Dr.

Davoud Mougouei
Decision Systems Lab
SCIT, EIS, UOW

Ph.D. in Software Engineering

M.Sc. in Computer Science
B.Eng. in Computer
Engineering

1
Engineering Human Values in Software through V
alue Programming (CHASE, 2020)

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 2

Important Points about the Subject

1 2 3
Please read the Please discuss Please email for
subject outline your technical what cannot be
carefully! questions in the discussed in the
lab! lab!

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 3

 Lecture 1

The Semantic Web Vision &

Structured Web Documents in XML
Chapters 1 &2 of
Grigoris Antoniou
Frank van Harmelen

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 4

 Chapter 1
The Semantic Web Vision

•https://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/

A Semantic Web Primer Chapter 2 5

 Lecture Outline
1. Today’s Web
2. The Semantic Web Impact
3. Semantic Web Technologies
4. A Layered Approach

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 6

 What are the typical usages of the web?

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 7

 Today’s Web
• Today’s web typical uses
– seeking and making use of information,
– searching for and getting in touch with other people,
– reviewing catalogues of online stores ,
– and ordering products by filling out forms

• Most of today’s Web content is suitable for human

consumption
– Even Web content that is generated automatically from databases is
usually presented without the original structural information found in
databases

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 8

 Keyword-Based Search Engines
• Current Web activities are not particularly well
supported by software tools
– Except for keyword-based search engines (e.g.,
Google)
• The Web’s success relies on search engines.

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 9

 What are the problems with the current
Keyword-Based Search Engines?

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 10

 Problems of Keyword-Based
Search Engines
• Results are highly sensitive to vocabulary
• High recall but low precision
• Low recall

Recall = tp/(tp+fn)
Precision = tp/(tp+fp)

https://medium.com/

(A) (B)
Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 11
 Problems of Keyword-Based
Search Engines

• Human involvement is necessary to interpret

and combine results
• Results of Web searches are not readily
accessible by other software tools

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 12

 The Key Problem of Today’s Web
• The meaning of Web content is not machine-
accessible: lack of semantics
• It is simply difficult to distinguish the meaning
between these two sentences:
I am a lecturer of sematic web.
I am a lecturer of semantic web, you may
think. Well, . . .

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 13

 Three key points with Semantic
Web Approach:
I. Representing Web content in a form
that is more easily machine-
processable.
II. Using intelligent techniques to take
advantage of these representations.
III. Evolving out of the existing Web

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 14

 Lecture Outline
1. Today’s Web
2. The Semantic Web Impact
3. Semantic Web Technologies
4. A Layered Approach

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 15

 The Semantic Web Impact – Knowledge
Management
• Knowledge management concerns with (i) acquiring, (ii)
accessing, and (iii) maintaining knowledge within an
organization
• Key activity of large businesses: internal knowledge as an
intellectual asset
• Most information is currently available in a weakly structured
form (e.g. text, audio, video)

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 16

 Limitations of Current Knowledge Management
Technologies in four dimensions:
I. Searching information:
Keyword-based search engines
II. Extracting information:
human involvement necessary for browsing,
retrieving, interpreting, combining
III. Maintaining information:
inconsistencies in terminology, outdated
information.
IV. Viewing information:
Impossible to define views on Web knowledge
Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 17
Semantic Web Enabled Knowledge Management

i) organizing knowledge in conceptual spaces according to its

meaning.
ii) having automated tools for maintenance and knowledge
discovery
iii) answering any query semantically
iv) answering any query over several documents
v) defining who may view certain parts of information (even
parts of documents) will be possible.

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 18

 The Semantic Web Impact –
B2C Electronic Commmerce
• A typical scenario: user visits one or several
online shops, browses their offers, selects and
orders products.
• Ideally humans would visit all, or all major
online stores; but time consuming
• Shopbots are a useful tool:
• https://www.shopbot.com.au/

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 19

 Limitations of Shopbots
• They rely on wrappers: extensive
programming required
• Wrappers need to be reprogrammed when an
online store changes its outfit
• Wrappers extract information based on
textual analysis
– Error-prone
– Limited information extracted

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 20

 Semantic Web Enabled B2C
Electronic Commerce
• Software agents that can interpret the product
information and the terms of service.
– Pricing and product information, delivery and
privacy policies will be interpreted and compared
to the user requirements.
• Information about the reputation of shops
• Sophisticated shopping agents will be able to
conduct automated negotiations

