W3C Celebrates Semantic Web Progress at SemTech 2009

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Active Linked Data Community, eGovernment, and Industry Showing Support forGrowing W3C Standards Stack

Contact Americas, Australia--

Ian Jacobs, <ij@w3.org>, +1.718.260.9447or+1.617.253.2613

Contact Europe, Africa and the Middle East--

Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, +33.492.38.75.94

http://www.w3.org/-- 15 June 2009 -- W3Ctechnical staff and more than 30 W3C Member organizations will present at theSemantic Technology Conference(SemTech)this week in San Jose, California. Sessions led by W3C staff andMember organizations highlight the accelerating rate of adoption and deploymentof Semantic Web technologies in the past year. In particular, the talksunderscore an active Linked Data community in government, healthcare, financeand other industries dedicated to the adoption of Semantic Web technologiesbased on W3C standards.

"We have gathered a growing number of Semantic Web use cases and casestudies in the past 12 months," said Ivan Herman, Semantic Web Activity Leadfor W3C. "What thrills me is the diversity of application areas for theSemantic Web, including more software, services and tools, as well assuccessful deployment in business and industry."

W3C collects and publishes

usecases="UseCases">Semantic Web use casesand case studies

as part of its community building andoutreach programs

.

SemTech attendees are invited to visit the W3C booth (number 120) during theconference.

Community Needs Drives Advances in Standards for Web of Data

W3C presenters will discuss advances in semantic tools to help people build,organize, and manage their data. The maturing standards provide tools for:

• knowledge representationon the Web. Data on the Web is expressed using terms such as "author" or "flight number" or "account number." When people wish to assign meaning to those terms and to express relationships among them ("'auteur' means the same thing as 'author', in French"), they can used the Web Ontology Language (OWL).

• knowledge organization systemssuch as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading systems and taxonomies. The newSimple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS)specification has already been used by librarians and others to create more than 20 thesauri, including theUnited States Library of Congress Authorities and Vocabulariesand theLeibnitz Information Centre for Economicsof the German National Library of Economics.

• content descriptionsthat will make it easier to provide, customize, and trust information added to large number of resources on the Web (seeuse cases). TheProtocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER)addresses the issue of publishing trustworthy metadata easily for a large number of Web resources. ThePOWDER Primerlists a number of benefits to various audiences, including these: end users will have an easier time judging the trustworthiness of information, publishers will be able to add more semantics to existing information, and service providers will be able to offer real-time content personalization.

• rule systemsto addressuse casesin a variety of disciplines, including: the ability to negotiate eBusiness contracts across rule platforms, managing business policies and practices across organizational boundaries, rule support for medical decisions. The primary goal of theRules Interchange Format (RIF)is to be an effective means of exchanging rules (such as "business rules") in a way that is widely adopted in industry and that is consistent with existing W3C technologies.

W3C continues to work with community members to review and recommend newstandards for the advancement and realization of the Semantic Web. In time forSemTech, W3C announces that SKOS and OWL, asProposed Recommendations

,are nearly complete. OWL 2 is aCandidate Recommendation

,meaning it is considered technically sound and ready for implementationexperience. OWL 2 builds on the original OWL standards (published in 2004) andadds features sought by the community. The basic design of RIF is now complete,and this week W3C expects to announce "Last Call" draft specifications, meaningthe public can confirm the technical soundness of the document.

About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium whereMember organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together todevelop Web standards. W3C primarily pursues its mission through the creationof Web standards and guidelines designed to ensure long-term growth for theWeb. Over 400 organizations are

list="List">Members

of the Consortium.W3C is jointly run by theMIT ComputerScience and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory(MIT CSAIL) in the USA, theEuropean Research Consortium for Informaticsand Mathematics(ERCIM) headquartered in France andKeio University

in Japan,and has additionalOffices worldwide. For moreinformation seehttp://www.w3.org/

News Source : W3C Celebrates Semantic Web Progress at SemTech 2009