SEMANTIC WEB AND WEB 2.0

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

BY

AKINSOLA, JIDE EBENEZER TAIWO

BABCOCK UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

SCHOOL OF COMPUTING AND

ENGINEERING SCIENCES

JANUARY 2016

CONTENTS

1.0 INTRODUCTION 1-2

2.0 LIFE CYCLE OF INFORMATION 3

3.0 THE EVOLUTION OF THE WEB - 3-4

DEFRAGMENTING THE INFOSPHERE

4.0. THE HISTORY OF SEMANTIC WEB 4

4.0.1 WHAT IS SEMANTIC WEB? 5-7

4.1 SEMANTICS FOR THE SEMANTIC WEB 7-8

4.2 SEMANTIC WEB ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES 8-9 -

LAYER CAKE

4.3 SEMANTIC WEB TECHNOLOGIES 10

4.4 WHY SEMANTIC WEB? 9

5.0 THE CURRENT WEB 10-11

6.0 SEMANTIC WEB VS CURRENT WEB 11-16

7.0 THE HISTORY OF WEB 2.0 17-18

7.1 WHAT IS WEB 2.0? 18-19

7.2 WEB 2.0 FEATURES AND TECHNIQUES 19-20

7.3 WEB 2.0 TOOLS 20

7.4 LIMITATIONS OF WEB2.0 AND THE SEMANTIC WEB

20-22

8.0 WHAT IS WEB ONTOLOGY? 22

9.0 RECOMMENDATIONS 23

9.1 SEMANTIC WEB 23

9.2 WEB 2.0 23

10.0 CONCLUSIONS 23-24

REFERENCES 25-27

1

SEMANTIC WEB AND WEB 2.0

1.0 INTRODUCTION

The Web has spanned every facet of human life and endeavors. The

penetration of web and social connectivity is crucial to development in this

information age. There is a nimiety of information (data) being shared

globally from the large database repositories through the World Wide Web.

Semantic Web and Web 2.0 are interdependent and complimentary. The

future evolution of web is hinged on Semantic Web and Web 2.0. Web 2.0

leverages on Semantic Web infrastructure to deliver mash-up (is a web page,

or web application, that uses content from more than one source to create a

single new service displayed in a single graphical interface)like information

sharing. It is an undeniable fact that the future web applications will retain

the Web 2.0 with emphasis on community and usability.

In the nearest future, there is the potential for combining Semantic Web and

Web 2.0 web technologies. There are several open issues that needs to be

resolved before Semantic Web and Web 2.0 can be commonplace. Web 2.0

has largely enabled and influenced contribution to the web through simple

interfaces that provide engaging interactions. There is huge amount of data

(big data) that is being shared, transferred and stored across web which

Semantic Web is playing a key role in data integration.

Web 2.0 has the platform for wider audience due to its participatory nature

among web users. This is possible because of simple interfaces and usability

by non-specialists. Although, the data is not available for easy interlinking

and re-use. Also, Web 2.0 brings about integration of heterogeneous

information. On the contrary, Semantic Web lacks approachable interfaces

allowing contributions, that is, it is largely closed to user contributions (i.e.

non-participatory). However, the large scale data integration in Semantic

Web can only be done by Specialists.

The cluster of technologies and design patterns will shape the next evolution

of the Web. Semantic web provide a clear way to apply a basic level of formal

semantics to the infrastructure and pages of the web. Web 2.0 deals with

the design pattern of socially shared meaning while Semantic Web deals

with the technologies of socially shared meaning. Therefore, the combination

of Semantic Web technologies and Web 2.0 application design pattern will

give rise to Social- Semantic Web also known as Web 3.0.

In a social-semantic web, certain formally representable parts of human

meaning can be encoded and reasoned about via the tools of the semantic

web, but can also be curated and maintained via the social, community-

oriented techniques of Web 2.0.

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The results of this combination would be powerful indeed. The social-

semantic web promises that the subtle variations in meaning that

characterize different human communities can be managed via the user-

friendly collaboration mechanisms of Web 2.0, while still maintaining the

expressive precision and reasoning power of the semantic Web. This would

make possible a new class of applications that could leverage the semantic

relations that exist between certain kinds of web-accessible data to

automatically locate and fuse information, perform basic reasoning, and

pivot and transform representations to meet a wide variety of user needs

(Greaves and Mika, 2008).

Web 2.0 is a rich network connecting users, the Semantic Web is a network

connecting data through semantic relations. The power of linking in

networks increases super linearly in networks in general, and that these two

networks are no exception. Interconnecting these networks is thus certain to

bring value as new connections become possible within them (Greaves and

Mika, 2008).

