Semantic Web

Mike Dean
Principal Investigator, DAML Integration and Transition
[email protected]

CoABS PI Meeting
Chantilly, VA
17 January 2002

http://www.daml.org/2002/01/coabs-daml/Overview.html

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Outline

• background
• small demo to illustrate key concepts
• recent news and plans

DAML Program Objectives

• support World Wide Web (WWW) content that is easily used by intelligent agents and other programs
• enable the Semantic Web
  • Scientific American article (vision)
  • WebOnt Charter (technical issues)

Approach

• create a linked object web
  • described by (many) ontologies
  • static and dynamic content, including Web Services
• define an ontology language with a formal foundation
  • DAML+OIL product of both DARPA and EU-funded Semantic Web research teams
• leverage existing WWW standards and protocols
• support a range of consumers:
  • simple programs (e.g. Visual Basic)
  • intelligent agents (reasoning/inference)
  • humans
• develop prototype tools to span the Semantic Web lifecycle:
  • ontology creation and editing
  • ontology translation and mapping
  • distributed knowledge bases
  • markup editors
  • validation services
  • translation services
  • APIs
  • browsers
  • security/trust
  • ...
  • applications

Ontologies

• ontology: a vocabulary of terms and the precise relationships between them
• levels of detail

  ontology	+ class expressions, etc.	KIF, DAML+OIL
  data model	+ abstraction	UML
  database schema	+ relations between objects	RDBMS, OODBMS
  class hierarchy	+ attributes	C++, Java, CORBA IDL
  taxonomy	subclass relationships	biology
  directory	grouping of related items	yahoo.com

most organizations already have a good start toward developing ontologies

Demo Scenario

• a notional Mark 2002 sensor that can be used in fixed locations or attached to a platform (aircraft, UAV, etc.)
• show object links
  • event to sensor
  • sensor to sensor characteristics
  • data to metadata
  • adding information
  • statements about statements (pedigree)

DAML Content

• generic
  • location-ont (dumpont)
• domain specific
  • sensor-type-ont (dumpont)
  • sensor-ont (dumpont)
  • event-ont (dumpont)
  • logistics-ont (dumpont)
• application specific
  • mk2002 (dumpont)
  • TOE (Table of Organization and Equipment) (hyperdaml)
  • events (hyperdaml)
  • logistics (hyperdaml)

Current Status

• 17 months into a 3 year DARPA program
• Murray Burke is now Program Manager
• DAML+OIL language stable since March 2001
  • submitted to W3C
• 40+ DAML+OIL tools
  • includes work by EU and other collaborators
  • mostly open source
• DAML Ontology Library: 170 ontologies
• DAML Crawler: 2.8 million statements from 48 public sites
• DAML Applications: ~12 end-to-end applications of varying scale

W3C Web Ontology (WebOnt) Working Group

• new part of the W3C Semantic Web Activity
• 49 members, chaired by Jim Hendler
• started in November; first face-to-face meeting earlier this week
• DAML+OIL (March 2001) is the starting point for the Ontology Web Language (OWL)

DAML Experiment

• major focus for this year
• metrics-based evaluation
• emphasis on Operational Net Assessment in accordance with Joint Vision 2020
• TIEs with various transition partners and other DARPA programs
• major topic for February 2002 DAML PI Meeting

More Information

• daml.org
• W3C Semantic Web Activity
• W3C Web Ontology (WebOnt) Working Group
• semanticweb.org (Semantic Web news)
• OntoWeb (European Semantic Web Network of Excellence)