Web Semanticization
Semanticization of a word represents its meaning.
Semanticization of things means the things themselves.
Web Semanticization = The meaning of Web.
What is Web Semanticization?
What is semanticization? Simply put, it means making content machine-readable.
- The Beatles are a popular band from Liverpool.
- John Lennon is a member of The Beatles.
- "Hey Jude" is a representative work of The Beatles.
We can easily understand the meaning of the above sentences. But how can computers understand these sentences?
Sentences are created by grammatical rules. The grammar of a language defines the rules for creating language sentences. But how can grammar become semantics?
The Semantic Web allows machines to understand data. Semantic Web technology includes a set of description languages and reasoning logic. It describes ontology through certain formats.
The Semantic Web is not about links between web pages.
The Semantic Web describes the relationships between things (such as A being part of B, Y being a member of Z) and the attributes of things (such as size, height, age, price, etc.).
| | The implementation of the Semantic Web is based on XML (Extensible Markup Language) and the Resource Description Framework (RDF). XML is a tool for defining markup languages, including XML declarations, DTDs (Document Type Definitions) for defining language syntax, detailed descriptions of tags, and the documents themselves, which contain tags and content. RDF is used to express the content of web pages. |
Resource Description Framework
RDF (Resource Description Framework) is a language specification recommended by W3C to describe information resources and their relationships on the WWW.
RDF(S) is a crucial part of the Semantic Web. It uses URIs to identify different objects (including resource nodes, property classes, or property values) and can connect different URIs to clearly express relationships between objects.
Implementation
Although the Semantic Web is a more beautiful network, its implementation is a complex and massive project. Currently, the architecture of the Semantic Web is under construction, primarily needing support from the following two aspects:
Namely: Through a unified and comprehensive data standard, network information is marked more thoroughly and in detail, allowing the Semantic Web to accurately identify information, distinguish the role and meaning of information. To make Semantic Web searches more precise and thorough, easier to judge the authenticity of information, and achieve practical goals, first, a standard needs to be established, which allows users to add metadata (detailed annotations) to web content and enables users to precisely specify what they are looking for; then, a method needs to be found to ensure that different programs can share content from different websites; finally, users should be able to add other functionalities, such as adding applications.
The implementation of the Semantic Web is based on XML (Extensible Markup Language) and the Resource Description Framework (RDF). XML is a tool for defining markup languages, including XML declarations, DTDs (Document Type Definitions) for defining language syntax, detailed descriptions of tags, and the documents themselves, which contain tags and content. RDF is used to express the content of web pages.
If the data network can be realized in a short time through hundreds of millions of individuals, then the semanticization and intelligence of the network will be achieved through the efforts of the top intellectual groups of humanity. Developing an information search engine with semantic analysis capabilities will be the most important step for the Semantic Web. This engine can understand human natural language and has certain reasoning and judgment capabilities.
A semantic search engine and a search engine with semantic analysis capabilities are two different things. The former is just a utilization of the Semantic Web, a way of information search, while the latter is an engine that can understand natural language and provide answers that are more in line with the user's psychology through computer reasoning.
Prospects
The architecture of the Semantic Web is under construction. Currently, internationally, research on this architecture has not yet formed a satisfactory rigorous logical description and theoretical system. Chinese scholars have only briefly introduced the architecture based on foreign research and have not yet formed a systematic exposition.
The realization of the Semantic Web requires the support of three key technologies: XML, RDF, and Ontology.
XML (Extensible Marked Language) allows information providers to define tags and attribute names according to their needs, making the structure of XML files complex to any extent.
It has good data storage formats, scalability, high structuralization, and is convenient for network transmission. Combined with its unique NS mechanism and the multiple data types and verification mechanisms supported by XML Schema, it has become one of the key technologies of the Semantic Web.
Currently, discussions about key technologies of the Semantic Web mainly focus on RDF and Ontology.
RDF is a language specification recommended by W3C for describing resources and their relationships. It is simple, easily extensible, open, easily exchangeable, and easily integratable.
It is worth noting that RDF only defines how to describe resources, but does not define which data to use to describe resources. RDF consists of three parts: RDF Data Model, RDF Schema, and RDF Syntax.
- The Semantic Web extends the existing Internet by incorporating content that represents its meaning, enabling computers to work collaboratively with humans. This means that resources in the Semantic Web are not just interconnected information but also include the true meaning of the information, enhancing the automation and intelligence of computer information processing. However, computers do not possess true intelligence; the establishment of the Semantic Web requires researchers to effectively represent information, establish unified standards, and enable computers to process information automatically.
(Source: He Bin, Zhang Lihou, "Principles and Methods of Information Management," Tsinghua University Press, July 2007, Second Edition)
Semantic Web Architecture
First Layer: Unicode and URI, serving as the foundation of the entire architecture.
Second Layer: XML+NS+XMLSchema, responsible for representing the content and structure of data syntactically, separating the presentation, data structure, and content of web information using standard format languages.
Third Layer: RDF+RDF Schema, providing a semantic model to describe online information and types. RDF (Resource Description Framework), recommended by W3C, is a language specification for describing information resources and their relationships on the WWW. RDF(S) is a crucial component of the Semantic Web, using URIs to identify different objects (including resource nodes, property classes, or property values) and linking different URIs to clearly express relationships between objects.
Fourth Layer: Ontology Vocabulary Layer, where ontology is a formal, explicit specification of domain knowledge. In the Semantic Web architecture, ontology's roles include: (1) Concept description, revealing domain knowledge through concept descriptions; (2) Semantic disclosure, with stronger expressive capabilities than RDF, revealing richer semantic relationships; (3) Consistency, ensuring semantic consistency as a clear specification of domain knowledge, resolving issues like polysemy, synonymy, and ambiguous meanings; (4) Reasoning support, the certainty in concept descriptions and powerful semantic disclosure capabilities of ontology effectively guarantee the validity of reasoning at the data level.
Fifth Layer: Logic Layer, providing axioms and reasoning principles as a foundation for intelligent services. Description Logic, based on object-oriented knowledge representation formalism, incorporates the main ideas of KL-ONE and is a decidable subset of first-order predicate logic. Unlike first-order predicate logic, Description Logic systems offer decidable reasoning services. Besides knowledge representation, Description Logic is used in various other fields and is considered the most important normalization form for object-centered representation languages. Its significant features are strong expressive capabilities and decidability, ensuring that reasoning algorithms always halt and return correct results. Description Logic has received special attention over the past decade due to its clear model-theoretic mechanisms, suitability for representing application domains through conceptual taxonomy, and providing useful reasoning services.
Sixth Layer: Proof Layer and Seventh Layer: Trust Layer, responsible for providing authentication and trust mechanisms.