The Semantic Web is the extension of the World Wide Web that enables people to share content beyond the boundaries of applications and websites. Lt has been described in rather different ways: as a utopic vision, as a web of data, or merely as a natural paradigm shift in our daily use of the Web. Most of all, the Semantic Web has inspired and engaged many people to create innovative semantic technologies and applications.
The Semantic Web consists primarily of three technical standards:
- RDF (Resource Description Framework): The data modeling language for the Semantic Web. All Semantic Web information is stored and represented in the RDF.
- SPARQL (SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language): The query language of the Semantic Web. It is specifically designed to query data across various systems.
- OWL (Web Ontology Language) The schema language, or knowledge representation (KR) language, of the Semantic Web. OWL enables you to define concepts composably so that these concepts can be reused as much and as often as possible. Composability means that each concept is carefully defined so that it can be selected and assembled in various combinations with other concepts as needed for many different applications and purposes.