knowledge base. The inference engine is the control of the execution of reasoning rules. This
means that it can be used to deduce new knowledge from existing information.
The inference engine is the core of an expert system and acts as the generic control mechanism
that applies the axiomatic knowledge from the knowledge base to the task-specific data to reach
some conclusion.

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Two techniques for drawing inferences are general logic-based inference engines and specialized
algorithms. Many realistic Web applications will operate agent-to-agent without human
intervention to spot glitches in reasoning. Therefore developers will need to have complete
confidence in reasoner otherwise they will cease to trust the results.
How the Inference Engine Works
In simple rule-based systems, there are two kinds of inference, forward and backward chaining.
Forward Chaining
In forward chaining, the data is put into working memory. This triggers rules whose conditions
match the new data. These rules then perform their actions. The actions may add new data to
memory, thus triggering more rules, and so on.
This is also called data-directed inference, because inference is triggered by the arrival of new
data in working memory. Consider iterating continuously though the following set of rules until
you reach a conclusion:
Rule 1: IF A and C THEN F Rule
2: IF A and E THEN G
Rule 3: IF B THEN E
Rule 4: IF G THEN D

To prove that D is true, given that A and B are true, we start with Rule 1 and go on down the list
until a rule that ―fires‖ is found. In this case, Rule 3 is the only one that fires in the first iteration.
At the end of the first iteration, it can be concluded that A, B, and E are true. This information is
used in the second iteration.
In the second iteration, Rule 2 fires adding the information that G is true. This extra information
causes Rule 4 to fire, proving that D is true. This is the method of forward chaining, where one
proceeds from a given situation toward a desired goal, adding new assertions along the way. This
strategy is appropriate in situations where data are expensive to collect and few are available.
Backward Chaining
In backward chaining the system needs to know the value of a piece of data. It searches for rules
whose conclusions mention this data. Before it can use the rules, it must test their conditions. This
may entail discovering the value of more pieces of data, and so on. This is also called goal-
directed inference, or hypothesis driven, because inferences are not performed until the system is
made to prove a particular goal.
In backward chaining, we start with the desired goal and then attempt to find evidence for proving
the goal. Using the forward chaining example, the strategy to prove that D is true would be the
following.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
First, find the rule that proves D. This is Rule 4. The subgoal is then to prove that G is true. Rule
2 meets the subgoal, and as it is already known that A is true, therefore the next subgoal is to
show that E is true. Rule 3 provides the next subgoal of proving that B is true. But the fact that B
is true is one of the given assertions. Therefore, E is true, which implies that G is true, which in
turn implies that D is true.
Backward chaining is useful in situations where the amount of data is large and where a specific
characteristic of the system is of interest.
Tree Searches

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A knowledge base can be represented as a branching network or tree. There is a large number of
tree searching algorithms available in the existing literature. However, the two basic approaches
are depth-first search and breadth-first search.
The depth-first search algorithm begins at a node that represents either the given data (forward
chaining) or the desired goal (backward chaining). It then checks to see if the left-most (or first)
node beneath the initial node (call this node A) is a terminal node (i.e., it is proven or a goal). If
not, it establishes node A on a list of subgoals outstanding. It then starts with node A and looks at
the first node below it, and so on. If there are no more lower level nodes, and a terminal node has
not been reached, it starts from the last node on the outstanding list and takes the next route of
descent to the right.
Breadth-first search starts by expanding all the nodes one level below the first node. Then it
systematically expands each of these nodes until a solution is reached or else the tree is
completely expanded. This process finds the shortest path from the initial assertion to a solution.
However, such a search in large solution spaces can lead to huge computational costs due to an
explosion in the number of nodes at a low level in the tree.
Full First-Order Logic Inference Engines
Using full first-order logic for specifying axioms requires a full-fledged automated theorem
prover. First-order logic is semidecidable and inferencing is computationally intractable for large
amounts of data and axioms.
Closed World Machine
The Closed World Machine (CWM) (www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/doc/cwm.html) inference
engine written in Python by Tim Berners-Lee and Dan Connolly is a popular Semantic Web
program. It is a general-purpose data processor for the Semantic Web and is a forward-chaining
reasoner that can be used for querying, checking, transforming, and filtering information. Its core
language is RDF, extended to include rules.
RDF INFERENCE ENGINE
RDF is a system meant for stating meta-information through triples composed of a subject, a
property, and an object. The subject and object can be either a designation like a URL or a set of
another triple. Triples form a simple directed graph.
The first triple says that Smith owns a computer and the second says that there is a computer
made by Apple. The third drawing, however, is composed of two triples, and it says that Smith
owns a computer made by Apple.
Suppose these triples were placed in a database.

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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

In the first query, the question is who owns a computer? The answer is ― Smith.‖ In the second
query, the question is What make of computer are defined in the database? The third query,
however asks who owns a computer and what is the make of that computer?
The query is a graph containing variables that can be matched with the graph. Should the graph
in the database be more extended, it would have to be matched with a subgraph. So, generally for
executing an RDF query what has to be done is called ― subgraph matching.‖
Following the data model for RDF the two queries are in fact equal because a sequence of
statements is implicitly a conjunction.

Fig: RDF Statements Fig: RDF Queries

Let us make a rule: If X owns a computer, then X must buy software.
How do we represent such a rule?
The nodes of the rule form a triple set. Here there is one antecedent, but there could be more.
There is only one consequent. (Rules with more than one consequent can be reduced to rules
with one consequent.)
The desired answer is John must buy software . The query is matched with the consequent of the
rule. Now an action has to be taken: The antecedents of the rule have to be added to the database
with the variables replaced with the necessary values (substitution). Then the query has to be
continued with the antecedent of the rule.
:
The question n ow is Who owns a computer? This is equal to a query described earlier. A rule
subgraph is treated differently from nonrule subgraphs.

Fig: Graph representation of a rule Fig: Query that matches with a rule
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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
A triple can be modeled as a predicate: triple(subject, property, object). A set of triples equals
a list of triples and a connected graph is decomposed into a set of triples.
For our example this gives
Triple(John, owns, computer).
Triple(computer, make, Apple).
This sequence is equivalent to:
[Triple(John, owns, computer). Triple(computer,make, Apple).]
From Figure RDF Queries the triples are Triple(?who, owns, computer).
Triple(computer, make,?what).
This sequence is equivalent to:
[Triple(?who, owns, computer). Triple(computer,make, ?what).]
From Figure Graph representation of a rule the triple is
Triple([Triple(X, owns, computer)], implies, [Triple(X, must buy, software)]).
From Figure Query that matches with a rule the triple is
Triple(?who, must buy, software).
A unification algorithm for RDF can handle subgraph matching and embedded rules by the term
“subgraph matching with rules.”
The unification algorithm divides the sequence of RDF statements into sets where each set
constitutes a connected subgraph. This is called a tripleset that is done for the database and for
the query. Then the algorithm matches each tripleset of the query with each tripleset of the
database.