Semantic Web ―bridge‖ technologies (like RDFa, GRDDL, and SPARQL) are

used by Web 2.0 applications. Web 2.0 brings massive amounts of user-

generated content and a proven recipe of humans and machines working

together in synergy. Semantic Web technology will act in two principal ways:

by adding structure to user data and by connecting the existing silos of data

that characterize the Web 2.0 landscape. Web 2.0 applications always

depend on some type of shared semantics—for example, between the

software componentsof a mashup, or within the user community that

contributes to a particular tagging system(Greaves and Mika,

2008).Semantic Web is a clear and well defined project while Web 2.0 is ill-

defined project which lacks a clear explanation of its nature and scope

(Florida, 2007).

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2.0 LIFE CYCLE OF INFORMATION

Figure 1: TheLife-cycleof Information Source: (Floridi, L. (n.d))

3.0 THE EVOLUTION OF THE WEB: DEFRAGMENTING THE

INFOSPHERE

The full Semantic Web is a well-defined mistake, whereas the Web 2.0 is an

ill-defined success. They are both interesting instances of a larger

phenomenon, which may be defined as the construction and

defragmentation of the infosphere. Web 2.0/the Participatory Web erases

barriers between production and consumption of information (less friction)

in one or more phases of the information life-cycle (from occurrence

through processing and management to usage (see Figure 1), or between

producers and consumers of information. Web 3.0/the Semantic Web,

understood, as it should, as the MetaSyntactic Web, erases barriers between

databases. Hence, Web 4.0 could be labeled as the Bridging Web, which

erases the digital divide between who is and who is not a citizen of the

information society (effective availability and accessibility). Interestingly, this

is happening more in terms of smart phones and other hand-held devices –

for example in China and India – than in terms of a commodification of

personal computers. By Web 5.0 one may then refer to Cloud computing

and its ability to erase physical barriers and globalise the local. Finally, Web

6.0 is the Web On life, which erases the threshold between here (off-line,

analogue, carbon-base) and there (online, digital, silicon-based). In this

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case, other common labels include ―Ubiquitous Computing‖, ―Ambient

Intelligence‖, ―The Internet of Things‖ or ―Web- augmented things‖. These

various Webs are developing in parallel and hence are only partially

chronological in their order of appearance. Their numbering implies no

hierarchical ordering, it is just a matter of convenient labelling. They should

be seen more like converging

forcespushingtheevolutionofthewebinthedirectionofabetterInfosphere.

(Floridi, L. (n.d))

Figure 2: Mapping The Evolution of the Web

Source: (Floridi, L. (n.d))

4.0 THE HISTORY OF SEMANTIC WEB

As early as the 1980s significant research appeared in information science

literature about the development of expert systems for improving search

results.Hundreds of universities, start-up companies, and major

corporations have published research and filed patents on various

algorithmic techniques for machine-aided searching over three decades (and

earlier when much of this work was classified as artificial intelligence). By

the late 1990s and early 2000s, these technologies began to be described as

semantic search components.In 2001 Tim Berners-Lee published an article

in Scientific American proposing a semantic web evolving out of the

expanding worldwide web (DUNAVTECH 2010).

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4.0.1 WHAT IS SEMANTIC WEB?

Semantic Web allows the meaning of information to be precisely described in

terms of well-defined vocabularies that are understood by people and

computers. On the Semantic Web information is described using a new W3C

standard called the Resource Description Framework (RDF). Semantic Web

Search is a search engine for the Semantic Web. Current Web sites can be

used by both people and computers to precisely locate and gather

information published on the Semantic Web.

Semantic Web applications are either exciting science fiction (when

―semantic‖ in Semantic Web is taken seriously) or realistic trivialities (what I

shall call the MetaSyntactic Web ( Floridi, L. (n.d))

The Semantic Web can be defined as a Logical Extension to the Current

Web. Semantic Web extends the current Web, it allows users to:

a. Express information in a format that is:

Unambiguous

Amenable to machine processing

b. Add metadata (to describe existing or new data)

Semantic Web is "A globally linked database" (Miller, 2002).

The Semantic Web deals with relationship between Resources versus Links

and User versus Machine versus Computer and People.

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Figure 3

Source:(Miller, 2002).

The Semantic Web is an extension of the current Web that will allow you to

find, share, and combine information more easily.

"The bane of my existence is doing things that I know the computer could do

for me." -- Dan Connolly, The XML Revolution

The most cited definition of the Semantic Web is given in the following:

―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.‖ (Tim Berners-Lee et al.)

The main idea of the Semantic Web, proposed by Tim Berners-Lee, is to

enhance existing data on the Web with machine interpretable metadata to

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enable better automation, integration, discovery and reuse across various

application.

