"Now, miraculously, we have the Web. For the documents in our lives, everything is simple and smooth. But for data, we are still pre-Web." -- Tim Berners-Lee, Business Model for the Semantic Web
"The bane of my existence is doing things that I know the computer could do for me." -- Dan Connolly, The XML Revolution
Just as the early development of the Web depended on code modules such as
libwww
, W3C is devoting resources to the creation and
distribution of similar core components that will form the basis for the
Semantic Web. Our approach is Live Early Adoption and Demonstration (LEAD) --
using these tools in our own work.
If you're doing related work, please let us know!
The information and communication intensive environment of the W3C provides challenges for effective scheduling. Tools that facilitate and automate the process of calendaring and schedule management are increasingly helpful towards a more effective, collaborative environment.
Less mature bits include
The web provides the capability for anyone to say anything about anything. Knowing who is making these assertions, is increasingly important in trusting these descriptions. The Annotea advanced development project provides the basis for asserting descriptive information, comments, notes, reviews, explanations, or other types of external remarks to any resource. Together with XML digital signatures, the Annotea project will provide a test-bed for 'web-of-trust' semantic web applications.
Real-time teleconferences are an integral part of the W3C environment, in addition to sharing documents in the Web and engaging in e-mail discussions. W3C augments voice teleconferences with simultaneous keyboard-based (irc) communication, for the purpose of facilitating the flow of the meeting, sharing URIs for items under discussion, and keeping meeting records. Meeting preparation, meeting facilitation, and meeting recording present opportunities for capturing data for the Semantic Web that is useful to workflow analysis. The Zakim and RRSAgent teleconference irc agents are SWAD tools that give the teleconference audio system a presence in the meeting irc co-channel and record the progress of the meeting. Zakim provides control over the audio system as well as meeting chair tools for agenda management, speaker (floor) control, and time management. Zakim and RRSAgent together capture meeting data and make it available in RDF/XML for other analysis tools.
Oxygen collaboration technologies enable the formation of spontaneous collaborative regions that provide support for recording, archiving, and linking fragments of meeting records to issues, summaries, keywords, and annotations.
Resources that are maintained on a Web server may be protected by descriptive rules that express authority to access the document based upon properties of the document in addition to properties of the requester. Examples of this to date include W3C's RDF Access Control mechanisms for supporting team, member and global accessibility. Further descriptive rules are anticipated to support richer access control functions.
Proof that a meeting can occur at which the resources required to reach a decision are able to be present will depend on the ability to identify all the resources; including personnel, meeting facilities (room, teleconference system), and prerequisite documents. Any participant can use this proof to synchronize independent databases including personal planners. Proofs that a meeting took place at which all prerequisites were met and a decision was taken, become messages that state, for example, that a document progressed from Working Draft to Last Call Working Draft.
MIT/LCS has funding for a proposal, Semantic Web Development, under the DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) program.
Progress reports include:
The work is bring done in close connection with the W3C and may lead to W3C activities in the future.
See also RDF · Web Design Issues · Web naming and addressing, news in the Semantic Web Activity, Talks/Presentations: see selected semantic web presentations, more semantic web presentations, W3C team talks and presentations.
Earlier work includes tools, integration with XML infrastructure, plans, talks, etc.
earlier (Aug 2000) work: RDF Syntax: An XML Schema Approach
technical details: Makefile, swad-chart.n3
Copyright © 1998-2001 W3C® (MIT, INRIA, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark, document use and software licensing rules apply. Your interactions with this site are in accordance with our public and Member privacy statements.