Semantic Web
by Silvie Spreeuwenberg
A business-oriented description of the Semantic Web is:
"... an extension of the current [Web], in which information is given well-defined
meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation."[1] A more technical description of the Semantic
Web emphasizes the need to have interoperability between software programs on a semantic
level, and not just at a precompiled-syntax level.
Observation 1
Research analysts have been reporting more and more on the semantic web community
(including the ontology research field and reasoning on the web) this last year.
Their interest in this topic is triggered by the standardization efforts of the semantic
web community at the W3C and the OMG.
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Some of these new standardization efforts include augmenting
ontology languages with rules. The question whether the Semantic Web should
be augmented to support behavior specification (with rules) has been subject to debate.[2] It looks like the answer
is now a definitive "yes."
What are the differences or similarities between the rules of the Semantic Web
and the rules of the Business?
Where a business rules analyst creates a fact model, the semantic web community
creates an ontology. Where a business rules analyst writes down business rules
in natural language, the semantic web community writes derivations in a formal language.
Observation 2
It seems to me that the business rules community and semantic web community talk
about the same things, but this talk is by people with different backgrounds.
The business rules community is driven by the practical experiences of business people
and business consultants, while the semantic web community is a vision of scientists
driven by (mostly) scientific publications.
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If this observation is true, it is important for there to be more understanding
of each other's work so that we can end up with a 'semantic business' that supports
a practical approach to business problems and that is supported by a long-term vision.
If the business rules community and the semantic web community do talk about different
things, then we need to get a better understanding of the bounderies between the
two communities so that we can develop standard transformations or processes for
crossing these bounderies.
My next column will have more observations on the differences or similarities
between the Semantic Web and the Business Rules Approach.
References
[1] Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila, "The
Semantic Web," Scientific American, May 17, 2001. URL: http://www.sciam.com 
[2] Ian Horrocks, JŸrgen Angele, Stefan Decker, Michael
Kifer, Benjamin Grosof, and Gerd Wagner, "Where Are the Rules?" IEEE
Inteligent Systems, Vol. 18, No. 5 (Sept./Oct. 2003), pp. 76-83.
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Drs. Silvie Spreeuwenberg has a background in artificial intelligence and is the
co-founder and director of LibRT. LibRT helps customers assess and improve
the quality of their business rules. Silvie's experience with business rules
modeling has resulted in the development of tools and techniques to increase the
quality of business rules. She writes, "We believe that one should focus
on quality management of business rules to make full profit of the business rules
approach." LibRT is located in the Netherlands; for more information
visit