Information Systems Engineering Area Faculty of Industrial Engineering

Information Systems Engineering Area Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Is The Semantic Web Ready for Business? Eran Toch May 2005

Agenda • • Why do we need it? What is it? Challenges and Opportunities Applications – Current Commercial Activities – Semantic Web Services – Social Software • Summary The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 2

The WWW Technically • A set of protocols and languages driven by a strong standards approach: – – URI HTTP HTML XML • Principles: – Implementation and platform independence crucial – World Wide Web Consortium the most prominent The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 3

Problems with the WWW 65, 900, 000 results were returned Google - Market Cap: 72. 45 B $ The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 4

More Problems: Comparison Shopping. com - Market Cap: 502. 70 M $ The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 5

Building Shopping Comparison Engine The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 6

Trust Spam Who can you trust to send you emails? Phishing E-Commerce Is this site is the one it claims to be? How can I know for sure if a transaction really occurred? The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 7

Problem Domains • The General Web – Data-mining activities (e. g. search, comparison, notification) – Transactions (e-comm, e-gov) • Business Knowledge bases – Intranets, data warehouses • Collaborative Computing – Transaction between systems • Knowledge-based businesses – biology, law etc The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 8

Agenda • • Why do we need it? What is it? Challenges and Opportunities Applications – Current Commercial Activities – Business Models – Social Software – Semantic Web Services • Summary The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 9

The Semantic Web “The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given welldefined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. ” Sir Tim Berners-Lee [Sci. Ame] The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 10

Making the Web Machine-Friendly 1. Making knowledge self explainable for machines 2. Creating an environment for knowledge inference 3. Establishing trust The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 11

Making it Meaningful for Machines WWW Resource <RDF> http: //www. amazon. com/4344533 Humans Machines The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 12

Knowledge For Machines RDF – Resource Description Framework is a Soundrack Audio CD its. Type its. Label Universal Product http: //www. amazon. com/4344533 has. Price availability has. Title 24 hours $14. 99 Kissing Jessica Stein [REF] The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 13

Ontologies • An ontology is standard for some knowledge domain, e. g. – – Healthcare Bioinformatics CRM Web services • It provides a formal and agreed upon controlled vocabulary, which is used to define concepts • Information can be tagged according to these concepts Disease Is treated by Is a Product has Medicine Price prescribe takes Doctor treats Patient Healthcare The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 14

Web Ontology Language (OWL( • OWL is an RDF-based language for Ontology modeling. • Enable class and instance definition, using relations and properties such as: – Properties (price is a property of product) – sub. Class. Of (Employee is sub. Class. Of Person) – intersection. Of (music CD is intersection. Of playable thing and consumer product) – Cardinality constrains (product has 1 (and only 1) price properties) • OWL ontologies can be developed independently, having concepts reference each other The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 15

Ontologies supplies Disease Is treated by Doctor treats Supplier has Is a Product Medicine Price takes Patient RFID has buys Customer Is a Healthcare E-Commerce The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 16

Generalizing Knowledge Networks Product Price Comparison Robot Is a Price Medicine Side Effect Is a Hospital Drug Monitor Robot Prescription OTC Medicine The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 17

The Network Effect Is a Item Product Price Catalog ID Library E-Commerce Site Is a Song Path Personal Computer The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 18

Agenda • • Why do we need it? What is it? Challenges and Opportunities Applications – Current Commercial Activities – Semantic Web Services – Social Software • Summary The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 19

Business on the Semantic Web Business Processes BP Reasoning Storing metadata (databases, messaging) Creating Metadata (editors, translators, automatic extraction, services) The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 20

Bottlenecks • Sufficient metadata is the main bottleneck of the Semantic Web • There is a loop: – Without metadata, no applications will be built – Without applications, no one will create metadata Commercial Academic The Metadata gap The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 21

Metadata Chasm • Ontology creation requires companies and organization to standardize their concepts, much harder than to standardize communication protocols • Ontology creation requires large investments. Because ontologies reduce the uncertainty of information, their benefits will be revealed mainly in the long run. • Thus, they do not provide immediate return on the investment, not immediately [KIM. [ • However, in some markets, ontologies may have faster cost-to-benefit cycle. The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 22

Markets • Niece fields on the general WWW – Content syndication – Communications and social networks • Business Processes – Handling interoperability – Extending Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) • Knowledge-rich markets – Bioinformatics – Software Engineering – Law • Business Intelligence – Business intelligence using semantic annotations The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 23

Agenda • • Why do we need it? What is it? Challenges and Opportunities Applications – Current Commercial Activities – Business Models – Social Software – Semantic Web Services • Summary The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 24

