W3C Semantic Web Activity Homepage
W3C
Site Navigation
Nearby
Activity
news
Specifications
FAQ
Use
Cases and Case Studies
List of Tools
On-line
validators
List of Books
Semantic Web
Logos and Buttons
SW
Wiki
Latest layercake diagram (SVG)
Latest layercake diagram (PNG)
Latest layercake small
sized (300×315) PNG
Activity RSS feeds
Activity news (RSS 1.0)
(RSS 2.0)
Activity news (Atom)
W3C QA blog (RSS 1.0)
FAQ (RSS
1.0)
SW
Use Cases and Case Studies (RSS 1.0)
Active Groups
Semantic
Web Coordination Group
RDFa
Working Group
RDF
Working Group
Linked
Data Platform Working Group
Health
Care and Life Sciences Interest Group
Semantic
Web Interest Group
Past
Groups
Best
Practices and Deployment Working Group
OWL
Working Group
RDF
Core Working Group
Web
Ontology Working Group
Education
and Outreach Interest Group
RDB2RDF
Working Group
POWDER
Working Group
Provenance
Working Group
SPARQL
Working Group
Rules
Interchange Format Working Group
Semantic
Web Deployment Working Group
GRDDL
Working Group
Related Groups at W3C
Government Linked Data
Working Group
eGovernment Interest
Group
Media
Fragments Working Group
Media
Annotations Working Group
Linking
Open Data Community Project
Warning: this Activity has been
subsumed
, in December
2013, by the
W3C Data
Activity
. That activity has a larger scope; new or current Working and Interest Groups related to “traditional” Semantic Web technologies are now
part of that Activity.
The current page has been frozen on the 11th December, 2013.
W3C Semantic Web
Activity
On this page →
publications, interviews
presentations
active groups
completed groups
past groups
What is the Semantic Web?
The
Semantic Web
provides a common framework that allows
data
to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and
community boundaries. It is a collaborative effort led by W3C
with participation from a large number of researchers and
industrial partners. It is based on the Resource Description
Framework (
RDF
). See also the separate
FAQ
for further information.
The Semantic Web is a web of data. There is lots of data we all
use every day, and it is not part of the web. I can see my bank
statements on the web, and my photographs, and I can see my
appointments in a calendar. But can I see my photos in a
calendar to see what I was doing when I took them? Can I see
bank statement lines in a calendar?
Why not? Because we don't have a web of data. Because data is
controlled by applications, and each application keeps it to
itself.
The Semantic Web is about two things. It is about common
formats for integration and combination of data drawn from
diverse sources, where on the original Web mainly concentrated
on the interchange of documents. It is also about language for
recording how the data relates to real world objects. That
allows a person, or a machine, to start off in one database, and
then move through an unending set of databases which are
connected not by wires but by being about the same thing.
See also
the
activity news
for an account of recent events,
publications, etc. For links to tools, books, further details on
the technologies, you can also refer to the
Semantic
Web Standards Wiki
(and you are welcome to modify those
pages when necessary and appropriate). You may also want to look
at the collection of
SW
Case Studies and Use Cases
to see how organizations are
using these technologies today. Finally, for an exhaustive list
of all the specifications published by the activity, please
refer to the separate
list of publications
Publications / Articles / Interviews
The following is a partial list of various publications and or
interviews by the W3C Staff that help explain the goals and
objectives of the Semantic Web.
"Semantic Link Podcast Series"
, organized by Eric
Franzon, featuring Andraž Tori, Bernadette Hyland, Christine
Connors, Eric Franzon, Eric Hoffer, Ivan Herman, Paul Miller,
and Peter Brown.
"Tim
Berners-Lee and Tim O'Reilly"
, Web 2.0 Summit 09
discussion (October 2009).
The
Semantic Web in Action
, by Lee Feigenbaum, Ivan Herman,
Tonya Hongsermeier, Eric Neumann, and Susie Stephens,
Scientific American, 297(6), pp. 90-97, (December 2007).
The Semantic Web
read it on the Internet Archive
), Scientific American, May 2001, Tim
Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila.
Presentations
Details of
recent and upcoming
Semantic Web related talks, given by
the
W3C Staff
, the staff of the
W3C
Offices
, and members of the W3C Working Groups are
available separately. A list of
all
Semantic Web
related talks since 2004 is
also
available
Groups
The following groups are part of the Semantic Web
Activity.
Active Groups
Semantic Web Coordination Group
The
Semantic
Web Coordination Group
is tasked to provide a forum for
managing the interrelationships and interdependencies among
groups focusing on standards and technologies that relate to
this goals of the Semantic Web Activity. This group is
designed to coordinate, facilitate and (where possible) help
shape the efforts of other related groups to avoid duplication
of effort and fragmentation of the Semantic Web by way of
incompatible standards and technologies.
RDFa Working Group
The mission of the
RDFa
Working Group
, formerly known as the W3C RDF Web
Application Working Group, is to support the developing use of
RDFa for embedding structured data in Web documents in
general. The Working Group will publish W3C Recommendations to
extend and enhance the currently published RDFa 1.0 documents.
