Networking and Internetworking - Guide to Cloud Computing for Business and Technology Managers - page 62

article in Scientific American titled “The Semantic Web: A New Form of Web
Content That Is Meaningful to Computers Will Unleash a Revolution of
New Possibilities”*.
The semantic web is an extension of the current Web in which infor-
mation is given well-defined meaning, enabling computers and people to
work in cooperation. In the lower part of the architecture, we find three
building blocks that can be used to encode text (Unicode), to identify
resources on the Web (URIs) and to structure and exchange information
(XML). Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a simple, yet power-
ful data model and language for describing Web resources. The SPARQL
Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) is the de facto standard used
to query RDF data. While RDF and the RDF Schema provide a model for
representing Semantic Web data and for structuring semantic data using
simple hierarchies of classes and properties, respectively, the SPARQL
language and protocol provide the means to express queries and retrieve
information from across diverse Semantic Web data sources. The need for
a new language is motivated by the different data models and semantics
at the level of XML and RDF, respectively.
Ontology is a formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualization of
a particular domain—concepts are the core elements of the conceptualization
corresponding to entities of the domain being described, and properties and
relations are used to describe interconnections between such concepts. Web
Ontology Language (OWL) is the standard language for representing knowl-
edge on the Web. This language was designed to be used by applications
that need to process the content of information on the Web instead of just
presenting information to human users. Using OWL, one can explicitly rep-
resent the meaning of terms in vocabularies and the relationships between
those terms. The Rule Interchange Format (RIF) is the W3C Recommendation
that defines a framework to exchange rule-based languages on the Web. Like
OWL, RIF defines a set of languages covering various aspects of the rule
layer of the Semantic Web.
2.6 Internet of Things
Just like the Internet and Web connecting humans, the Internet of Things
(IoT) is a revolutionary way of architecting and implementing systems and
services based on evolutionary changes. The Internet as we know it is trans-
forming radically, from an academic network in the 1980s and early 1990s to
* Berners-Lee, T.; Lassila, O.; Hendler, J. (2001) The semantic web: A new form of Web content
that is meaningful to computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities. Scientific
American , 284(5), pp. 34-43.