SemantExplorer

Dear all,

we want to highlight one of our latest projects related to the Semantic Web.

SemantExplorer:

Web Page annotation, using domain specific ontologies is the basis of the
semantic web, and besides RDF and RDFS, OWL has emerged as the most common
language for defining relationships between resources in a web page. A
Semantic Web Browser deals with the annotations embedded in the HTML of a
web page.

Currently there are two approaches to creating Semantic Web Browsers. A
SEMANTIC WEB Browser has been described as a browser that explores the
semantic web in its own right, and is able to relate and aggregate
information about resources located in different web documents. On the
other hand  a Semantic WEB BROWSER can be described as a special web
browser, that augments standard web browsers with the ability to visualize
hidden metadata. While approaches like the latter ARE based almost
entirely on the present WWW resource sharing technologies, other
approaches could involve new  ideas. In particular, special repositories
could be used for the collection of RDF triples from various accessed
locations over time. Such triple stores could largely improve the
efficiency of locating information on some resource of interest.

Our SemantExplorer attempts to bridge the gap between these two
approaches. While the Table and Graph Builders contribute to the 'SEMANTIC
WEB Browser', the Lens Builder, contributes to the alternate approach, by
enabling navigation through related data.

More information on the preliminary version of SemantExplorer can be found
at:
http://staff.um.edu.mt/cabe2/supervising/undergraduate/swbrowsing/semantexplorer.html

Your feedback is strongly welcome!

Stay tuned for more ...

Charlie Abela

Department of CSAI
University of Malta

Received on Saturday, 30 April 2005 16:27:08 UTC