RDF Working Group
The mission of the
RDF
Working Group
, is to update the 2004 version of the
Resource
Description Framework (RDF)
Recommendation. The scope of
work is to extend RDF to include some of the features that the
community has identified as both desirable and important for
interoperability based on experience with the 2004 version of
the standard, but without having a negative effect on existing
deployment efforts.
Linked Data Platform Working
Group
The mission of the Linked Data
Platform (LDP) Working Group is to produce a W3C
Recommendation for HTTP-based (RESTful) application
integration patterns using read/write Linked Data. This work
will benefit both small-scale in-browser applications
(WebApps) and large-scale Enterprise Application Integration
(EAI) efforts. It will complement SPARQL and will be
compatible with standards for publishing Linked Data, bringing
the data integration features of RDF to RESTful, data-oriented
software development.
Semantic Web Interest Group
The Semantic Web Interest Group is
a forum for W3C Members and non-Members to discuss innovative
applications of the Semantic Web. The Interest Group also
initiates discussion on potential future work items related to
enabling technologies that support the Semantic Web, and the
relationship of that work to other activities of W3C and to
the broader social and legal context in which the Web is
situated.
Semantic Web Health Care and
Life Sciences Interest Group
The Semantic Web Health Care and
Life Sciences Interest Group is designed to improve
collaboration, research and development, and innovation
adoption in the health care and life science industries.
Aiding decision-making in clinical research, Semantic Web
technologies will bridge many forms of biological and medical
information across institutions.
Past Groups
RDF Core Working Group
The RDF Core Working Group was
chartered
to consider
update to the RDF Model and Syntax Recommendation, and to a
few revisions to the RDF Schema specification.
Web Ontology Working Group
The Web Ontology Working Group was
chartered
to build upon
the RDF Core work a language for defining structured web based
ontologies which will provide richer integration and
interoperability of data among descriptive communities.
OWL Working Group
The mission of the OWL Working
Group, is to produce a W3C Recommendation that refines and
extends the 2004 version of
OWL
The proposed extensions are a small set that: have been
identified by users as widely needed, and have been identified
by tool implementers as reasonable and feasible extensions to
current tools.
Provenance Working Group
The mission of the Provenance
Working Group is to support the widespread publication and use
of provenance information of Web documents, data, and
resources. The Working Group will publish W3C Recommendations
that define a language for exchanging provenance information
among applications.
Rules Interchange Format
Working Group
This Working Group is chartered to
produce a core rule language plus extensions which together
allow rules to be translated between rule languages and thus
transferred between rule systems. The Working Group will have
to balance the needs of a community diverse including Business
Rules and Semantic users Web specifying extensions for which
it can articulate a consensus design and which are
sufficiently motivated by use cases.
Semantic Web Deployment Working
Group
The mission of this Working Group
is to provide guidance in the form of W3C Technical Reports on
issues of practical RDF development and deployment practices
in the areas of publishing vocabularies, OWL usage, and
integrating RDF with HTML documents.
This group is also responsible for the development of the
RDFa 1.0
and
SKOS
specifications.
RDB2RDF Working Group
The mission of the
RDB2RDF
Working Group
is to standardize a language for mapping
relational data and relational database schemas into RDF and
OWL, tentatively called the RDB2RDF Mapping Language, R2RML.
Semantic Web Best Practices and
Deployment Working Group
The focus of the
Semantic
Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group
was to
provide hands-on support for developers of Semantic Web
applications.
Semantic Web Education and
Outreach Interest Group
The Semantic Web Education and
Outreach Interest Group (SWEO) was chartered to collect
proof-of-concept business cases, demonstration prototypes,
etc, based on successful implementations of Semantic Web
technologies, collect user experiences, develop and facilitate
community outreach strategies, training and educational
resources.
SPARQL Working Group
Formerly known as RDF Data Access
Working Group, it developed the SPARQL Query Language
recommendation
published
in January 2008
. The group is currently chartered to
make small updates to the SPARQL specification that have been
identified as users and implementers as feasible and useful
extensions.
POWDER Working Group
The mission of the Protocol for Web
Description Resources (POWDER) Working Group is to develop a
mechanism through which structured metadata ("Description
Resources") can be authenticated and applied to groups of Web
resources. This mechanism will allow retrieval of the
description resources without retrieval of the resources they
describe.
GRDDL Working Group
The mission of this Working Group
was to complement the concrete RDF/XML syntax with a mechanism
to relate other XML syntaxes (especially XHTML dialects or
"microformats") to the RDF abstract syntax via transformations
identified by URIs.
W3C
staff assigned to the
Activity
are
Sandro
Hawke
(see also
private blog
Ivan
Herman
(see also
private blog
Phil Archer
and
Eric
Prud'hommeaux
Ivan Herman
, Semantic Web Activity
Lead,

2013-06-19
Footer Navigation
Standards
Participate
Membership
About
W3C
Contact W3C
Contact
Help and
FAQ
Donate
Feedback
archive
W3C Updates
Copyright © 2013 W3C
MIT
ERCIM
Keio,
Beihang
Usage
policies apply