The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has detailed the release of
working drafts of its Web Ontology Language (OWL) to enable
development of the Semantic Web.
The Semantic Web is intended to enable more structured, intelligent
processes on the Internet, allowing, for example, the automatic
lookup of flights and hotel information after a person confirms
attendance at a meeting in a specific city.
W3C spokesman Ian Jacobs, said, "The whole idea of the Semantic Web
is when you say something, I need to know what you're talking
about. The idea is we want computers to know things."
He described development of the Web Ontology Language as being in
its early stages.
OWL is being designed by the W3C Web Ontology Working Group. The
intention is to provide a language that can be used for
applications that need to understand content, instead of just
human-readable presentation of content, according to W3C.
As part of the Semantic Web, XML, RDF, and RDF-S support boost
machine readability by providing a vocabulary for term
descriptions.
The three working drafts released by W3C are entitled Feature
Synopsis, Abstract Syntax, and Language Reference.
W3C this week also released a working draft of its Web Services
Architecture Usage Scenarios collection, which is intended to
provide usage cases and scenarios for generation of Web
services.
Scenarios include situations such as travel agent use case or
EDI-like purchasing. "[W3C officials are] documenting the extent of
the Web services architecture," Jacobs said. "By looking at
scenarios they will establish what they intend or don't intend to
cover."
The draft can be found at
www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-ws-arch-scenarios-20020730.
On 26 August the W3C is holding an event entitled, "Forum on
Security Standards for Web Services" in the US.
At this event, which is to be part of the XML Web Services One
Conference & Expo, relationships will be explored between W3C
and OASIS Web services and security specifications.
OASIS is co-sponsoring the event.