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 21

 The Semantic Web Impact –
B2B Electronic Commerce
• Currently relies mostly on EDI (Electronic Data
Interchange)
– Isolated technology, understood only by experts
– Difficult to program and maintain, error-prone
– Each B2B communication requires separate
programming

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 22

 Semantic Web Enabled B2B Electronic Commerce
(Advantages)
I. Businesses enter partnerships without much overhead
II. Differences in terminology will be resolved using standard
abstract domain models
III. Data will be interchanged using translation services.
IV. Auctioning, negotiations, and drafting contracts will be
carried out automatically (or semi-automatically) by
software agents

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 23

 • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM6XIICm_qo
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeUrEh-nqtU
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy67j0ysBfo

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 27

 Lecture Outline
1. Today’s Web
2. The Semantic Web Impact
3. Semantic Web Technologies
4. A Layered Approach

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 28

 Semantic Web Technologies
• Explicit Metadata
• Ontologies
• Logic and Inference
• Agents

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 29

 On HTML
• Web content is currently formatted for human
readers rather than programs.
• HTML is the predominant language in which
Web pages are written (directly or using tools)
• Vocabulary describes presentation

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 30

 An HTML Example
<h1>Agilitas Physiotherapy Centre</h1>
Welcome to the home page of the Agilitas Physiotherapy Centre. Do
you feel pain? Have you had an injury? Let our staff Lisa Davenport,
Kelly Townsend (our lovely secretary) and Steve Matthews take care
of your body and soul.
<h2>Consultation hours</h2>
Mon 11am - 7pm<br>
Tue 11am - 7pm<br>
Wed 3pm - 7pm<br>
Thu 11am - 7pm<br>
Fri 11am - 3pm<p>
But note that we do not offer consultation during the weeks of the
<a href=". . .">State Of Origin games </a>

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 31

 Problems with HTML
• Humans have no problem with this
• Machines (software agents) do:
– How distinguish therapists from the secretary,
– How determine exact consultation hours
– They would have to follow the link to the State Of
Origin games to find when they take place.

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 32

 A Better Representation
<company>
<treatmentOffered>Physiotherapy</treatmentOffered>
<companyName>Agilitas Physiotherapy
Centre</companyName>
<staff>
<therapist>Lisa Davenport</therapist>
<therapist>Steve Matthews</therapist>
<secretary>Kelly Townsend</secretary>
</staff>
</company>

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 33

 Explicit Metadata
• This representation is far more easily
processable by machines
• Metadata: data about data
– Metadata capture part of the meaning of data
• Semantic Web does not rely on text-based
manipulation, but rather on machine-
processable metadata

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 34

 Ontologies

The term ontology originates from philosophy

• The study of the nature of existence
Different meaning from computer science
• An ontology is an explicit and formal
specification of a conceptualization

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 35

 Typical Components of Ontologies
• Terms denote important concepts (classes of objects)
of the domain
– e.g. professors, staff, students, courses,
departments
• Relationships between these terms: typically class
hierarchies
– a class C to be a subclass of another class C' if
every object in C is also included in C'
– e.g. all professors are staff members

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 36

 Further Components of Ontologies
• Properties:
– e.g. X teaches Y
• Value restrictions
– e.g. only faculty members can teach courses
• Disjointness statements
– e.g. faculty and general staff are disjoint
• Logical relationships between objects
– e.g. every department must include at least 10 faculty members.

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 37

 Example of a Class Hierarchy

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 38

The Role of Ontologies on the Web
• Ontologies provide a shared understanding of
a domain: semantic interoperability
– overcome differences in terminology
– mappings between ontologies
• Ontologies are useful for the organization and
navigation of Websites

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 39

 The Role of Ontologies in Web Search

• Ontologies are useful for improving the accuracy of Web

searches
– search engines can look for pages that refer to a precise concept in an
ontology
• Web searches can exploit generalization/ specialization
information
– If a query fails to find any relevant documents, the search engine may
suggest to the user a more general query.
– If too many answers are retrieved, the search engine may suggest to
the user some specializations.

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 40

 What is the difference between Ontology and
Taxonomy?