―The Semantic Web is a web of data, in some ways like a global database.‖

and ―Leaving aside the artificial intelligence problem of training machines to

behave like people, the Semantic Web approach instead develops

languagesfor expressing information in a machine processable form.‖ (Tim

Berners-Lee)

There is some confusion about the term ―Semantic Web‖:

―The fact that the programmer and the interpreter of the computer output

use the symbols to stand for objects in the world is totally beyond the scope

of thecomputer. The computer, to repeat, has a syntax but no semantics.‖

(John Searle)

―Developing XML as a richer version of HTML was generally a good idea. But

what botched the Semantic Web is that promoting a universal syntax does

nothing to promote semantics. To avoid further confusion, it would be a

good idea to rename it the syntactic web.‖ (John Sowa).

The usefulness of the Semantic Web idea does not depend on the title we

use for it. Tim Berbers-Lee has noted that the semantic in Semantic Web

means machine processable.

4.1 SEMANTICS FOR THE SEMANTIC WEB

Semantic is the process of communicating enough meaning to result in an

action. A sequence of symbols can be used to communicate meaning, and

this communication can then affect behavior. Semantics has been driving

the next generation of the Web as the Semantic Web, where the focus is on

the role of semantics for automated approaches to exploiting Web resources.

‗Semantic‘ also indicates that the meaning of data on the web can be

discovered not just by people, but also by computers. Then the Semantic

Web was created to extend the web and make data easy to reuse everywhere

(Madhu, Govardhan, and Rajinikanth 2001).

Sheth et al. described three types of semantics for the Semantic Web: the

implicit, the formal and the powerful. The implicit Semantics is not stated

explicitly and extracted from the patterns in data. For example, keyword

occurrences, hypertext links, position in concept hierarchy, etc. This kind of

8

semantics allows finding the relevance of data (document) to some semantic

context, however it is not machine-processable – it is not possible to name a

relationship between concepts.

The formal semantics is presented in some well-formed syntactic language.

The formal language should include the following features:

(a) The notions of model and model theoretic semantics – language

expressions are interpreted in models which reflect ―structure of the world‖,

and

(b) The principle of compositionality – expression meaning is a function of

the meanings of expression‘s parts and of the way they are syntactically

combined. Examples of such languages are RDF, OWL, Description Logics.

This type of semantics is machine-processable. The major drawback of the

formal semantics is that it becomes impractical as knowledge base size

increases or knowledge is added from different sources.

The powerful (soft) semantics can exploit implicit and formal semantics

(probably ―incomplete‖) to derive relationships using statistical analysis (e.g.,

probabilistic and fuzzy knowledge). The derived relationships are associated

with likelihoods of being valid. The major drawback of the powerful

semantics is prior assignments of probabilities to deal with uncertainties.

In summary, the current Web mostly exploits the implicit semantics (search

engines like Google), the major focus of the SW is on formal and powerful

semantics (Chebotko,2008).

4.2 SEMANTIC WEB ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES - LAYER

CAKE

This is referred to as Semantic Web frame work or Semantic Web Layer Cake

(W3C). The Semantic Web stack, which describes its components and their

relationships, is shown below (Miller, 2002).

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Figure 4

Source:(Butler, 2003).

The top-most layer for Semantic Web Frame work is User Interface and

Applications.

4.3 SEMANTIC WEB TECHNOLOGIES

These are tools or applications. It can be defined as a set of technologies and

frameworks that enable the Web of Data. All are intended to provide a

formal description of concepts, terms, and relationships within a given

knowledge domain (Hassanzadeh, 2011).

The following are the major Semantic Web technologies, tools or applications being used on the web:

a) Resource Description Framework (RDF) b) RDF Schema (RDFS) c) Querying RDF data (SPARQL)

d) Web Ontology Language (OWL)

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4.4 WHY SEMANTIC WEB?

Semantic web is being to be developed to overcome the following problems

for current web:

a) The web content lacks a proper structure regarding the representation

of information.

b) Ambiguity of information resulting from poor interconnection of

information.

c) Automatic information transfer is lacking.

d) Usability to deal with enormous number of users and content

ensuring trust at all levels.

e) Incapability of machines to understand the provided information due

to lack of a universal format (Madhu, Govardhan and Rajinikanth

2001).

There are many reasons for Semantic Web, some of which are highlighted by

Miller (2002) as follow:

a) Define conventions for applications that exchange metadata on the

Web

b) Enable vocabulary semantics to be defined by communities of

expertise, not W3C

c) Provide for the fine-grained mixing of diverse metadata

d) Making it cost-effective for people to effectively record their knowledge.

e) Ultimate goal - the design of enabling technologies to support machine

facilitated global knowledge exchange

5.0 THE CURRENT WEB

Present World Wide Web is the longest global database that lacks the

existence of a semantic structure and hence it becomes difficult for the

machine to understand the information provided by the user in the form of

search strings. As for results, the search engines return the ambiguous or

partially ambiguous result data set. (Madhu, Govardhan, and

Rajinikanth 2011).

