Introduction to the Semantic Web

Suggested title: "Python & the Semantic Web: From Specification to Tarball"

Kendall Clark, Daniel Krech, A.M. Kuchling, Bijan Parsia

The Semantic Web is an extension to the current HTML-centered web that adds a specification for machine-readable data (RDF); additional specifications are the subject of current development. This paper/talk would be an introduction to RDF in three parts:

A quick, gentle introduction to the Semantic Web

A general introduction to RDF

• Motivation: why is it useful?
• Structure: why all the triples?
• Syntaxes: XML, N3 (maybe N-Triples?)
• RDF Schema: some level of explanation
• DAML/OWL : 2 slides w/o code, 4 or 5 with code

rdflib: a Python library for processing RDF (DK)

• Overview: what does rdflib include?
• TripleStore: a database for triples
• InformationStore: (TripleStore + contexts)
• RDF/XML parser and serializer
• Redfoot: application built on rdflib that adds...
• httpd integration (medusa)
• hypercode (python embeded in RDF)

Example RDF application: Chat bots that tie together IRC and the web. (BP, KC)

• "chumping": collaborative, social annotations of web resources
• RDF as a data model

Miscellany

• Other Python toolkits: 4RDF, Redland, tmproc(?)
• OWL

Perhaps dissect an example schema

• Which one? Suggestions?