Agents
Agents are pieces of software that work autonomously and proactively. In most cases, an agent
will simply collect and organize information. Agents on the Semantic Web will receive some
tasks to perform and seek information from Web resources, while communicating with other
Web agents, in order to fulfill its task. Semantic Web agents will utilize metadata, ontologies,
and logic to carry out its tasks.

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 Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

UNIT - IV
Semantic Web applications and services, Semantic Search, e-learning, Semantic Bioinformatics,
Knowledge Base ,XML Based Web Services, Creating an OWL-S Ontology for Web Services,
Semantic Search Technology, Web Search Agents and Semantic Methods.

SEMANTIC WEB APPLICATIONS AND SERVICES

SEMANTIC WEB APPLICATIONS

Semantic Web applications are those web-based applications that take advantage of semantic
content: content that includes not only information, but also metadata, or information about
information. The Semantic Web can be used for more effective discovery, automation,
integration, and reuse across various applications.
The Semantic Web will provide an infrastructure not just for Web pages, but databases, services,
programs, sensors, and personal devices. Software agents can use this information to search,
filter, and repackage information. The ontology and logic languages will make information
machine readable and power a new generation of tools.
Web technologies can link information easily and seamlessly. The majority of network systems
now have Web servers, and the Web interfaces make them seem part of the same world of
information. Despite this, transferring content between Web applications is still difficult.
The Semantic Web can address and improve the linking of databases, sharing content between
applications, and discovery and combination of Web Services. Under the current Web
architecture, linkages between dissimilar systems are provided by costly, tailored software. Again
and again, special purpose interfaces must be written to bring data from one systems into another.
Applications that run in a given company involve a huge number of ways they can be linked
together.
That linking requires a lot of custom code. Use of XML can help, but the problem of effectively
exchanging data remains. For every pair of applications someone has to create an ―XML to
XML bridge.‖
The problem is that different databases are built using different database schemas, but these
schemas are not made explicit.
The use of Resource Description Framework (RDF) in addition to XML can be appropriate when
information from two sources need to be merged or interchanged.
The Semantic Web is bringing to the Web a number of capabilities, such as allowing applications
to work together in a decentralized system without a human having to custom handcraft every
connection.
Some opportunities for Semantic Web applications include Semantic Web Services, Semantic
Search, e-Learning, Semantic Web and Bio-Informatics; Semantics- based Enterprise Application
and Data Integration, and Knowledge Base.
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SEMANTIC WEB SERVICES
Semantic Web Services can bring programs and data together. Just as databases cannot be easily
integrated on the current Web without RDF, the same applies to programs.
Consider the case of a company that wishes to purchase parts from a vendor, arrange shipping
from a large freight company, and have those parts delivered to one of several manufacturing
locations based on which plant has the most capacity at the time of the delivery. Further, they
would like this deal to be brokered on the Web with the minimum amount of human interaction.
These programs that execute this brokering may be running on special purpose machines and/or
behind security and firewall protections.
Web Services are self-contained, self-described, component applications invoked across the Web
to perform complex business processes. Once a Web Service is deployed, other applications can
discover and invoke the service.
At present, Web Services require human interaction in order to identify and implement.
Tim Berners-Lee has suggested that the integration of Web Services and the Semantic Web could
be done in such a way as to combine the business logic of Web Services with the Semantic Web‘s
meaningful content.
The vision for Semantic Web Services is to automate the discovery, invocation, composition, and
monitoring of Web Services through the use of machine processing. Web sites will be able to use
a set of classes and properties by declaring and describing an ontology of services. Web Ontology
Language for Services (called OWL-S) has been designed to meet this goal.

SEMANTIC SEARCH
Semantic search methods can augment and improve traditional search results by using, not just
words, but concepts and logical relationships. There are two approaches to improving search
results through semantic methods: (1) the direct use of Semantic Web metadata and (2) Latent
Semantic Indexing (LSI).
The Semantic Web will provide more meaningful metadata about content, through the use of RDF
and OWL documents that will help to form the Web into a semantic network. In a semantic
network, the meaning of content is better represented and logical connections are formed between
related information.
However, most semantic-based search engines suffer increasingly difficult performance problems
because of the large and rapidly growing scale of the Web. In order for semantic search to be
effective in finding responsive results, the network must contain a great deal of relevant
information. At the same time, a large network creates difficulties in processing the many
possible paths to a relevant solution.

e-LEARNING
The big question in the area of educational systems is what is the next step in the evolution of e-
learning? Are we finally moving from scattered applications to a coherent collaborative
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
environment? How close we are to the vision of the Educational Semantic Web and what do we
need to do in order to realize it?
On the one hand, we wish to achieve interoperability among educational systems and on the other
hand, to have automated, structured, and unified authoring.
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The Semantic Web is the key to enabling the interoperability by capitalizing on (1) semantic
conceptualization and ontologies, (2) common standardized communication syntax, and (3)
large-scale integration of educational content and usage.
The RDF describes objects and their relationships. It allows easy reuse of information for
different devices, such as mobile phones and PDAs, and for presentation to people with different
capabilities, such as those with cognitive or visual impairments.
By tailored restructuring of information, future systems will be able to deliver content to the end-
user in a form applicable to them, taking into account users‘ needs, preferences, and prior
knowledge. Much of this work relies on vast online databases and thesauri, such as wordnet,
which categorize synonyms into distinct lexical concepts. Developing large multimedia database
systems makes materials as useful as possible for distinct user groups, from schoolchildren to
university lecturers. Students might, therefore, search databases using a simple term, while a
lecturer might use a more scientific term thus reflecting scaling in complexity.
The educational sector can also use the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) (http://www.irc.org/) a tool
that can be used by the Semantic Web. The IRC is a chat protocol where people can meet on
channels and talk to each other.
The IRC and related tools could work well within education, for project discussion, remote
working, and collaborative document creation. Video-conferencing at schools is increasingly
becoming useful in widening the boundaries for students.

