Bio:
Bijan Parsia is a Semantic Web Researcher at the MIND laboratory of
the University of Maryland at College Park. His research interests
include web logics and rule engines, semantic web services,
fine-grained, reflective annotation systems, and trust focused reasoning.
Title:
Semantic Web Specs: Past, Present, and Future
Abstract:
At the moment, indeed, for the entire history of the current
Semantic Web effort, there is exactly one specifically Semantic Web
focused W3C Recommendation, the Resource Description Framework (RDF)
Model and Syntax Specification, describing the most basic specifically
Semantic Web language, RDF. Three years after RDF M&S went to
recommendation status, two working groups stand poised to release some
10 (and counting) documents describing two languages, RDF and OWL (the
Web Ontology Language). In this talk, I shall examine the changes in
overall usability wrought by the refactoring and cleanup of RDF M&S, and
the current state of affairs with the OWL specifications. Then, I shall
discuss some ways that the technologies described by these
specifications might improve the usability of the specifications
themselves.