Evolution Towards Web 3.0:
The Semantic WebExperiences and Challenges on the Web and Inside Enterprises
Lee FeigenbaumVP Technology & Client Services, Cambridge Semantics
Co-chair W3C SPARQL Working [email protected]
for “Evolution Towards Web 3.0”, April 21, 2011
Agenda
• How did we get here?• Semantic Web: What and why• How is it used today?• Semantic Web challenges
Acknowledgement
Much material used gratefully with permission of Tim Berners-Lee. All opinions and conclusions are Lee Feigenbaum’s.
Web Evolution
1992 1993 1994
1st image on the Web
Debut of Mosaic browser
• Widespread success of Web 1.0– IMDB.com– PizzaHut.com– Whitehouse.gov– Lycos.com
• Universality: anything can link to anything
• Push information to users
Web Evolution
1994 1999 2004
IE7 has 1st complete AJAX stack
First Web 2.0 ConferenceHighlights User-Generated
Content
2006Web 1.0 is “here”.
Building Silos
• Web 1.0: The silo is the document
Building Silos
• Web 2.0: The silo is the application
Image originally from March 2008 issue of The Economist and used with permission of creator David Simonds
Penetrating Silos: Building the Data Web
Penetrating Silos: Building the Data Web
Penetrating Silos: Building the Data Web
Penetrating Silos: Building the Data Web
Penetrating Silos: Building the Data Web
Penetrating Silos: Building the Data Web
Penetrating Silos: Building the Data Web
Web Evolution
1994 20042001 2007Web 1.0 is “here”. Web 2.0 is “here”.
2009
• Semantic Web consumers include Google & Yahoo!
• Semantic Web publishers include Best Buy, NY Times, US and UK gov’ts
Web Evolution
1999 2001 2004 2008 20112007
RIF
16
• “The Semantic Web”– Link explicit data on the World Wide Web in a machine-
readable fashion• …government data• …commercial data• …social data
– In order to enable…• …targeted, semantic search• …data browsing• …automated agents
Semantic Web – 1st view
World Wide Web : Web pages :: The Semantic Web : Data
• “Semantic Web technologies”– A family of technology standards that ‘play nice together’,
including:• Flexible data model• Expressive ontology language• Distributed query language
– Drive Web sites, enterprise applications• Data integration• Business intelligence• Large knowledgebases• …
Semantic Web – 2nd view
The technologies enable us to build applications and solutions that were not possible, practical, or feasible traditionally.
Names
• Semantic Web• Web of Data• Giant Global Graph• Data Web• Web 3.0• Linked Data Web• Semantic Data Web• Enterprise Information Web
Branding
Value propositions
• On the Web, the Semantic Web is about moving from linking documents to linking data
• What’s the value proposition within the enterprise?
Evolution to Semantic Web Inside Enterprises
Cathy
Relational Technology Semantic TechnologyCustomer Table
Cust ID Name City
394021-1454 Cathy Seattle
Purchased Items Table
Purchase-ID Cust-ID Item
P942-4294 394021-1454 iPad
Based on tablesRigid table stores only the things they’re
designed to storeMeaning (e.g. relationships) must come
from the user or be built into software
Based on a Web of dataCan accommodate new data as it arrivesUnderstandable by human beings & machinesComplements & builds upon traditional IT
purchased iPad
The Semantic Web Paradigm
The World Changes
Traditionally:Change is costly
Semantics:Change is cheap
Semantic Web Paradigm: Coping with Change
Flexible Graph Model
URIs for naming
Agility On-the-fly
RDB 1 RDB 2
Data Silos (structured, semi-structured, unstructured data)
ExcelEmailMySQLSybaseOracle
Integrated Enterprise Data
Response
Response
Response
QueryQuery
Query
…At and Beyond Enterprise Scale
Semantics Puts Data Within Reach of Domain Experts
How is Semantic Web used today?
We’re not here yet.
Image from Trey Ideker via Enoch Huang
What is here today?
• Do you use Web 3.0 in your day-to-day life?