SEMANTIC BIOINFORMATICS
The World Wide Web Consortium recently announced the formation of the Semantic Web Health
Care and Life Sciences Interest Group (HCLSIG) aimed to help life scientists tap the potential
benefits of using Semantic Web technology by developing use cases and applying standard
Semantic Web specifications to healthcare and life sciences problems.
The initial foundation and early growth of theWeb was based in great part on its adoption by the
high-energy physics community when six high-energy physics Web sites collaborated allowing
their participating physicists to interact on this new network of networks. A similar critical mass
in life sciences could occur if a half dozen ontologies for drug discovery were to become
available on the Semantic Web.
Life science is a particularly suitable field for pioneering the Semantic Web.

KNOWLEDGE BASE
In a number of parallel efforts, knowledge systems are being developed to provide semantic-
based and context-aware systems for the acquisition, organization, processing, sharing and use of
the knowledge embedded in multimedia content.
Ongoing research aims to maximize automation of the complete knowledge lifecycle and to
achieve semantic interoperability between Web resources and services.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

In one particularly interesting application, Cycorp (http://www.cyc.com/) intends to sell products

and services using its inference engine, which has been designed to work with the Cyc
Knowledge. Cycorp provides a reference Cyc Server executable for Intel-based Linux and for
Windows 2000.

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OpenCyc is the open source version of the Cyc technology, the world‘s largest and most
complete general knowledge base and common sense reasoning engine. OpenCyc can be used as
the basis for a wide variety of intelligent applications, such as speech understanding, database
integration and consistency-checking, rapid development of an ontology, and email prioritizing,
routing, summarizing, and annotating.

XML-BASED WEB SERVICES

Web Services provide a standard means of interoperating between different software applications
running on a variety of platforms. The XML provides the extensibility and language neutrality
that is the key for standard-based interoperability of Web Services.
Web Service discovery and composition is led by Universal Description Discovery and
Integration (UDDI) developed by IBM and Microsoft. Well accepted standards like Web
Services Description Language (WSDL) for binding and Simple Object Access Protocol
(SOAP) for messaging make it possible to dynamically invoke Web services.

Web Service Architecture requires discrete software agents that must work together to implement
functionality. In XML-based Web Services, an agent sends and receives messages based upon
their architectural roles.
If a requester wishes to make use of a provider‘s Web Service, he uses a requester agent to
exchange messages with the provider agent. In order for this message exchange to be successful,
the requester and the provider must first agree on both the semantics and the mechanics of the
message exchange.
The message exchange mechanics are documented using WSDL. The service description is a
specification that can be processed by a machine using message formats, data types, and protocols
that are exchanged between the requester and provider.

CREATING AN OWL-S ONTOLOGY FOR WEB SERVICES

Creating an OWL-S based Ontology for a Web Service requires five steps:
1. Describe individual programs: describe the individual programs that comprise the service. The
process model provides a declarative description of a program‘s properties.
2. Describe the grounding for each atomic process: relate each atomic process to its grounding.
3. Describe compositions of the atomic processes: describe the composite process that is a
composition of its atomic processes.
4. Describe a simple process: describe a simple process for the service (optional).
5. Profile description: provide a declarative advertisement for the service. It is partially populated
by the process model.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

SEMANTIC SEARCH TECHNOLOGY

As Web ontology becomes more advanced, using RDF and OWL tags will offer semantic
opportunities for search.
Searching Techniques
Semantic search deals with concepts and logical relationships.
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Inference can be viewed as a sequence of logical deductions chained together. At each point along
the way, there might be different ways to reach a new deduction. So, in effect, there is a
branching set of possibilities for how to reach a correct solution. This branching set can spread
out in novel ways.
For example, you might want to try to determine ―Whom does Kevin Bacon know?‖ based on
information about his family relationships, his movies, or his business contacts.
It is possible to start at the top of the tree, the root, or with the branches. Taking the top of the
tree, the query can be asked, Whom does Kevin Bacon know? Each step down from parent-to-
child nodes in this tree can be viewed as one potential logical deduction that moves toward trying
to assess the original query using this logical deductive step.
Imagine that each node in this tree represents a statement or fact to prove. Each link from a parent
node to a child node represents one logical statement. Now the problem is that we have a big tree
of possibilities and this could result in any search being limited to incomplete results.
The Halting Problem is a decision problem that can be informally stated as follows:
Given a description of an algorithm and a description of its initial arguments, determine whether
the algorithm, when executed with these arguments, ever halts (the alternative is that it runs
forever without halting). Alan Turing proved in 1936 that there is no general method or algorithm
that can solve the halting problem for all possible inputs.
The importance of the Halting Problem lies in the fact that it was the first problem to be proved
undecidable. Subsequently, many other such problems have been described; The Halting Problem
implies that certain algorithms will never end in a definite answer.
You run into incompleteness because the search tree is too large. So our approach must be to
search only portions of the tree. There are well-known strategies for how one addresses search
problems like this. One strategy is to search the tree in a depth-first fashion.
A depth-first search would start at the top of the tree and go as deeply as possible down some
path, expanding nodes as you go, until you find a dead end.
A dead end is either a goal (success) or a node where you are unable to produce new children. So
the system cannot prove anything beyond that point. Let us walk through a depth-first search and
traverse the tree.
Start at the top node and go as deeply as possible:
1. Start at the highest node.
2. Go as deeply as possible down one path.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
3. When you run into a dead-end (i.e., a false statement), back-up to the last node that you turned
away from. If there is a path there that you have not tried, go down it. Follow this option until
you reach a dead-end or a goal (a true statement with no child nodes).
4. If this path leads to another dead-end, go back up a node and try the other branches.
5. This path leads to a goal. In other words, this final node is a positive result to the query. So you
have one answer. Keep searching for other answers by going up a couple more nodes and then
down a path you have not tried.
6. Continue until you reach more dead-ends and have exhausted search possibilities.

