Abstract
The emergence of semantic Web opens up boundless new opportunities for e-business. According to Tim Berners-Lee, Hendler, and Lassila (2001), “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”. A more formal definition by W3C (2001) refers that, “the semantic Web is the representation of data on the World Wide Web. It is a collaborative effort led by W3C with participation from a large number of researchers and industrial partners. It is based on the resource description framework (RDF), which integrates a variety of applications using eXtensible Markup Language (XML) for syntax and uniform resource identifiers (URIs) for naming”. The capability of the semantic Web to add meaning to information, stored in such way that it can be searched and processed as well as recent advances in semantic Web-based technologies provide the mechanisms for semantic knowledge representation, exchange and collaboration of e-business processes and applications.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Personalization: Any action that adapts the information or services provided by a Web site to the knowledge gained from the users’ navigational behavior and individual interests, in combination with the content and the structure of the site.
Semantic Web: An extension of the current Web, proposed by Tim Berners-Lee, in which information is given a well-defined meaning. The semantic Web would allow software agents, as well as humans, to access and process information content.
Semantic Web Technologies: Realization of semantic Web relies primarily on the following core technologies: XML, URIs, RDF, Web services, ontologies, and intelligent agents.
Intelligent Agent: Software application that is capable of accomplishing tasks autonomously (without continuous supervision) on behalf of its user. It can perceive changes in its environment and can perform actions to accomplish its tasks.
Ontology: An explicit formal specification of how to represent objects, concepts, and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of interest and relationships holding among them. Systems that share the same ontology are able to communicate about domain of discourse without necessarily operating on a globally shared theory. System commits to ontology if its observable actions are consistent with definitions in the ontology.
Semantic E-Business: An approach to managing knowledge for coordination e-business processes through the systematic application of semantic Web technologies.
Web Service: Software application that can be discovered, described, and accessed based on XML and standard Web protocols over intranets, extranets, and the Internet.
Knowledge Management: The process of finding, selecting, organising, transforming, disseminating, and transferring important information and expertise necessary for organisation’s activities such as problem solving, dynamic learning, strategic planning, and decision making.