The current Web represents information using:

a) Natural language (e.g., English)

b) Graphics, multimedia

c) Page layout

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Current Web can be easily interpreted by humans. That is, Okay for

humans. It is difficult for machine processing (ambiguity, unconstrained

data formats). The Current Web deals with Resources versus Links and User

versus Machine:

Resources:

identified by URI's

untyped

Links:

href, src, ...

limited, non-descriptive

User:

Exciting world - but, the characteristics of the documents is clear to

those with a grasp of (normally) English.

Machine:

Very little information available - significance of the links only evident

from the context around the anchor (Miller, 2002).

Figure 5

Source: (Miller, 2002).

6.0 SEMANTIC WEB VS CURRENT WEB

Semantic web may be compared with non-semantic web within several

parameters such as content, conceptual perception, scope, environment and

resource-utilization.

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(a) Content:

Semantic web encompasses actual content along with its formal semantics.

Here, the formal semantics are machine understandable content, generated

in logic-based languages such as Web Ontology Language (OWL)

recommended by W3C. Through formal semantics of content, computers can

make inferences about data i.e., to understand what the data resource is

and how it relates to other data.

Table 6.1: Relevant results (from top 20 results) of search some engines

Search Engine Precision

Yahoo 0.52

Google 0.48

MSN 0.37

Ask 0.44

Seekport 0.37

In today‘s web there is no formal semantics of existing contents. These

content are machine-readable but not machine understandable.

(b) Conceptual Perception:

Current web is just like a book having multiple hyperlinked documents. In

book scenario, index of keywords are presented in each book but the

contexts in which those keywords are used, are missing in the indexes. That

is, there are no formal semantic of keywords in indexes. To check which one

is relevant, we have to read the corresponding pages of that book. Same is

the case with current web. In semantic web this limitation will be eliminated

via ontologies where data is given with well-defined meanings,

understandable by machines.

(c) Scope:

Through literature survey, it has been determined that inaccessible part of

the web is about five hundred times larger than accessible one. It is

estimated that there are billion pages of information available on the web,

and only a few of them can be reached via traditional search engines. In

semantic web formal semantics of data are available via ontologies, and the

ontologies are the essential component of semantic web accessible to

semantic search engines.

(d) Environment:

Semantic web is the web of ontologies having data with formal meanings.

This is in contrast to current web which contains virtually boundless

information in the form of documents. The semantic web, on the other hand,

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is about having data as well as documents that machines can process,

transform, assemble, and even act on data in useful ways.

Table 6.2: Semantic Web vs. Current Web

S/ N

Web Factors

(Non-Semantic) Web

Semantic Web

1.

Conceptual Perception

large hyperlinked book

Large interlinked database

2.

Content No formal meanings Formally defined

3.

Scope Limited – Probably invisible web excluded

Boundless – Probably invisible web included

4.

Environment Web of documents Web of ontologies, data and documents

5.

Resources Utilization Minimum-Normal Maximum

6.

Inference/Reasoning capability

No Yes

7.

Knowledge Management applications sport

No Yes

8.

Information searching, accessing, extracting, interpreting and processing

Difficult and time-consuming task

Easy and Efficient

9.

Timeliness, accuracy, transparency of information

Less More

10.

Semantic heterogeneity

More Less

11.

Ingredients -Content -Presentation

-Content, presentation & -Formal Semantics -Presentation

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(e) Resources Utilization:

There are a lot of web resources that may be very useful in our everyday

activities. In current web it is difficult to locate them; because they are not

annotated properly by the metadata understandable by machines. In

semantic web there will be a network of related resources. It will be very

easy to locate and to use them in semantic web world. Similarly there are

some other criteria factors for comparison between current web and

semantic web. For example, information searching, accessing, extracting,

interpreting and processing on semantic web will be more easy and efficient;

Semantic web will have inference or reasoning capability; network or

communication cost will be reduced in the presence of semantic web for the

reason of relevant results; and many more - some are listed in the Table 6.2.

According to theme of semantic web, if the explicit semantics of web

resources are put together with their linguistic semantics and are

represented in some logic-based languages then we can handle the

limitations of current web. To support this theme of semantic web, W3C

recommended some standards such as RDF (Resource Description

Framework), RDFS (RDF Schema), OWL (Web Ontology Language), SPARQL

(a query language for RDF) and GRDDL (Gleaning Resource Descriptions

from Dialects of Languages). RDF is used for data model of semantic web

application. Resources are represented through URIs, connected through

labeled edges which are also represented through URIs. RDF is represented

through a language called RDFS. There is another more powerful language

so-called OWL to represent RDF model. The query language such as

SPARQL can be used to querying RDF model. Now the semantic web vision

has become a reality. Several semantic web systems have been developed. A

subset of these systems is given in Table 6.3. A huge number of ontology

based web documents have been published.