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The advantage of depth-first search is that it is a very algorithmically efficient way to search
trees in one format. It limits the amount of space that you have to keep for remembering the
things you have not looked at yet.
Another strategy for searching is a breadth-first search.
Here you search layer by layer. First, you try to do all of the zero-step proofs, and then you try to
do all of the one-step proofs, and so on. The advantage of breadth-first search is that you are
guaranteed to get the simplest proofs before you get anything that is strictly more complicated.
The disadvantage of breadth-first search becomes apparent when you encounter huge deep
trees. We also have huge bushy trees where you could have thousands, or tens of thousands, of
child nodes.
Another disadvantage of breadth-first searching is the amount of space you have to use to store
what you have not examined as yet.
So, if the third layer is explosively large, you would have to store all of the third level results
before you could even look at them. With a breadth-first search, the deeper you go into the tree,
the more space you will need. So, you find that each of the two traditional algorithms for search,
depth-first and breadth-first, are going to run into problems with large systems.

WEB SEARCH AGENTS

While Web search engines are powerful and important to the future of the Web, there is another
form of search that is also critical: Web search agents. A Web search agent will not perform like a
commercial search engine. Search engines use database lookups from a knowledge base.
In the case of the Web search agent, the Web itself is searched and the computer provides the
interface with the user. The agent‘s percepts are documents connected through the Web utilizing
HTTP. The agent‘s actions are to determine if its goal of seeking a Web site containing a
specified target (e.g., keyword or phrase), has been met and if not, find other locations to visit.
What makes the agent intelligent is its ability to make a rational decision when given a choice. In
other words, given a goal, it will make decisions to follow the course of actions that would lead it
to that goal in a timely manner.
An agent can usually generate all of the possible outcomes of an event, but then it will need to
search through those outcomes to find the desired goal and execute the path (sequence of steps)
starting at the initial or current state, to get to the desired goal state.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
Building an intelligent Web search agent requires mechanisms for multiple and combinational
keyword searches, exclusion handling, and the ability to self-seed when it exhausts a search
space.
The search agent needs to know the target (i.e., keyword or phrase), where to start, how many
iterations of the target to find how long to look (time constraint), and what methods should
determine criteria for choosing paths (search methods). These issues are addressed in the
software.
Implementation requires some knowledge of general programming, working with sockets, the
HTTP, HTML, sorting, and searches. There are many languages with Web-based utilities,
advanced application programming interfaces (APIs), and superior text parsing capabilities that
can be used to write a Web search agent. Using a more advanced, efficient sorting algorithm will
help improve the performance of the Web search agent.
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The Web search agent design consists of four main phases: initialization, perception, action,
and effect.
Initialization phase: The Web search agent should set up all variables, structures, and arrays. It
should also get the base information it will need to conduct the hunt for the target, the goal, a
place to start, and the method of searching.
Perception phase: It is centered on using the knowledge provided to contact a site and retrieve
the information from that location. It should identify if the target is present and should identify
paths to other Universal Resource Locator (URL) locations.
Action phase: It takes all of the information that the system knows and determines if the goal has
been met (the target has been found and the hunt is over).
The Web search agent moves from the initialize phase to a loop consisting of the perception,
action, and effect phases until the goal is achieved or cannot be achieved.
SEMANTIC METHODS
There are two approaches to improving search results through semantic methods: (1) LSI and
(2) Semantic Web documents.
LATENT SEMANTIC INDEX SEARCH
So far, we have reviewed search technology in general, and identified today‘s search limitations.
Now, future technologies based upon the semantics will be explored. First, we will discuss
implementing LSI, which may improve today‘s search capabilities without the extreme
limitations of searching large semantic networks.
Building on the criteria of precision, ranking, and recall requires more than brute force. Assigning
descriptors and classifiers to a text provides an important advantage, by returning relevant
documents that do not necessarily contain a verbatim match to our search query. Fully described
data sets can also provide an image of the scope and distribution of the document collection as a
whole.
A serious drawback to this approach to categorizing data is the problem inherent in any kind of
taxonomy: The world sometimes resists categorization.

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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
Latent semantic indexing adds an important step to the document indexing process. In addition to
recording which keywords a document contains, the method examines the document collection
as a whole, to see which other documents contain some of those same words.
When you search an LSI-indexed database, the search engine looks at similarity values it has
calculated for every content word, and returns the documents that it thinks best fit the query.
Because two documents may be semantically very close even if they do not share a particular
keyword, LSI does not require an exact match to return useful results. Where a plain keyword
search will fail if there is no exact match, LSI will often return relevant documents that do not
contain the keyword at all.
SEMANTIC WEB DOCUMENTS
A Semantic Web Document is a document in RDF or OWL that is accessible to software agents.
Two kinds of SWDs create Semantic Web ontologies (SWOs) and Semantic Web databases
(SWDBs). A document is an SWO when its statements define new classes and properties or by
adding new properties. A document is considered as a SW DB when it does not define or extend
terms. An SWDB can introduce individuals and make assertions about them.

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 Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

UNIT - V
What is social Networks analysis, development of the social networks analysis, Electronic Sources for
Network Analysis – Electronic Discussion networks, Blogs and Online Communities, Web Based
Networks. Building Semantic Web Applications with social network features.

What is social Networks Analysis?

Social Network Analysis (SNA) is the study of social relations among a set of actors. The key
difference between network analysis and other approaches to social science is the focus on
relationships between actors rather than the attributes of individual actors.
Network analysis takes a global view on social structures based on the belief that types and
patterns of relationships emerge from individual connectivity and that the presence (or absence)
of such types and patterns have substantial effects on the network and its constituents. In
particular, the network structure provides opportunities and imposes constraints on the individual
actors by determining the transfer or flow of resources (material or immaterial) across the
network.
The focus on relationships as opposed to actors can be easily understood by an example. When
trying to predict the performance of individuals in a scientific community by some measure (say,
number of publications), a traditional social science approach would dictate to look at the
attributes of the researchers such as the amount of grants they attract, their age, the size of the
team they belong to etc. A statistical analysis would then proceed by trying to relate these
attributes to the outcome variable, i.e. the number of publications.
In the same context, a network analysis study would focus on the interdependencies within the
research community. For example, one would look at the patterns of relationships that scientists
have and the potential benefits or constraints such relationships may impose on their work.
The patterns of relationships may not only be used to explain individual performance but also to
hypothesize their impact on the network itself (network evolution). Attributes typically play a
secondary role in network studies as control variables.
SNA is thus a different approach to social phenomena and therefore requires a new set of
concepts and new methods for data collection and analysis. Network analysis provides a
vocabulary for describing social structures, provides formal models that capture the common
properties of all (social) networks and a set of methods applicable to the analysis of networks in
general.
It is interesting to note that the formalization of network analysis has brought much of the same
advantages that the formalization of knowledge on the Web (the SemanticWeb) is expected to
bring to many application domains.
The methods of data collection in network analysis are aimed at collecting relational data in a
reliable manner. Data collection is typically carried out using standard questionnaires and
observation techniques that aim to ensure the correctness and completeness of network data.
Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

