Semantic Web facts for kids

The Semantic Web is a project of the W3C that uses metadata, to write specific details related to a subject, to let computers better process the information on the internet. This plan, for saving additional semantic details, would make computers able to do more of the work involved in finding, sharing and combining information on the internet.

The Semantic Web is an idea of the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners Lee. He has wanted to make the web more intuitive about how to meet a user's needs. The semantics of information and services is defined in Web Ontology Language (OWL) and RDF Schemas. These are used to give a formal description of concepts, terms, and relationships within a given area of knowledge.

Tim Berners-Lee's idea was as follows:

I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.

Markup

The World Wide Web is based on HTML documents. The semantic web involves using Resource description Framework (RDF) that has data that computers use. The layout used in HTML will be stored separately such as in a CSS file. RDF and OWL can either supplement or replace the content of web documents (XHTML).

In this way, a machine can use the knowledge itself. By using the information in ways similar to human reasoning, it can create more meaningful results.

See also

In Spanish: Web semántica para niños