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 41

 Web Ontology Languages
RDF (Resource Description Framework) Schema
• RDF is a data model for objects and relations between them
• RDF Schema is a vocabulary description language which
1) Describes properties and classes of RDF resources,
2) Provides semantics for generalization hierarchies of
properties and classes

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 42

 Web Ontology Languages (2)
OWL (Web Ontology Language) OWL is built on
top of RDF
• A richer ontology language
• relations between classes
– e.g., disjointness
• cardinality
– e.g. “exactly one”
• richer typing of properties
• characteristics of properties (e.g., symmetry)
Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 43
 Logic and Inference
• Logic is the discipline that studies the
principles of reasoning
• Formal languages for expressing knowledge
• Well-understood formal semantics
– Declarative knowledge: we describe what holds
without caring about how it can be deduced
• Automated reasoners can deduce (infer)
conclusions from the given knowledge

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 44

 An Inference Example
prof(X)  faculty(X)
faculty(X)  staff(X)
prof(michael)
We can deduce the following conclusions:
faculty(michael)
staff(michael)
prof(X)  staff(X)

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 45

 Logic versus Ontologies
• The previous example involves knowledge
typically found in ontologies
– Logic can be used to uncover ontological
knowledge that is implicitly given
– It can also help uncover unexpected relationships
and inconsistencies
• Logic is more general than ontologies
– It can also be used by intelligent agents for
making decisions and selecting courses of action

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 46

 Inference and Explanations

• An important advantage of logic is that it can

provide explanations for conclusions
• Explanations: a series of inference steps that
can be retraced
• They increase users’ confidence in Semantic
Web agents.
• Activities between agents: create or validate
proofs
Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 48
 Software Agents
• Software agents work autonomously and
proactively
– They evolved out of object oriented and
compontent-based programming

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 50

 Intelligent Personal Agents

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 51

 Semantic Web Agent Technologies

• Metadata
– Identify and extract information from Web sources
• Ontologies
– Search websites and interpret retrieved
information
– Communicate with other agents
• Logic
– Process retrieved information, draw conclusions

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 52

 What will a personal agent on the Semantic Web
do? Name its operations one after another
chronically (in a time-based sequence).

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 54

 A personal agent on the Semantic Web will:

I. receive some tasks and preferences from the

person
II. seek information from Web sources,
communicate with other agents
III. compare information about user requirements
and preferences, make certain choices
IV. give answers to the user

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 55

Take a break!

56
 Lecture Outline
1. Today’s Web
2. The Semantic Web Impact
3. Semantic Web Technologies
4. A Layered Approach

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 57

 The Semantic Web Layer Tower
A General Semantic
Web Layer Stack

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 58

 A specific Semantic Web Layer
Stack

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 60

 Semantic Web Layers
• XML layer
– Syntactic basis
• RDF layer
– RDF basic data model for facts
– RDF Schema simple ontology language
• Ontology layer
– More expressive languages than RDF Schema
– Current Web standard: OWL

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 61

 Semantic Web Layers (2)
• Logic layer
– enhance ontology languages further
– application-specific declarative knowledge
• Proof layer
– Proof generation, exchange, validation
• Trust layer
– Digital signatures
– recommendations, rating agencies ….

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 62

 Chapter 2:
Structured Web Documents in XML

1. Introduction
2. Detailed Description of XML
3. Structuring
a) DTDs
b) XML Schema
4. Namespaces
5. Accessing, querying XML documents: XPath
6. Transformations: XSLT

A Semantic Web Primer Chapter 2 63

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeLiQXqVgMI

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 64

 HTML vs XML: Structural Information

• HTML documents do not contain structural information:

pieces of the document and their relationships.
• XML more easily accessible to machines because
– Every piece of information is described.
– Relations are also defined through the nesting structure.
– E.g., the <author> tags appear within the <book> tags, so they
describe properties of the particular book.

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 69

 HTML vs XML: Structural Information (2)

• A machine processing the XML document

would be able to deduce that
– the author element refers to the enclosing book element
• XML allows the definition of constraints on
values
– E.g. a year must be a number of four digits

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 70

 HTML vs XML: Formatting
• The HTML representation provides more than
the XML representation:
– The formatting of the document is also described
• Τhe main use of an HTML document is to
display information: it must define formatting
• XML: separation of content from display
– same information can be displayed in different
ways

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 71

 Lecture Outline

1. Introduction
2. Detailed Description of XML
3. Structuring
a) DTDs
b) XML Schema
4. Namespaces
5. Accessing, querying XML documents: XPath
6. Transformations: XSLT

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 75

 The XML Language

An XML document can consists of:

A prolog and a number of elements

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 76

 Prolog of an XML Document
The prolog consists of
• an XML declaration and
• an optional reference to external structuring
documents

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?>

<!DOCTYPE book SYSTEM "book.dtd">

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 77

 XML Elements
• The “things” the XML document talks about
– E.g. books, authors, publishers
• An element consists of:
– an opening tag
– the content
– a closing tag
<lecturer>David Billington</lecturer>

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 78

 Content of XML Elements
• Content may be text, or other elements, or nothing

<lecturer>
<name>David Billington</name>
<phone> +61 − 7 − 3875 507 </phone>
</lecturer>

• If there is no content, then the element is called empty; it is

abbreviated as follows:
<lecturer/> for <lecturer></lecturer>

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 79

 Is every empty element meaningless? Why ?