Semantic Web Applications • Adobe - uses RDF as a basis for documenting metadata, in PDF and other tools • Boeing – uses RDF and OWL in several internal projects • AGFA – uses RDF to categorize medical photos • NOKIA – lots of Semantic Web activities. Including RDF knowledge store • IBM – Strong research activities The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 25

Aduna • Netherlands-based startup • Main products: – Semantic desktop search – Semantic enterprise search – Semantic Metadata server [ADUNA] The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 26

Celcorp • Based in Santa-Monica • Claim to have 3 customers from Fortune 500 • Main business: Semantic EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) • Main product: Celware Intelligent Access – – Records user actions in legacy systems Builds an editable knowledge based of reusable task models Generates executable processes, based on the tasks Business processes are automatically planned and executed, using the knowledge base [CELCORP] The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 27

Brandsoft • Based in Los Gatos, CA • Main product: Brandsoft Resource Manager – Content management and application development suite, based on RDF The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 28

Cerebra • Based in Carlsbad, CA. AKA Network Inference. • Claim to have more than 25 customers, some of them from Fortune 500 • Cerebra Server – – Provides ontology management and storage – Semantic integration of data from RDBMS etc – Querying through XQuery • Cerebra Construct – – Ontology modeling using MS-Visio • Professional Services [CEREBRA] The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 29

Tucana • Based in Reston, VA. • Their main product, Tucana Knowledge Discovery Suite, is a semantic knowledge base, with some business intelligence abilities. It is built upon: – Scaleable RDF triple store – Reasoning engine – Metadata extraction from RDBMS, files, emails, ERP etc. [Tucana] The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 30

Semantic Web Services 2. Domain and Service models can be used to automatically or manually compose services 1. The customer’s agent automatically locates and invokes the brokerage firm’s Web service The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 31

Semantic Web Services, cont’d • OWL-S is an upper ontology for a semantic description of Web services. – E. g. an input message can be typed as the concept “Product”, and not just a String • Describes a Web service by: – What it does (inputs, outputs, preconditions…) – How it works (a process model) – Grounding to an invocation method (WSDL) [OWL-S] The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 32

Semantic SOA (Service Oriented Computing( Employee Report employee Signoff daily activities Check user security profile Order Management Order product Update inventory check order status Customer Care Get incoming messages Get customer History The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 33

FOAF • Stands for "Friend Of A Friend“* • Provides a template for metadata about people, and their interests, relationships and activities • An open community-lead and open-source initiative [FOAF] The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 34

FOAF Example Email <Person> Picture knows <Person> Website knows Name <Person> The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 35

FOAF-Based Applications • FOAF Explorer: • More – – Job search Dating Identity Security [http: //xml. mfd-consult. dk/foaf/explorer/] The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 36

FOAF-Applications – cont’d FOAFNaut - <http: //www. foafnaut. org/> The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 37

Email Trust with FOAF [TRUST] The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 38

Inferring Trust trust Email is accepted Email is blocked me trust trust Don’t trust The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 39

Agenda • • Why do we need it? What is it? Challenges and Opportunities Applications – Current Commercial Activities – Business Models – Social Software – Semantic Web Services • Summary The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 40

Summary Academia desert Widespread Use Where would the semantic web go The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 41

Key Points for Success • Crossing the metadata chasm – Automatic extraction of metadata in predefined domains – Reducing the turn-on-investment cycle. Making ontologies useful, now • Niece markets – Bioinformatics – Software engineering • Business Processes – Leveraging semantic markup with Web services and enterprise computing The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 42

Long Term Implications of a Success • New professions: – Ontology editors – Taggers • Agents – Many automated tasks (shopping, travel, dating…) – Bigger threats on human agents (travel agents, insurance agents…) • Business Processes – IT missions change - from constructing applications to providing frameworks – Work of operational personnel change – from requirement definitions to business process modeling The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 43

References [Sci. Ame] Berners-Lee, T. , Hendler, J. , Lassila, O. , The Semantic Web, Scientific American, 284(5), 2001, pp. 34 -43. [RDF] http: //www. w 3. org/RDF, http: //www. ilrt. bris. ac. uk/discovery/rdf [OWL] http: //www. w 3. org/TR/owl-guide [KIM] Kim, Henry M. (2002). "Predicting How Ontologies for the Semantic Web Will Evolve", Communications of the ACM, Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 48 -54. [FOAF] http: //www. foaf-project. org/ [ADUNA] http: //aduna. biz [CELCORP] http: //www. celcorp. com [CEREBRA] http: //cerebra. com [OWL-S] http: //www. daml. org/services [TRUST] http: //trust. mindswap. org The Semantic Web - Eran Toch 44

Thank You erant@tx. technion. ac. il http: //www. technion. ac. il/erant