Table 6.3: Examples of Semantic Web Systems

SW Systems County Activity area Application

area of

SWT

SWT used SW

technology

benefits

A Digital Music

Archive (DMA) for NRK using

SW techniques

Norway Broadcasting IS, CD, &

DI

1,2,3 & IHV IS, INR,

S&RD

A Linked Open

Data Resource

List

Management

Tool for UndergradStds

UK ELT, and

publishing

CD, CM,

DI, and SA

RDF, 3, 1,

SKOS & PV

(ECR), P,

reduced time

to market,

and S&RD

A Semantic Web

Content

US HC and PI DI 1, 2, 4, 5,

and PV

automation,

IM, and IS

15

Repository for

Clinical

Research

An Intelligent

Search Engine for Online

Services for

Public Admin.

Spain PI and eG portal and

IS

1 and IHV ECR, INR,

and IS

An Ontology of

Cantabria’s

Cultural

Heritage

Spain PI and

museum

portal and

DI

1 and IHV ECR and IM

Composing Safer

Drug Regimens

for the

Individual

Patient using

SWT

US HC DI and IS 1, 2, PV, and

IHV

S&RD, open

model, IS,

and DCG

CRUZAR — An application of

semantic

matchmaking

for eTourism in

the city of Zaragoza

Spain PI and eTourism

portal and DI

1, 3, Rules, PV, and IHV

faceted navigation, P,

and (S&R D)

Enhancement

and Integration

of Corporate

Social Software

Using SW

France Util and

energy

DI, CM, and

SN

1, 3, and PV IS, S&RD,

and INR

Enhancing

Content Search Using SW

US IT industry portal and

IS

1 IS and S&RD

Geographic

Referencing

Framework

UK PI, GIS &eG DI 1, 2 & IHV S&RD and

automation

Improving the

Reliability of

Internet Search Results Using

Search Thresher

Ireland Web

accessibility

IS 1 IS

Improving Web

Search Using

Metadata

Spain and

US

Search portal, IS,

CD, and

customizati

on

1, 2, RDF, 4,

PV, and IHV

P, open

model, and

S&RD

KDE 4.0

Semantic Desktop Search

and Tagging

Germany Semantic

desktop

DI, CD, IS,

service integration,

and SA

1, 3, 2, and

RDFS++

IS, IM, and

open model

POPS — NASA’s

Expertise

Location Service

Powered by SW Technologies

US PI DI and SN 1 and 3 faceted

navigation,

S&RD, and

ECR

Prioritization of

Biological

Targets for Drug

Discovery

US life sciences DI and

portal

1, 3, 2, 2DL,

PV, and IHV

IS, S&RD,

IM, and ECR

16

Real Time

Suggestion of

Related Ideas in

the Financial Industry

Spain Financial CD 1 and IHV IS

S CtntDesc to

improve

discovery

UK Telecom CD and IS 1, PV & IHV S&RD, open

model, and

IS

Semantic MDR

and IR for

National

Archives

Korea PI portal, CD,

and SA

1, 2, Rules,

PV, and IHV

IS

Semantic Tags Serbia IT industry SA, SN, and

DI

1, 3 and PV INR, IS,

S&RD, and

DCG

SWT for Public

Health

Awareness

US HC, PI&eG DI 1,2,PV&IHV S&RD and

IM

Semantic-based

Search and Query System

for the

Traditional

Chinese

Medicine Community

China PI and HC DI, IS, and

schema mapping

2, 3, and PV S&RD and IS

The SW for the

Agricultural

Domain,

Semantic

Navigation of

Food, Nutrition and Agriculture

Journal

Italy PI and eG Portal, IS,

SA, and CD

1, 2, SKOS,

PV, and IHV

IS

The swoRDFish

Metadata

Initiative:

Better, Faster, Smarter Web

Content

US IT industry portal and

DI

1 and IHV DCG and

ECR

Twine US IT industry SA, SN, and

DI

RDF,1,2, 3 INR, IS,

S&RD, and

DCG

Use of SWT in

Natural language

interface to Business

Applications

India IT industry natural

language

interface

1, 2, 5, 3,

and IHV

IM and ECR

Different abbreviations and integers used in above table are: SWT (Semantic Web

Technologies), IHV (In-House Vocabularies) , IS (Improved Search), IM (Incremental Modeling ,

CD (Content Discovery), DI (Data Integration), INR (Identify New Relationships), S&RD

(Share and Reuse Data), PV (Public Vocabularies), ECR (Explicit Content Relationships), SA

(Semantic Annotation), SN (Social Networks), GIS (Geographic Information System), ELT

(Education, Learning Technology), CM (Content Management), DCG (Dynamic Content

Generation), P (Personalization), PI (Public Institution), HC (Health Care), eG(eGovernment),

1 (RDFS), 2 (OWL), 3 (SPARQL), 4 (GRDDL), 5 (Rules, Rules (N3))

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NOTE: Every resource from Semantic Web VS Current Web Sub-heading

above to this point are referenced using the URL below.