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 80

 ANSWER
• An empty element is not necessarily
meaningless
– It may have some properties in terms of attributes
• An attribute is a name-value pair inside the
opening tag of an element
<lecturer name="David Billington"
phone="+61 − 7 − 3875 507"/>

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 81

 XML Attributes: An Example
<order orderNo="23456" customer="John Smith"
date="October 15, 2002">
<item itemNo="a528" quantity="1"/>
<item itemNo="c817" quantity="3"/>
</order>

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 82

 The Same Example without Attributes

<order>
<orderNo>23456</orderNo>
<customer>John Smith</customer>
<date>October 15, 2002</date>
<item>
<itemNo>a528</itemNo>
<quantity>1</quantity>
</item>
<item>
<itemNo>c817</itemNo>
<quantity>3</quantity>
</item>
</order>

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 83

 Further Components of XML Docs

• Comments
– A piece of text that is to be ignored by parser
– <!-- This is a comment -->
• Processing Instructions (PIs)
– Define procedural attachments
– <?stylesheet type="text/css"
href="mystyle.css"?>

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 85

 Well-Formed XML Documents
• Syntactically correct documents
• Some syntactic rules:
– Only one outermost element (called root element)
– Each element contains an opening and a
corresponding closing tag
– Tags may not overlap
• <author><name>Lee Hong</author></name>
– Attributes within an element have unique names

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 86

 The Tree Model of XML Documents:
An Example

<email>
<head>
<from name="Michael Maher"
address="[email protected]"/>
<to name="Grigoris Antoniou"
address="[email protected]"/>
<subject>Where is your draft?</subject>
</head>
<body>
Grigoris, where is the draft of the paper you promised me
last week?
</body>
</email>

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 87

 The Tree Model of XML Documents:
An Example (2)

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 88

 The Tree Model of XML Docs

• The tree representation of an XML

document is an ordered labeled tree:
– There is exactly one root
– There are no cycles
– Each non-root node has exactly one parent
– Each node has a label.
– The order of elements is important
– … but the order of attributes is not important
Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 89
 Lecture Outline

1. Introduction
2. Detailed Description of XML
3. Structuring
a) DTDs
b) XML Schema
4. Namespaces
5. Accessing, querying XML documents: XPath
6. Transformations: XSLT
Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 90
 Structuring XML Documents
https://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_dtd.asp

• Define all the element and attribute names

that may be used
• Define the structure
– what values an attribute may take
– which elements may or must occur within other
elements, etc.
• If such structuring information exists, the
document can be validated

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 91

 Lecture Outline
1. Introduction
2. Detailed Description of XML
3. Structuring
a) DTDs
b) XML Schema
4. Namespaces
5. Accessing, querying XML documents: XPath
6. Transformations: XSLT

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 92

 XML Schema
https://www.w3schools.com/xml/schema_intro.asp

• Significantly richer language for defining

the structure of XML documents
• Its syntax is based on XML itself
– not necessary to write separate tools
• Reuse and refinement of schemas
– Expand or delete already existent schemas
• Sophisticated set of data types, compared
to DTDs (which only supports strings)

Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 93

 Lecture Outline
1. Introduction
2. Detailed Description of XML
3. Structuring
a) DTDs
b) XML Schema
4. Namespaces
5. Accessing, querying XML documents:
XPath
6. Transformations: XSLT
Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 96
 Namespaces
https://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_namespaces.asp

• An XML document may use more than one

DTD or schema
• Since each structuring document was
developed independently, name clashes
may appear.
• The solution is to use a different prefix for
each DTD or schema.
– prefix:name
Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 97
 Namespace Declarations
• Namespaces are declared within an
element and can be used in that element
and any of its children (elements and
attributes)
• A namespace declaration has the form:
– xmlns:prefix="location"
– location is the address of the DTD or schema
• If a prefix is not specified:
xmlns="location" then the location is used
by default
Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer 99