Semantic Web-Based Information Systems: State-of-the-Art ...

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preface
Importance of semantics has been recognized in different areas of data and information
management, including better access, exchange, interoperability, integration
and analysis of data. Semantics of data is about associating meaning to data, and
understand what data represents, and improve the value of data. Early use of semantics
in the context of data and information management occurred in the context
of development of multidatabase or federated database systems, to be followed by
mediator and information brokering architectures. As the Web started to take the
shape as a global information system and as a way to connect distributed data repositories,
usage of metadata and semantics correspondingly started in early 1990s
and increased there after. The first use of the term “semantic information brokering”
in 1993 conceived the use of semantics in the form of domain models and ontologies
for heterogeneous data integration, and about the same time, ontology-based
information integration was proposed in some mediator based projects. In the last
two chapters of his book Weaving the Web (Harper, 1997), Tim Berners-Lee started
to put forth a vision of the next phase of the Web in which semantics would play
a critical role, and the term Semantic Web was coined. Research community, first
supported by the DARPA’s DAML program (for which Jim Handler was the program
manager) quickly saw the new research opportunity. This book contributes to the
revolutionary domain of Semantic Web and information systems in four following
aspects, namely, vision, methodologies, tools and applications.
Section.I:.Vision.
The first two chapters of the book present a vision, a provocative or an alternate
view, and/or a counter-point.
The first chapter “Semantics for the Semantic Web: The Implicit, the Formal, and
the Powerful,” by Sheth, Ramakrishnan, and Thomas, takes the expansive view of