Available at: http://prr.hec.gov.pk/chapters/84s-2.pdf

7.0 THE HISTORY OF WEB 2.0

The foundational components of Web 2.0 are the advances enabled by Ajax

and other applications such as RSS and Eclipse and the user empowerment

that they support.

Darcy DiNucci, an information architecture consultant, coined the term

―Web 2.0 In her 1999 article, "Fragmented Future‖:

―The Web we know now, which loads into a browser window in essentially

static screenfuls, is only an embryo of the Web to come. The first

glimmerings of Web 2.0 are beginning to appear, and we are just starting to

see how that embryo might develop. The Web will be understood not as

screenfuls of text and graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ether

through which interactivity happens.‖

Tim O'Reilly is generally credited with popularizing the term, following a

conference dealing with next-generation Web concepts and issues held by

O'Reilly Media and MediaLive International in 2004. O'Reilly Media has

subsequently been energetic about trying to copyright "Web 2.0" and holds

an annual conference of the same name (WhatIs.com 2015).

The term, Web 2.0, first gained currency after the 2001 ―dot.bomb‖ when the

IT bubble that had lasted a good 5 years burst. While some commentators

suggested that the Internet had been over-hyped, other folks maintained

that the crash signaled the end of the first phase of the Internet and

suggested that the more exciting stuff was yet to come. They called this new

phase or era ―Web 2.0.‖ A number of people affiliated with O‘Reilly Media

(which publishes some of the best programming books I‘ve encountered)

began using ―Web 2.0‖ first at a conference brainstorming session and then

at a Web 2.0 Summit. By 2005, usage of the term had spread well beyond a

small circle of people. Currently, the term has become ubiquitous in the IT

world.

7.0.1 Web 2.0 controversy

Critics of Web 2.0 maintain that it makes it too easy for the average person

to affect online content, which can impact the credibility, ethics and even

legality of web content. The extent of data sharing and gathering also raises

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concerns about privacy and security. Defenders of Web 2.0 point out that

these problems have existed ever since the infancy of the medium and that

the alternative -- widespread censorship based on ill-defined elitism -- would

be far worse. The final judgment concerning any web content, say the

defenders, should be made by end users alone. Web 2.0 reflects evolution in

that direction (WhatIs.com 2015).

7.0.2 Web 2.0 Technologies

Most of the technologies used in delivering web 2.0 are rich Web

technologies, such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight and JavaScript (in

addition to Ajax, RSS and Eclipse). Web 2.0 applications are often based on

the decentralized download methodology that made BitTorrent so

successful, in which each downloader of content is also a server, sharing the

workload and making heavily demanded content more accessible that it

would be in the centralized model where demand can lead to overwhelmed

servers and pages (WhatIs.com 2015).

7.1 WHAT IS WEB 2.0?

Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices. Web 2.0

applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that

platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets

better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple

sources,including individual users, while providing their own data and

services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects

through an ‗architecture of participation‘, and going beyond the page

metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences (O'Reilly, 2006).

Web 2.0 is term that was introduced in 2004 and refers to the second

generation of the World Wide Web. It is a collective term for certain

applications of the Internet and the World Wide Web, including blogs, wikis,

video sharing services, and social media websites such as Facebook and

MySpace, which occurs on interactive sharing and participatory

collaboration rather than simple content delivery. The term "Web 2.0" was

introduced by the O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004, which focused

on social uses of the Web.(The Tech Terms Computer Dictionary, 2008).

Web 2.0 is a term that describes the changing trends in the use of World

Wide Web technology and Web design that aim to enhance creativity, secure

information sharing, increase collaboration, and improve the functionality of

the Web as we know it (Web 1.0). These have led to the development and

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evolution of Web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-

networking sites (i.e. Facebook, MySpace), video sharing sites (i.e. YouTube),

wikis, blogs, etc.Web 2.0 Websites allow users to do more than just retrieve

information. Now users can build on the interactive facilities of Web 1.0 to

provide "network as platform" computing, allowing users to run software-

applications entirely through a browser. Users are able to co-author the data

on a Web 2.0 site and exercise control over it. These sites have an

"architecture of participation" that encourages users to add value to the

application as they use it. This stands in contrast to traditional Websites,

which limit visitors to passive viewing and whose content only the site

owners can modify. Young people seem to be particularly attracted to Web

2.0 developments, often for the social aspects of easy communication,

coordination, and online self-expression. Web 2.0 innovations harmonize

well with current thinking about educational practice. In particular, Web 2.0

offers students new opportunities to take more control of their learning and

create customized information, resources, tools, and services. Web 2.0 also

encourages a wider range of expressive capability, facilitates more

collaborative ways of working, enables community creation, dialogue and

knowledge sharing, and creates a setting for learnersto attract authentic

audiences Stern (n.d)).