The Linked Data Web, May 2007
The Linked Data Web, March 2008
May 12, 2009 31
The Linked Data Web, March 2009
32
The Linked Data Web, September 2010
Semantic Web In Use: Social Data
• People, relationships– Friend Of A Friend (“FOAF”) – foaf:knows– Self-published or site-published (LiveJournal, hi5, …)
• Blogs, discussion forums, mailing lists– Semantically Interlinked Online Communities (“SIOC”)– Plug-ins for popular blogging & CMS platforms
• Calendars, vCards, reviews, … – One-offs
• Why don’t we have portable social networks? Yet?
Social Data Example
• Facebook Open Graph Protocol
Semantic Web In Use: Scientific Data
May 12, 2009 36
Example: Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery
What genes are involved in signal transduction and are related to pyramidal neurons?
General search: 223,000 hits, 0 results
Domain-limited search: Still 2,580 potential results
Specific databases: Too many silos!
Linked Scientific Data: 32 targeted results
Semantic Web In Use: Enterprises on the Web
• Thesis: Describe your business more precisely and drive more (and better) traffic to your site
• Example: NYTimes publishes their article classification scheme as linked data
• Example: Best Buy, Overstock.com use RDFa to annotate product listings
Measurable Results
• 30% increase in search-engine traffic• 15% increase in click-through-rate for search ads
• Many and Varied Applications Across Industries– Health care and pharma
• integration, classification, ontologies
– Oil & Gas• integration, classification
– Finance • structured data, ontologies, XBRL
– Publishing • metadata
– Libraries & museums • metadata, classification
– IT • rapid application development & evolution
Semantic Web In Use: Inside the Enterprise
Targeting High-Potential Opportunities in Pharma
Universe of considered
opportunities
High-potentialopportunities Mobile device
RegionalAnalyst
ProfileTerritory Preferredtargets
. . .
Per-analystrelevance filter
Delivering Dynamic, Data-driven Websites
The development of this new high-performance dynamic semantic publishing stack is a great innovation for the BBC as we are the first to use
this technology on such a high-profile site. It also puts us at the cutting edge of development for the next phase of the Internet, Web 3.0.
“
Semantic Web In Use: Government data
– Since January 2010, 2,500 (large) datasets published as Linked Data
– Since May 2009, 250,000 (smaller) datasets published (CSV, XML, …)
– RPI project to convert datasets toLinked Data
Tim Berners-Lee @ TED2010
http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_the_year_open_data_went_worldwide.html
Semantic Web challenges
Companies range from small, family-owned businesses to massive global conglomerates. But the challenges
faced by even the largest corporation pale in comparison to the scope of the challenges of building a
world-wide Semantic Web.
Economic Model
• What sustains Semantic Web applications in industry?
• What sustains the Linked Data Web?
• Are there viable economic models for Linked Data?
Big Issue: Motivation
• Retailers have clear motivation to put their data on the Web. But…
• …what if your business is data?– Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, …
• …what if your business is your application?– Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp, …
Scale
Web
Fortune 100 corp.
Data Quality
• Web 1.0 & 2.0 by necessity put a human between the information and its interpretation
• Web 3.0 queries, searches, and agents seek to automate this
Data quality is a challenge to automation
1. Variable quality of uninterpreted source data– What are the highest cities in the US?
2. Variable quality of links and assertions about Linked Data
Data Quality – Two Issues
405,696,000m
Data Quality – Two Issues
• What ensures data quality on the Linked Data Web?
• Enterprises spend millions on data quality already– Knowledge management– Master data management– Governance and curation processes
• …though data quality issues do seep in when enterprises use Semantic Web to link to partners and public sources of data!
Trust
• How do we know which contributions to the Linked Data Web to trust?– Trust (distrust) the contributors?– Trust (distrust) the contributions?– Trust (distrust) the process?
• How is trust established within an enterprise’s Linked Data Web?
Adoption
Suggestion: Progress towards enterprise linked data requires far fewer people embrace Semantic Web technologies compared with a global Linked Data Web
Other Challenges
• Data licensing• Open world assumption• Unique name assumption• Temporal data
• What other challenges can you think of?
To learn more or to discuss the contents of this presentation, please contact me.
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