Development of Social Network Analysis

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The field of Social Network Analysis today is the result of the convergence of several streams of
applied research in sociology, social psychology and anthropology.
Many of the concepts of network analysis have been developed independently by various
researchers often through empirical studies of various social settings. For example, many social
psychologists of the 1940s found a formal description of social groups useful in depicting
communication channels in the group when trying to explain processes of group communication.
Already in the mid-1950s anthropologists have found network representations useful in
generalizing actual field observations, For example when comparing the level of reciprocity in
marriage and other social exchanges across different cultures.
Some of the concepts of network analysis have come naturally from social studies. In an
influential early study at the Hawthorne works in Chicago, researchers from Harvard looked at
the workgroup behavior (e.g. communication, friendships, helping, controversy) at a specific part
of the factory, the bank wiring room [May33].
The investigators noticed that workers themselves used specific terms to describe who is in ―our
group‖. The researchers tried to understand how such terms arise by reproducing in a visual way
the group structure of the organization as it emerged from the individual relationships of the
factory workers (see below Figure).
Despite the various efforts, each of the early studies used a different set of concepts and different
methods of representation and analysis of social networks. However, from the 1950s network
analysis began to converge around the unique world view that distinguishes network analysis
from other approaches to sociological research. (The term ―social network‖ has been introduced
by Barnes in 1954.)
This convergence was facilitated by the adoption of a graph representation of social networks
usually credited to Moreno. What Moreno called a sociogram was a visual representation of
social networks as a set of nodes connected by directed links.
The nodes represented individuals in Moreno‘s work, while the edges stood for personal relations.
However, similar representations can be used to depict a set of relationships between any kind of
social unit such as groups, organizations, nations etc.
While 2D and 3D visual modelling is still an important technique of network analysis, the
sociogram is honored mostly for opening the way to a formal treatment of networkanalysis based
on graph theory.
The following decades have seen a tremendous increase in the capabilities of network analysis
mostly through new applications. SNA gains its relevance from applications and these settings in
turn provide the theories to be tested and greatly influence the development of the methods and
the interpretation of the outcomes.
For example, one of the relatively new areas of network analysis is the analysis of networks in
entrepreneurship, an active area of research that builds and contributesto organization and
management science. The vocabulary, models and methods of network analysis also expand
continuously through applications that require to handle ever more complex data sets.

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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
The increasing variety of applications and related advances in methodology can be best observed
at the yearly Sunbelt Social Networks Conference series, which started in 1980. The field of
Social Network Analysis also has a journal of the same name since 1978, dedicated largely to
methodological issues.
While the field of network analysis has been growing steadily from the beginning, there have
been two developments in the last two decades that led to an explosion in network literature.
First, advances in information technology brought a weal th of electronic data and significantly
increased analytical power. Second, the methods of SNA are increasingly applied to networks
other than social networks such as the hyperlink structure on the Web or the electric grid.

Illustrations froman early social network study at the Hawthorne works ofWestern Electric
in Chicago. The upper part shows the location of the workers in the wiring room, while the
lower part is a network image of fights about the windows between workers (W), solderers
(S) and inspectors (I).
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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

Electronic sources for network analysis

Electronic discussion networks
One of the foremost studies to illustrate the versatility of electronic data is a series of works from
the Information Dynamics Labs of Hewlett-Packard.
Tyler, Wilkinson and Huberman analyze communication among employees of their own lab by
using the corporate email archive. They recreate the actual discussion networks in the
organization by drawing a tie between two individuals if they had exchanged at least a minimum
number of total emails in a given period, filtering out one-way relationships. Tyler et al. find the
study of the email network useful in identifying leadership roles within the organization and
finding formal as well as informal communities. (Formal communities are the ones dictated by
the organizational structure of the organization, while informal communities are those that
develop across organizational boundaries.)
The authors verify this finding through a set of interviews where they feed back the results to the
employees of the Lab.
Wu, Huberman, Adamic and Tyler use this data set to verify a formal model of information flow
in social networks based on epidemic models [WHAT04]. In yet another study, Adamic and Adar
revisits one of the oldest problems of network research, namely the question of local search: how
do people find short paths in social networks based on only local information about their
immediate contacts?
Their findings support earlier results that additional knowledge on contacts such as their physical
location and position in the organization allows employees to conduct their search much more
efficiently than using the simple strategy of always passing the message to the most connected
neighbor. Despite the versatility of such data, the studies of electronic communication networks
based on email data are limited by privacy concerns.
Public forums and mailing lists can be analyzed without similar concerns. Starting from the mid-
nineties, Marc Smith and colleagues have published a series of papers on the visualization and
analysis of USENET newsgroups, which predate Web-based discussion forums
In the work of Peter Gloor and colleagues, the source of these data for analysis is the archive of
the mailing lists of a standard setting organization, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
The W3C —which is also the organization responsible for the standardization of Semantic Web
technologies—is unique among standardization bodies in its commitment to transparency toward
the general public of the Internet and part of this commitment is the openness of the discussions
within the working groups.
Group communication and collective decision taking in various settings are traditionally studied
using much more limited written information such as transcripts and records of attendance and
voting, see e.g. As in the case with emails Gloor uses the headers of messages to automatically re-
create the discussion networks of the working group.1 The main technical contribution of Gloor is
a dynamic visualization of the discussion network that allows to quickly identify the moments
when key discussions take place that activate the entire group and not just a few select members.
Gloor also performs a comparative study across the various groups based on the structures that
emerge over time.
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Blogs and online communities
Content analysis has also been the most commonly used tool in the computer-aided analysis of
blogs (web logs), primarily with the intention of trend analysis for the purposes of
marketing.2 While blogs are often considered as “personal publishing” or a “digital diary”,
bloggers themselves know that blogs are much more than that: modern blogging tools allow to
easily comment and react to the comments of other bloggers, resulting in webs of communication
among bloggers. These discussion networks also lead to the establishment of dynamic
communities, which often manifest themselves through syndicated blogs (aggregated blogs that
collect posts from a set of authors blogging on similar topics), blog rolls (lists of discussion
partners on a personal blog) and even result in real world meetings such as the Blog Walk series
of meetings.
A slight difference is that unlike with personal emails messages to a mailing list are read by
everyone on the list. Nevertheless individuals interactions can be partly recovered by looking at
To: and CC: fields of email headers as well as the Reply Figure 3.1 shows some of the features
of blogs that have been used in various studies to establish the networks of bloggers.

