The goal of the Semantic Web initiative is as broad as that of the Web: to create a universal medium for the exchange of data. It is envisaged to smoothly interconnect personal information management, enterprise application integration, and the global sharing of commercial, scientific and cultural data. Facilities to put machine-understandable data on the Web are quickly becoming a high priority for many organizations, individuals and communities.
The Web can reach its full potential only if it becomes a place where data can be shared and processed by automated tools as well as by people. For the Web to scale, tomorrow's programs must be able to share and process data even when these programs have been designed totally independently. The Semantic Web Activity is an initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) designed to provide a leadership role in defining this Web. The Activity develops open specifications for those technologies that are ready for large scale deployment, and identifies, through open source advanced development, the infrastructure components that will be necessary to scale in the Web in the future.
The principal technologies of the Semantic Web fit into a set of layered specifications. The current components are the Resource Description Framework (RDF) Core Model, the RDF Schema language, the Web Ontology language (OWL), and the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS). Building on these core components is a standardized query language, SPARQL (pronounced "sparkle"), enabling querying decentralized collections of RDF data. The POWDER recommendations provide technologies to find resource descriptions for specific resources on the Web; descriptions which can be ‘joined’ to other RDF data. The GRDDL and RDFa Recommendations aim at creating bridges between the RDF model and various XML formats, like XHTML. Finally, the goal of the R2RML language (under development) is to provide standard language to map relational data and relational database schemas to RDF and OWL.
The OWL Working Group has published the OWL 2 Candidate Recommendation in June 2009. The CR phase ended in mid-July and did not reveal any fundamental problems with the technology. As a consequence, the group has published the OWL 2 Proposed Recommendation in September 2009. In case of a successful review, the goal is to publish the OWL2 Recommendation in October 2009. The plan is not to close the Working Group, however; it will rather be kept in a “dormant” state. The reason is that the OWL 2 Recommendation will have to be re-issued when the XSD 1.1 document becomes a standard; the new OWL 2 version can then normatively refer to the XSD 1.1 datatypes (which is not the case today). No substantial change on OWL2 is planned, though.
The Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) Working Group has successfully published the POWDER Recommendation in September 2009, as well new edition of some Working Group Notes (POWDER Primer and POWDER Test Suites). With these series of publications the Working Group has successfully completed it work and is ready to be closed.
The Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Working Group published the Last Call Working Drafts of the RIF specification in July 2009, and published a Candidate Recommendation in October. The end of the CR period is planned for the end of October.
The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the SKOS Recommendation in August 2009 as well as some Working Group Notes (SKOS Primer and the SKOS Use Case as Requirements). The charter of the Working Group has been extended until the end of the year; goals are to develop a strategy for the management of the SKOS community beyond the Working Group's life, as well as to develop a charter for the continuation of the RDFa work. In the meantime, the RDFa Task Force has started coordination with the HTML5 Working Group to find ways to incorporate RDFa into HTML5; the first draft of that has been submitted to the HTML5 Working Group.
The SPARQL Working Group plans to add some new features to the current SPARQL Recommendation. The group has gone through a dual re-chartering since the last AC meeting: it was chartered under a so-called phase-I charter, which was followed in September 2009, by the phase-II charter that is the charter the group operates upon. The reason for this dual charterning was to ensure that the new features that the group wants to add to the renewed version of SPARQL could be treated properly from an IPR point of view. On the publication front the group has published a draft version of the SPARQL New Feature and Rationale document, and plans to publish First Public Working Drafts of the Recommendation track documents mid October.
After a succeful review, the RDB2RDF Working Group has started in September 2009. The goal of this is to standardize a language for mapping relational data and relational database schemas into RDF and OWL, tentatively called the RDB2RDF Mapping Language, R2RML.
The Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group (HCLSIG) plans to publish a series of Interest Group notes and organizes a Workshop at the ISWC conference in Washington, DC, in October 2009.
Another possible “vertical”, explored by the Activity, is on Financial services, more specifically around XBRL. As announced to the AC in January, work is ongoing to explore whether an Interest Group in the area would be feasible. This line of work was made possible by the fact that JustSystems offered W3C a fellow, in the person of Dave Raggett. A Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web was organized by W3C in October in Arlington, Virginia, USA.
The Activity plans the publication of a number of documents before the next Advisory Committee meeting in March 2010. These include the OWL 2 and RIF Recommendations (although the former might be published before the November 2009 AC meeting already). The SPARQL Working Group should have several Working Drafts published and the RDB2RDF Working Group should have published the first public Working Draft for R2RML. The HCLS Interest Group plans a number of publications in various scientific journals, conferences, make demonstrations on the way the technology can be used, and publish W3C Notes to document their experiences.
New technological challenges will also be explored, although it is not clear when and if these would lead to new Working or Interest Group activities. A new Incubator Group on Provenance has been launched in September 2009, and the result of this Incubator Group may lead to Recommendation track work in the Activity. Similarly, the results of the Incubator group on Semantic Sensor Networkds will be available in Spring 2010, and these may lead to additional Recommendation track work, too. Issues around Named (or Literal) Graphs, possible revision of the core RDF model, handling uncertainty, standard Javascript interface to RDF, etc, are debated in the community, and are also closely watched by the Activity.
| Group | Chair | Team Contact | Charter |
|---|---|---|---|
| OWL Working Group (participants) | Ian Horrocks, Alan Ruttenberg | Ivan Herman, Sandro Hawke | Chartered until 31 December 2009 |
| Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) Working Group (participants) | Phil Archer | Matt Womer | Chartered until 30 June 2009 |
| SPARQL Working Group (participants) | Lee Feigenbaum, Axel Polleres | Ivan Herman, Eric Prud'hommeaux | Chartered until 31 August 2010 |
| Rule Interchange Format Working Group (participants) | Christian de Sainte Marie, Christopher Welty | Sandro Hawke | Chartered until 30 November 2009 |
| Semantic Web Coordination Group (participants) | Ivan Herman | Ivan Herman | Chartered until 31 May 2011 |
| Semantic Web Deployment Working Group (participants) | Thomas Baker, Guus Schreiber | Ralph Swick | Chartered until 31 December 2009 |
| Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group | Susie Stephens, M. Scott Marshall | Eric Prud'hommeaux | Chartered until 30 May 2011 |
| Semantic Web Interest Group | Dan Brickley | Ivan Herman | Chartered until 31 May 2011 |
| RDB2RDF Working Group (participants) | Ahmed Ezzat, Michael Hausenblas | Harry Halpin | Chartered until 30 September 2011 |
This Activity Statement was prepared for the November 2009 W3C Advisory Committee Meeting (Members only) per section 5 of the W3C Process Document. Generated from group data.
Ivan Herman, Semantic Web Activity Lead$Id: Activity.html,v 1.272 2009/10/02 07:36:36 ivan Exp $