News Release: W3C Celebrates Semantic Web Progress at SemTech 2009

W3C Celebrates Semantic Web Progress at SemTech 2009

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

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

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

W3C collects and publishes Semantic Web use cases and case studies as 
part of its community building and outreach programs.

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

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 representation on 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 systems such as thesauri, classification 
schemes, subject heading systems and taxonomies. The new Simple 
Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) specification has already been used 
by librarians and others to create more than 20 thesauri, including the 
United States Library of Congress Authorities and Vocabularies and the 
Leibnitz Information Centre for Economics of the German National Library 
of Economics.
     * content descriptions that will make it easier to provide, 
customize, and trust information added to large number of resources on 
the Web (see use cases). The Protocol for Web Description Resources 
(POWDER) addresses the issue of publishing trustworthy metadata easily 
for a large number of Web resources. The POWDER Primer lists 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 systems to address use cases in 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 the Rules 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 new 
standards for the advancement and realization of the Semantic Web. In 
time for SemTech, W3C announces that SKOS and OWL, as Proposed 
Recommendations, are nearly complete. OWL 2 is a Candidate 
Recommendation, meaning it is considered technically sound and ready for 
implementation experience. OWL 2 builds on the original OWL standards 
(published in 2004) and adds features sought by the community. The basic 
design of RIF is now complete, and this week W3C expects to announce 
"Last Call" draft specifications, meaning the public can confirm the 
technical soundness of the document.


EDITOR's NOTES:
===============

Web Resources:
--------------
This press release:
   - in English: http://www.w3.org/2009/06/SemTech-pressrelease.html.en
   - in other translations:
     http://www.w3.org/Press/Overview.html#x2009-semtech

W3C @ the Semantic Technology Conference:
     http://www.semantic-conference.com/2009/sponsors/#supporting

W3C Semantic Web Activity:
     http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

Semantic Web use cases and case studies:
     http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/


Press Contacts:
--------------
Americas, Australia -- Ian Jacobs, <ij@w3.org>, +1.718.260.9447 or 
+1.617.253.2613
Europe, Africa and the Middle East -- Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, 
+33.676.86.33.41

About the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
-------------------------------------------
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where 
Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to 
develop Web standards. W3C primarily pursues its mission through the 
creation of Web standards and guidelines designed to ensure long-term 
growth for the Web. Over 400 organizations are Members of the 
Consortium. W3C is jointly run by the MIT Computer Science and 
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European 
Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) 
headquartered in France and Keio University in Japan,and has additional 
Offices worldwide. For more information see http://www.w3.org/

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Received on Monday, 15 June 2009 16:35:21 UTC