Blogs make a particularly appealing research target due to the availability of structured electronic
data in the form of RSS (Rich Site Summary) feeds. RSS feeds contain the text of the blog posts
as well as valuable metadata such as the timestamp of posts, which is the basis of dynamic
analysis.
The 2004 US election campaign represented a turning point in blog research as it has been the
first major electoral contest where blogs have been exploited as a method of building networks
among individual activists and supporters. Blog analysis has suddenly shed its image as relevant
only to marketers interested in understanding product choices of young demographics;
Online community spaces and social networking services such as MySpace, LiveJournal cater to
socialization even more directly than blogs with features such as social networking (maintaining
lists of friends, joining groups), messaging and photo sharing.
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As they are typically used by a much younger demographic they offer an excellent opportunity for
studying changes in youth culture. Paolillo, Mercure and Wright offer a characterization of the
LiveJournal community based on the electronic data that the website exposes about the interests
and social networks of its users.
Backstrom et al. also study the LiveJournal data in order to answer questions regarding the
influence of certain structural properties on community formation and community growth, while
also examining how changes in the membership of communities relates to (changes in) the
underlying discussion topics. These studies are good examples of how directly available
electronic data enables the longitudinal analysis of large communities (more than 10,000 users).
Most online social networking services (Friendster, Orkut, LinkedIn and their sakes) closely
guard their data even from their own users.
A technological alternative to these centralized services is the FOAF network (see also Chapter
5). FOAF profiles are stored on the web site of the users and linked together using hyperlinks.
The drawback of FOAF is that at the moment there is a lack of tools for creating and maintaining
profiles as well as useful services for exploiting this network. Nevertheless, a few preliminary
studies have already established that the FOAF network exhibits similar characteristics to other
online social networks.

Web-based networks
The content of Web pages is the most inexhaustible source of information for social network
analysis. This content is not only vast, diverse and free to access but also in many cases more up
to date than any specialized database.
There are two features of web pages that are considered as the basis of extracting social
relations: links and co-occurrences (see Figure 3.2). The linking structure of the Web is
considered as proxy for real world relationships as links are chosen by the author of the page and
connect to other information sources that are considered authoritative and relevant enough to be
mentioned. The biggest drawback of this approach is that such direct links between personal
pages are very sparse: due to the increasing size of the Web searching has taken over browsing as
the primary mode of navigation on the Web. As a result, most individuals put little effort in
creating new links and updating link targets or have given up linking to other personal pages
altogether.

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For this reason most social studies based on the linking structure of the web are looking at
relationships at higher levels of aggregation. Unfortunately, search engines such as Google or
Yahoo! typically limit the number of queries that can be issued a day.
The data for this analysis comes from bibliographic records, project databases and hyperlink
networks. The connections for the latter are collected by crawling the websites of the institutions
involved. In principle it could be possible to extract more fine-grained networks from the
homepages of the individual researchers.
Co-occurrences of names in web pages can also be taken as evidence of relationships and are a
more frequent phenomenon. On the other hand, extracting relationships based on co-occurrence
of the names of individuals or institutions requires web mining as names are typically embedded
in the natural text of web pages. (Web mining is the application of text mining to the content of
web pages.)
Web mining has been first tested for social network extraction from the Web in the work of Kautz
el al. on the ReferralWeb project in the mid-90s [KSS97]. The goal of Kautz et al. was not to
perform sociological experiments but to build a tool for automating what he calls referral
chaining: looking for experts with a given expertise, who are close to the user of the system, i.e.
experts who can be accessed through a chain of referrals.
Tie strength was calculated by dividing the number of co-occurrences with the number of pages
returned for the two names individually (see Figure 3.3). Also known as the Jaccard-coefficient,
this is basically the ratio of the sizes of two sets: the intersection of the sets of pages and their
union [Sal89]. The resulting value of tie strength is a number between zero (no co-occurrences)
and one (no separate mentioning, only co-occurrences). If this number has exceeded a certain
fixed threshold it was taken as evidence for the existence of a tie.
Although Kautz makes no mention of it we can assume that he also filtered ties also based on
support, i.e. the number of pages that can be found for the given individuals or combination of
individuals. The reason is that the Jaccard-coefficient is a relative measure of co-occurrence and it
does not take into account the absolute sizes of the sets. In case the absolute sizes are very low we
can easily get spurious results:
for example, if two names only occur once on the Web and they occur on the same page, their co-
efficient will be one. However, in this case the absolute sizes are too low to take this as an
evidence for a tie.

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The network in the system has grown two ways:
Firstly, the documents from the Web were searched for new names using proper name
extraction, a fairly reliable NLP technique. These nameswere then used to extract new names, a
process that was repeated two or three times. (Note that this is similar to the snowballing
technique of network analysis where the network under investigation is growing through new
names generated by participants in the study.)
Second, users of the system were also allowed to register themselves.
Kautz never evaluated his system in the sense of asking whether the networks he extracted are an
accurate reflection of real world networks. He notes that the system as a recommender system
performed well on both the research domain and in the corporate setting, although ―the
recommendations made by (any) recommender system tend to be either astonishingly accurate, or
absolutely ridiculous [, which is] true for any AI-complete problem‖. However, he suggest that
the system is able to keep the trust of the user provided that it is made transparent. For example,
the system can show the evidence on which the recommendation is based and indicate the level of
confidence in its decisions.
A disadvantage of the Jaccard-coefficient is that it penalizes ties between an individual whose
name often occurs on theWeb and less popular individuals (see Figure 3.4). In the science domain
this makes it hard to detect, for example, the ties between famous professors and their PhD
students. In this case while the name of the professor is likely to occur on a large percentage of
the pages of where the name of the PhD student occurs but not vice versa. For this reason we use
an asymmetric variant of the coefficient.

