CSE 428: Semantic Web Topics, Sping 2006

Professor Jeff Heflin

TTh 9:20-10:35am, Maginnes 110

Course News

Regularly check here for updates about the class.

Course Description

The Internet is on the verge of another revolution. The development of the World Wide Web made the Internet accessible to millions by making it easy for anyone to publish and access documents on the Internet. However, the explosive growth of the Web has led to the problem of information overload. Researchers from industry and academia are now exploring the possibility of creating a "Semantic Web," in which meaning is made explicit, allowing machines to process and integrate Web resources intelligently. Beyond enabling quick and accurate web search, this technology may also allow the development of intelligent internet agents and facilitate communication between a multitude of heterogeneous web-accessible devices. In this class, we will examine this exciting area by reading and discussing both existing web specifications and cutting-edge research papers. Topics will include the design of various Semantic Web languages (such as XML, RDF, SHOE, and OWL), the role of ontologies and how to develop them, the knowledge acquisition problem, techniques for scalable reasoning, integrating heterogeneous data sources, web-based agents, and issues in developing semantic-aware applications.

For details about course content, grading, assignments, and office hours, see the class syllabus.

Assignments

Each assignment will be made available here after they are handed out in class. The online versions of the assignments are in PDF format.

Readings

Your readings will be listed below as they are assigned. Readings marked SWP are from our textbook, "A Semantic Web Primer." We will also read research papers and technical specifications, and I provide links to online versions of these documents. Usually this is in HTML or PDF format, although a few papers may be in PostScript or Compressed PostScript format. Also, each online reading assignment is followed by a reference (in brackets) that links to the complete citation for the paper. The citations for the entire reading list can be found here.

TaskDue
Read SWP Ch. 1 (pp. 1-21) 1/19
Read SWP Sect. 2.1 - 2.3 (pp. 23-43) 1/24
Read SWP Sect. 2.4 - 2.7 (pp. 43-57)
Optional:
Read A Technical Introduction to XML [Wal98]
Read XML 1.1 Recommendation [BPS04]
1/26
Read SWP Sect. 3.1 - 3.3 (pp. 61-80)
Optional:
Read XML Namespaces by Example [Bra99]
Read What is XSLT? [Hol00]
Read XML Schema Part 0: Primer [FW01]
Read Namespaces in XML [BHL99]
Read XSL Transformations [Cla99]
1/31
Read SWP Sect. 3.4 - 3.10 (pp. 80-105)
2/2
Read SWP Sect. 4.1 - 4.2 (pp. 109-128)
2/7
Read SWP Sect. 4.3 - 4.6 (pp. 129-146)
2/9
Read Ontology Development 101 [NM01a] 2/14
Read The Protégé OWL Plugin: An Open Development Environment for Semantic Web Applications [KFN04]
Read OWL Pizzas: Practical Experience of Teaching OWL-DL: Common Errors & Common Patterns [RDH04]
2/16
Read An Introduction to Description Logics [NB02] 2/21
Read Reducing OWL Entailment to Description Logic Satisfiability [HPS03]
Read Using Vampire to Reason with OWL [TRB04]
2/23
Read An Evaluation of Knowledge Base Systems for Large OWL Datasets [GPH04] 2/28
Read An Introduction to RDF and the Jena RDF API 3/2
Read Description Logic Programs: Combining Logic Programs with Description Logic [GHV03] 3/14
Read Schema Mediation in Peer Data Management Systems [HIS03] 3/16
Read Somewhere in the Semantic Web [ACG05] 3/21
Read Distributed and Modular Ontology Reasoning [SBT05]
Read A Model Theoretic Semantics for Ontology Versioning [HP04]
3/23
Read Web-Scale Information Extraction in KnowItAll (Preliminary Results) [ECD04]
Read Gimme' The Context: Context-driven Automatic Semantic Annotation with C-PANKOW [CLS05]
3/28
Read Searching for Common Sense: Populating Cyc from the Web [MWK05]
Read Wrapper Induction for Information Extraction [KWD97]
4/4
Read Anchor-PROMPT: Using Non-Local Context for Semantic Matching [NM01b]
Read Learning to Map between Ontologies on the Semantic Web [DMD02]
4/6
Read Making RDF Presentable [RvOH05]
Read Scaling Question Answering to the Web [KEW01]
4/11
Read PowerAqua: Fishing the Semantic Web [LMU06] 4/13
Read SWP Ch. 6 (pp. 179-203)
Read CS AKTive Space: Representing Computer Science in the Semantic Web [SSG04]
4/18
Read Semantic Web Technologies to Reconcile Privacy and Context Awareness [GS04] 4/20
Read Automated Discovery, Interaction and Composition of Semantic Web Services [SPA04]
Read Automating DAML-S Web Services Composition Using SHOP2 [WPS03]
4/25
Read Named Graphs, Provenance and Trust [CBH05] 4/27

Additional Class Materials

Syllabus
Contains information on course content, grading, assignments, and office hours
Further Reading
A list of additional papers of relevance, organized by topic.
Supplemental Slides
Contains some of the slides used during lecture.
Textbook Errata
Contains a list of errata from our textbook as well as a pointer to the book's companion web site

Links

The following sites contain additional information about the Semantic Web that you may find interesting.