It is unclear what Web 2.0 applications really amount to, but they do

capture an actual novelty in the current development of online technologies,

for they take full advantage of the semantic and collaborative capacities of

human users in order to improve and expand the infosphere (Floridi (n.d)).

7.2 WEB 2.0 FEATURES AND TECHNIQUES

Web 2.0 Websites typically include some of the following

features/techniques:

a) Search: the ease of finding information through keyword searching.

b) Links: guides to important pieces of information. The best pages are

the most frequently linked to.

c) Authoring: the ability to create constantly updating content that is

co-created by users. In wikis, the content is iterative in the sense that

the people undo and redo each other‘s work. In blogs, it is cumulative

in that posts and comments of individuals are accumulated over time.

d) Tags: categorization of content by creating tags that are simple, one-

word descriptions to facilitate searching and avoid having to fit into

rigid, pre-made categories.

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e) Extensions: automation of pattern matching for customization by

using algorithms (i.e. Amazon.com recommendations).

f) Signals: the use of RSS (Real Simple Syndication) technology to create

a subscription model which notifies users of any content changes.

g) (Stern, (n.d).

7.3 WEB 2.0 TOOLS

This can be referred to as Web 2.0 Tools or Applications. Web 2.0 is the term

used to describe a variety of web sites and applications that allow anyone to

create and share online information or material they have created. A key

element of the technology is that it allows people to create, share,

collaborate & communicate. Web 2.0 differs from other types of websites as

it does not require any web design or publishing skills to participate, making

it easy for people to create and publish or communicate their work to the

world. The nature of this technology makes it an easy and popular way to

communicate information to either a select group of people or to a much

wider audience. The University can make use of these tools to communicate

with students, staff and the wider academic community. It can also be an

effective way to communicate and interact with students and research

colleagues.Many of the most popular websites are Web 2.0 sites such as

Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr (Thomson, 2008).

The most popular Web 2.0 tools:

1. Blogs

2. Podcasts

3. Social Networks

4. Wikis

5. ePortfolios

6. Micro-Blogs

7. Social Bookmarking

8. Folksonomies,

9. Podcasting

10. Content Hosting Services

7.4 LIMITATIONS OF WEB2.0 AND THE SEMANTIC WEB

7.4.1Web2.0 data is hard to reuse and interlink

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Web2.0 has produced many ‗killer-apps‘: Wikipedia, Flickr,and

Facebook have elicited vast numbers of wiki entries, taggedphotos,

and links joining people in social networks. These formsof contribution are

often referred to as ‗user-generated content‘.However, at present much of

this content is confined to ‗silos‘or ‗walled data gardens‘, or published in

formats that hinder itsreuse. This prevents easy integration of the content

with datafrom other sources, leading to the un-Web-like situation wherea

friend on Facebook is a stranger on MySpace, as the socialnetwork defined

in one service cannot be used to populate theother. Overcoming this

requires data to be published in formatsthat are easily processed by third

parties, that are more expressivethan simple syndication formats such as

RSS, and that affordinterlinking with other data on the Web.

APIs such as those offered by Amazon and Flickr go someway to addressing

this issue, however barriers to the reuse ofthis data still exist. No common

query language is implementedacross Web2.0 APIs. Application developers

must generallyparse XML trees to retrieve the desired data. Whilst most

programminglanguages make this task trivial, data processingremains tied

to the underlying syntactic rather than semanticstructure of the data.

Creating Web2.0 mashups consequentlyrequires the writing of custom

handlers to interact with, andintegrate data from, each API.

Publishing data using the Resource Description Framework(RDF) [26]

conveys a number of benefits relative to ‗vanilla‘XML: it lowers the barriers

to data reuse by third parties, makesdata accessible via a standard query

language (SPARQL [22]),eases the integration of data from different sources,

and allowsmachine-readable links to be created between data sources.

IntegratingXML data from different sources into one documentrequires that

all data conform to the same schema. In practice,much XML data from

Web2.0 APIs is integrated at the level ofprogramme code (at great cost in

terms of development effort)and only republished in HTML, thereby

hindering its reuse.RDF does not suffer these limitations; data can be

arbitrarilycombined into one document without this document needingto

validate against a specific schema. Statements can be madeanywhere on

theWeb about a particular resource; different statementsmay reference the

same URI, or use different URIs butstate that both identify the same

resource.

Whilst an XML Schema may define a <uri></uri> elementto be populated

with the URI of some item, the semantics of thisrelationship are not explicit.

Consequently, and in contrast toRDF, machines cannot infer links between

data based on suchelements. This situation is analogous to enclosing a URL

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in<span></span> tags within an HTML document (without usinganchor

tags <a href=―‖></a>) and expecting applications tointerpret this string as a

link.