Kautz already notes that the biggest technical challenge in social network mining is the
disambiguation of person names. Person‘s names exhibit the same problems of polysemy and
synonymy that we have seen in the general case of web search.
In our work in extracting information about the Semantic Web community we also add a
disambiguation term our queries. We use a fixed disambiguation term (Semantic Web OR
ontology) instead of a different disambiguation term for every 'name. This is a safe (and even
desirable) limitation of the query as we are only interested in relations in the Semantic Web
context.
We also experimentwith a second method based on the concept of average precision. When
computing the weight of a directed link between two personswe consider an ordered list of pages

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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
for the first person and a set of pages for the second (the relevant set) as shown in Figure 3.5. In
practice, we ask the searc h engine for the top N pages for both persons but in the case of the
second person the order is irrelevant for the computation. Let‘s define rel(n) as the relevance at
position n, where rel(n) is 1 if the document at position n is the relevant set and zero otherwise (1
≤ n ≤ N).
Let P(n) denote the precision at position n (also known as p@n):

The average precision method is more sophisticated in that it takes into account the order in
which the search engine returns document for a person:
It assumes that names of ot her persons that occur closer to the top of the list represent more
important contacts than names that occur in pages at the bottom of the list. The method is also
more scalable as it requires only downloading the list of top ranking pages once for each author.
The drawback of this method is that most search engines limit the number of pages returned to at
most a thousand. In case a person and his contacts have significantly more pages than that it is
likely that some of the pages for some the alters will not occur among the top ranking pages.
Lastly, we would note that one may reasonably argue against the above methods on the basis that
a single link or co -occurrence is hardly evidence for any relationship. In fact, not all links are
equally important nor every co-occurrence is intended.
For example, it may very well happen that two names co -occur on a web page without much
meaning to it (for example, they are on the same page of the corporate phone book or appear in a
list of citations).

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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)

Building Semantic Web applications with social network features

Sesame is a general database for the storing and queryingRDF data. Along with Jena, Redland
and the commercial offerings of Oracle, Sesame is one of the most popular triple stores among
developers, appreciated in particular for its performance. Sesame has been developed by Aduna
(formerly Aidministrator), but available as open source (currently under LGPL license).
Next, we describe the Elmo API, a general purpose ontology API for Sesame. Elmo allows to
manipulate RDF/OWL data at the level of domain concepts, with specific tools for collecting and
aggregating RDF data from distributed, heterogeneous information sources. Elmo has been
developed in part by the author and is available under the same conditions as Sesame, using the
same website.
Lastly, we introduce a simple utility called GraphUtil which facilitates reading FOAF data into
the graph object model of the Java UniversalNetwork Graph (JUNG) API. GraphUtil is open
source and available as part of Flink.
The generic architecture of SemanticWeb applications
Semantic Web applications have been developed in the past years in a wide range of domains
from cultural heritage to medicine, from music retrieval to e-science. Yet, almost all share a
generic architecture as shown in Figure 6.1. By the definition above, all Semantic Web
applications are mashups in that they build on a number of heterogeneous data sources and
services under diverse ownership or control.
Before external, heterogeneous data sources can be reused, they need to be normalized
syntactically as well as semantically. The first refers to transforming data into RDF syntax such
as RDF/XML, while the latter means that the ontologies (schemas and instances) of the data
sources need to be reconciled.
Needless to say; the first step can be skipped if the data is exposed as an RDF or OWL document,
or can be queried dynamically using the SPARQL query language and protocol.

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Semantic Web and Social Networks IV B.Tech I Sem (R15)
Most current Semantic Web applications are based on a fixed, small number of data sources
selected by the application developer. In this case, the schemas of the data sources are known in
advance and their mapping can be performed manually. In the future, it is expected that
SemanticWeb applications will be able to discover and select new data sources and map them
automatically.
Semantic Web applications persist information in ontology stores (also known as triple stores),
databases specifically designed for the storage, manipulation and querying of RDF/OWL data.
Ontology stores are almost always equipped with a reasoner or can be connected to an external
reasoning service. Reasoning is used to infer new information based on the asserted facts or to
check the existing information for consistency.
Some triple stores also allow to define customrules that are evaluated by the reasoner along with
the rules prescribed by the ontology language itself. Reasoning can take place either when the
data is added to a repository (forward-chaining) or at query time (backward-chaining).
Most Semantic Web applications have a web interface for querying and visualization and thus
considered by all as web applications. However, this is not a requirement:
Semantic Web applications may have a rich client interface (desktop applications) or other forms
of access.
Queries are given as a combination of triple patterns and return a table (a set of variable bindings)
as a result. This is similar to accessing a relational database. the above mentioned SPARQL
protocol, which provides limited, read-only access and is only suitable for accessing remote data
sources.
In other words, what is lacking is an equivalent of the ODBC and JDBC protocols for relational
databases. This means that without additional abstraction layers (such as the one provided by
Elmo), all application code is specific to a particular triple store.
Further, in most cases it is desirable to access a triple store on an ontological level, i.e. at the level
of classes, instances and their properties. This is also the natural level of manipulating data in
object-oriented frameworks.
The Elmo library to be introduced facilitates this by providing access to the data in the triple store
through Java classes that map the ontological data in the triple store. Setting and reading
attributes on the instances of these classes result in adding and removing the corresponding triples
in the data store.
Elmo is a set of interfaces that have been implemented for the specific case of working with data
in Sesame triple stores. Sesame is one of the most popular RDF triple stores and it is to be
introduced next. We note that the Elmo interfaces can be implemented for other, Java-based
triples stores such as Jena.

