business semantic web

Is The Semantic Web Ready Is The Semantic Web Ready for Business?for Business?

Eran Toch

May 2005

Information Systems Engineering AreaFaculty of Industrial Engineering and Management

Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

2The Semantic Web - Eran Toch

AgendaAgenda

• Why do we need it?

• What is it?

• Challenges and Opportunities

• Applications– Current Commercial Activities– Semantic Web Services– Social Software

• Summary


The WWW TechnicallyThe 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


Problems with the WWWProblems with the WWW

65,900,000 results were returned

Google - Market Cap:72.45 B $


More Problems: Comparison ShoppingMore Problems: Comparison Shopping

Shopping.com - Market Cap:502.70 M $


Building Shopping Comparison EngineBuilding Shopping Comparison Engine


TrustTrust

Spam Phishing E-Commerce

Who can you trust to send you emails?

Is this site is the one it claims to be?

How can I know for sure if a transaction really occurred?


Problem DomainsProblem 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


AgendaAgenda


• What is it?


• Applications– Current Commercial Activities– Business Models– Social Software– Semantic Web Services

• Summary


The Semantic WebThe Semantic Web

[SciAme]

“The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.”

Sir Tim Berners-Lee

“The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.”

Sir Tim Berners-Lee


Making the Web Machine-FriendlyMaking the Web Machine-Friendly

1. Making knowledge self explainable for machines

2. Creating an environment for knowledge inference

3. Establishing trust


Making it Meaningful for MachinesMaking it Meaningful for Machines

WWWResource

WWWResource

Humans Machines

<RDF>http://www.amazon.com/4344533


Knowledge For MachinesKnowledge For Machines

Product

$14.99

Soundrack Audio CD

Universal

24 hoursKissing Jessica Stein

hasPrice

hasTitle

availability

itsLabel

itsType

is a

http://www.amazon.com/4344533

RDF – ResourceDescription Framework

[REF]


OntologiesOntologies

• 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 Healthcare

Disease

Medicine

Product

Price

DoctorPatient

Is a

treats

takes

Is treated by

has

prescribe


Web Ontology Language (OWL)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)– subClassOf (Employee is subClassOf Person)– intersectionOf (music CD is intersectionOf 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


OntologiesOntologies

E-CommerceHealthcare

Disease

Medicine

Product

Price

Customer

Doctor

Supplier

RFID

PatientIs a

Is a

treats

takes

Is treated by

supplies

has

buys

has


Generalizing Knowledge NetworksGeneralizing Knowledge Networks

Product

Price

MedicineSide Effect

OTC MedicinePrescription

Is a

Is a Is a

Price Comparison Robot

Hospital Drug Monitor Robot


E-Commerce SiteE-Commerce Site

The Network EffectThe Network Effect

E-Commerce SiteLibrary

Personal Computer

SongPath

Product

Price

Item

Catalog ID

Is a

Is a


AgendaAgenda


• What is it?


• Applications– Current Commercial Activities– Semantic Web Services– Social Software

• Summary


Business on the Semantic WebBusiness on the Semantic Web

BP

Reasoning

Storing metadata(databases, messaging)

Creating Metadata(editors, translators, automatic

extraction, services)

Business Processes


BottlenecksBottlenecks

• 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

Academic

The Metadata gap

Commercial


Metadata ChasmMetadata 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.


MarketsMarkets

• 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


AgendaAgenda


• What is it?



• Summary


Semantic Web ApplicationsSemantic Web Applications

• Adobe - uses RDF as a basis for documenting meta-data, 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


AdunaAduna

• Netherlands-based startup

• Main products:– Semantic desktop

search– Semantic enterprise

search– Semantic Metadata

server

[ADUNA]


CelcorpCelcorp

• 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]


Brandsoft Brandsoft

• Based in Los Gatos, CA• Main product: Brandsoft Resource Manager

– Content management and application development suite, based on RDF


CerebraCerebra

• 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]


TucanaTucana

• 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]


Semantic Web ServicesSemantic Web Services

1. The customer’s agent automatically locates and invokes the brokerage firm’s Web service

2. Domain and Service models can be used to automatically or manually compose services


Semantic Web Services, cont’dSemantic 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]


Semantic SOA (Service Oriented Computing)Semantic SOA (Service Oriented Computing)

Orderproduct

Order Order ManagementManagement

Employee Employee SignoffSignoffReport employee

daily activities

check order status

Update inventory

Get customerHistory

Check usersecurity profile

Get incomingmessages

Customer Customer CareCare


FOAFFOAF

• 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]


FOAF ExampleFOAF Example

<Person><Person>

Name

Website

PictureEmail

<Person><Person>

<Person><Person>

knows

knows


FOAF-Based ApplicationsFOAF-Based Applications

• FOAF Explorer:

• More– Job search– Dating– Identity– Security

[http://xml.mfd-consult.dk/foaf/explorer/]


FOAF-Applications – cont’dFOAF-Applications – cont’d

FOAFNaut - <http://www.foafnaut.org/>


Email Trust with FOAFEmail Trust with FOAF

[TRUST]


Inferring TrustInferring Trust

me

trust

trust

trust

Don’ttrust

trust

trust

trust

emailemailemailemail

Email is blockedEmail is

accepted


AgendaAgenda


• What is it?



• Summary


SummarySummary

Widespread Use

Academiadesert

Where would the semantic web go


Key Points for SuccessKey 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


Long Term Implications of a Success 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


ReferencesReferences

[SciAme] Berners-Lee, T., Hendler, J., Lassila, O., The Semantic Web, Scientific American, 284(5), 2001, pp. 34-43.

[RDF] http://www.w3.org/RDF, http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/discovery/rdf

[OWL] http://www.w3.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

http://www.w3.org/RDF

http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/discovery/rdf

http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-guide

http://www.yorku.ca/hmkim/files/Kim02-CACM-wcopyright.pdf

http://www.foaf-project.org/










http://aduna.biz/

http://www.celcorp.com/

http://cerebra.com/

Thank YouThank You

[email protected]

http://www.technion.ac.il/erant

mailto:[email protected]



business semantic web

Economy & Finance