7.4.2. The Semantic Web is (largely) closed to user contributions

Initiatives such as DBpedia[2] and the broader Linking OpenData project [6]

are bootstrapping the Semantic Web, primarilyby transforming to RDF and

interlinking large, existing datasets. These initiatives are of great value in

providing a baselevel of linked RDF data on the Web. However, few

mechanismscurrently exist that allownon-specialist users to contributeto

the Semantic Web. This is in stark contrast to both the conventionalWeb

and Web2.0. Early growth of the Web is widelyattributed to individuals

creating personal sites by copying andpasting HTML code. Whilst this

approach may not be appropriateto a Semantic Web (novice users may not

understandthe semantics of statements contained in copied code),

Web2.0applications have demonstrated that regular users can

contributecontent without specialist skills. With few exceptions, similartools

enabling grassroots publishing on the Semantic Web arenot currently

available. Revyu(http://revyu.com) is one exception.

In an evaluation of Semantic Web applications deployed tomembers of the

SemanticWeb community [14] itwas found thatthe usability of applications

hindered their uptake, even by thoseknowledgeable in the field.

Consequently the usage of these toolsto create semantic annotations was

relatively low. In the light ofthese findings, tools that make semantic

annotation accessibleto non-specialist and specialist alike are required if the

SemanticWeb is to see the degree of user engagement enjoyed by

previousgenerations of the Web (Heath and Motta 2001).

8.0 WHAT IS WEB ONTOLOGY?

One of the frequently cited definitions of an ontology is given by Gruber: an

ontology is a ―formal specification of a conceptualization‖, and is shared

within a specific domain. In other words, an ontology is a document, defined

in a formal language (like RDF Schema), that describes a vocabulary of

terms or concepts (and their relationships) used for a specific domain.

Ontology is formal representation of knowledge of different domains.

Ontologies can be used to describe the domain in a formal manner.

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9.0 RECOMMENDATIONS

9.1 Semantic Web

The problemssuch as efficient discovery, automation, integration and reuse

of data and provide support for interoperability which cannot be resolved

with current web technologies can be solved using Semantic Web. Therefore,

Semantic Web search engine should be deployed to overcome the problems

of traditional search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing (MSN) and so

forth

There is a need for more research on state-off art algorithms in order to give

efficient and effective results.

Semantic Web must be given urgent attention to creating interfaces that will

allow regular Web Users to contribute meaningfully to the Web. Also, in order to support the theme of semantic web, there is a crucial need of techniques for designing, development, populating and integrating

ontologies.

There is a need for formal semantics of existing contents since there is no formal semantics in today‘s web. These contents are machine-readable but not machine understandable, so with formal semantics they will be machine

understandable.

9.2 Web 2.0

Web 2.0 should give serious concern into publishing data to allow for greater

reuse and interlinking, such as RDF. The use of SPARQL rather than

custom APIs should be explored for remote data access.

Noteworthy effort must be given to developing compelling interfaces to able

to display structured data from across the web.

11.0 CONCLUSIONS

The amount of information grows billions of databases is useless until it is

retrieved for purposeful use. For this information search to retrieve relevant

and meaningful information intelligently, Semantic Web information

description called RDF must use important concepts in the Semantic Web

infrastructures such as RDF(S) and OWL as meaningful Ontologies. It is

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then that Semantic Web can really present the anticipated web future to us.

There should be universal format to be provided to machines to understand

the provided information.

Available RDF(S) query languages today are not complete and they lack

expressivity. Standards on query languages takes rules and inference

resulted into many different incompatible implementations that makes them

difficult to compare, learn, exploit, etc. A reasoner will not have a clear-cut

inferencing path to choose from. Existing Systems lack maturity and have

the following limitations: Performance and Scalability are affected by

inefficient storage schemas and influence algorithm; Low expressivity of

implemented query languages; Insufficient support of inference is a function

of completeness of query results; Soundness of query results is a function

influenced by incomplete inference; Lack of performance and scalability

experiments.

There will birth of a new and exciting offspring referred to as Social-

Semantic Web or Web 3.0 that could leverage the semantic relations that

exist between certain kinds of web-accessible data to automatically locate

and fuse information, perform basic reasoning, and pivot and transform

representations to meet a wide variety of user needs. Also, Web 3.0 will be

managed via the user-friendly collaboration mechanisms of Web 2.0, and

still maintaining the expressive precision and reasoning power of the

semantic Web.

As the information society develops, the threshold between online and offline

is becoming increasingly blurred, and that, once there won‘t be any

significant difference, we shall gradually re-conceptualise ourselves not as

cyborgs but rather as inforgs, i.e. socially connected, informational

organisms.

Web 2.0 is a rather ill-defined project, which lacks a clear explanation of its

nature and scope, it does have the potentiality of becoming a success (and

indeed it is already, as part of the new phenomenon of Cloud Computing)

because it leverages the only semantic engines available so far in nature, us

(human).

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