Sesame

Sesame is a triple store implemented using Java technology. Much like a database for RDF data,
Sesame allows creating repositories and specifying access privileges, storing RDF data in a
repository and querying the data using any of the supported query languages. In the case of
Sesame, these include Sesame‘s own SeRQL language and SPARQL.
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The data in the repository can be manipulated on the level of triples:
Individual statements can be added and removed from the repository.
RDF data can be added or extracted in any of the supported RDF representations including the
RDF/XML and Turtle languages.
Sesame can persistently store and retrieve the data from a variety of back-ends: data can persist
in memory, on the disk or in a relational database. As most RDF repositories, Sesame is not only
a data store but also integrates reasoning. Sesame has a built-in inferencer for applying the
RDF(S) inference rules.
While Sesame does not support OWL semantics, it does have a rule language that allows to
capture most of the semantics of OWL, including the notion of inverse-functional properties and
the semantics of the owl: sameAs relationship.
An important, recently added feature of Sesame is the ability to store and retrieve context
information. In distributed scenarios, it is often necessary to capture metadata about statements.
For example, in the case of collecting FOAF profiles from the Web, we might want to keep track
of where the information came from (the URL of the profile) and the time it was last crawled.
Context information is important even for centralized sites with user contributed content. Every
triple becomes a quad, with the last attribute identifying the context. Contexts are identified by
resources, which can be used in statements as all other resources. Contexts (named graphs) can
also be directly queried using the SPARQL query language supported by this version of Sesame.
The above mentioned functionalities of Sesame can be accessed in three ways.
First, Sesame provides an HTML interface that can be accessed through a browser.
Second, a set of servlets exposes functionality for remote access through HTTP, SOAP and RMI.
Lastly, Sesame provides a Java client library for developers which exposes all the above
mentioned functionality of a Sesame repository using method calls on a Java object called
SesameRepository.
This object can provide access to both local Sesame servers (running in the same Java Virtual
Machine as the application) or and remote servers (running in a different JVM as the application
or on a remote machine.
Working with the Sesame client API is relatively straightforward. Queries, for example, can be
executed by calling the evaluateTableQuery method of this class, passing on the query itself and
the identifier of the query language.
Elmo
Elmo is a development toolkit consisting of two main components. The first one is the Elmo API,
providing the above mentioned interface between a set of JavaBeans representing ontological
classes and the underlying triple store containing the data that is manipulated through the
JavaBeans.
The API also includes the tool for generating JavaBeans from ontologies and vice versa. The
second main component consists of a set of tools for working with RDF data, including an RDF
crawler and a framework of smushers.
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The Elmo API

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The core of the Elmo API is the ElmoManager a JavaBean pool implementation that is
responsible for creating, loading, renaming and removing ElmoBeans. ElmoBeans are a
composition of concepts and behaviors.
Concepts are Java interfaces that correspond one-to-one to a particular ontological class and
provide getter and setter methods corresponding to the properties of the ontological class. (The
mapping is maintained using annotations on the interface.) The inheritance hierarchy of the
ontological classes is mapped directly to the inheritance hierarchy of concepts. Elmo concepts are
typically generated using a code-generator.
An instance of ElmoBeans corresponds to instances of the data set. As resources in ontology may
have multiple types, ElmoBeans themselves need to be composed of multiple concepts.
ElmoBeans implement particular combinations of concept interfaces.
ElmoBeans can be generated runtime as the types of resources may change during the run-time of
the application. ElmoBeans may also implement behaviors. Behaviors are concrete or abstract
classes that can be used to give particular implementations of the methods of a concept (in case
the behavior should differ from the default behavior), but can also be used to add additional
functionality. Behaviours can be mixed-in to ElmoBeans the same way that additional types can
be added runtime.
The separation of concepts and behaviors, and the ability to compose them at will support the
distributed application development, which is the typical scenario in case of Web applications.
Lastly, Elmo helps developers to design applications that are robust against incorrect data, which
is a common problem when designing for the Web.
In general, Semantic Web applications processing external data typically have few guarantees for
the correctness of the input. In particular, many of the RDF documents on the Web —especially
documents written by hand—, are either syntactically incorrect, semantically inconsistent or
violate some of the assumptions about the usage of the vocabularies involved. Most of these
problems result from human error.
Syntax can be easily checked by syntax validators such as the online RDF validation service of
theW3C1112 Inconsistency can be checked by OWL DL reasoners. Elmo provides solutions for
performing checks that can only be carried out programmatically.
Elmo tools
Elmo also contains a number of tools to work with RDF data. The Elmo scutter is a generic RDF
crawler that follows rdfs:seeAlso links in RDF documents, which typically point to other relevant
RDF sources on the web.
Several advanced features are provided to support this scenario:
• Blacklisting: Sites that produce FOAF profiles in large quantities are automatically
placed on a blacklist. This is to avoid collecting large amounts of uninteresting FOAF data
produced by social networking and blogging services or other dynamic sources.
• Whitelisting: the crawler can be limited to a domain (defined by a URL pattern).
• Metadata: the crawler can optionally store metadata about the collected statements. This
metadata currently includes provenance (what URL was the information coming from)
and timestamp (time of collection)
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 • Filtering: incoming statements can be filtered individually. This is useful to remove
unnecessary information, such as statements from unknown namespaces.
• Persistence: when the scutter is stopped, it saves its state to the disk. This allows to
continue scuttering from the point where it left off. Also, when starting the scutter it tries
to load back the list of visited URLs from the repository (this requires the saving of
metadata to be turned on).
• Preloading from Google: the scutter queue can be preloaded by searching for FOAF files
using Google
• Logging: The Scutter uses Simple Logging Facade for Java (SLF4J) to provide a detailed
logging of the crawler.
The smushers report the results (the matching instances) by calling methods on registered
listeners. We provide several implementations of the listener interface, for example to write out
the results in HTML, or to represent matches using the owl:sameAs relationship and upload such
statements to a Sesame repository.
Smushers can also be used as a wrapper. The difference between a wrapper and a smusher is that
a smusher finds equivalent instances in a single repository, while a wrapper compares instances in
a source repository to instances in a target repository.
If a match is found, the results are lifted (copied) from the source repository to the target
repository. This component is typically useful when importing information into a specific
repository about a certain set of instances from a much larger, general store.
GraphUtil
GraphUtil is a simple utility that facilitates reading FOAF data into the graph object model of the
Java Universal Network Graph (JUNG) API. GraphUtil can be configured by providing two
different queries that define the nodes and edges in the RDF data.
These queries thus specify how to read a graph from the data. For FOAF data, the first query is
typically one that returns the foaf :Person instances in the repository, while the second one
returns foaf :knows relations between them. However, any other graph structure that can be
defined through queries (views on the data) can be read into a graph.
JUNG16 is a Java library (API) that provides an object-oriented representation of different types
of graphs (sparse, dense, directed, undirected, k-partite etc.) JUNG also contains implementations
for the most well known graph algorithms such as Dijkstra‘s shortest path.
We extended this framework with a new type of ranker called PermanentNodeRanker which
makes it possible to store and retrieve node rankings in an RDF store.
Lastly, JUNG provides a customizable visualization framework for displaying graphs.Most
importantly, the framework let‘s the developer choose the kind of layout algorithm to be used and
allows for defining interaction with the graph visualization (clicking nodes and edges, drag- and-
drop etc.) The visualization component can be used also in applets as is the case in Flink and
openacademia.

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