Semantic Technology

Origins and Modern Enterprise Use

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Semantic Technology refers to a set of standards that allows computers to understand, share, use and reuse data.

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Adding semantics (as the name of the technology suggests) to data pieces, semantic technology, unlike the traditional technologies, allows for the smooth and efficient data integration and interoperability.

Although not limited to applications for web resources only, it is Semantic Technology that lies in the heart of the Semantic Web, or the Web of Data.

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Far from done, the Web of Data, just as the Web of Documents, is slowly but

steadily growing, together with the adoption and maturity of semantic web

technology from various enterprises.

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The origins of Semantic Technology can be traced back to the not so distant 1989. Back then Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web was working on his vision for the Web, which in its very essence was about “anything being potentially connected to anything”. 5

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This is how the World Wide Web, as we now know it started. Today, the Web is a powerful means for collaboration. We publish, share, access, use and reuse documents and files of all conceivable formats.

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As exciting and disruptive as this is, it is not the full potential of the Web. The full potential of the Web will be unfolded through Semantic Technology.

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Semantic technologies are the building blocks of one more layer to the Web, for it to become the Web of Data - a web where computers are able to manipulate information on our behalf, meaningfully.

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For the Semantic Web to unfold, data on the Web are to be put in an understandable and processable by machines format. The very same paradigm is now wildly adopted for tapping into enterprise data lakes.

With the help of Semantic Technology rather than locked into siloed, proprietary data formats that impede storage, access and retrieval, data pieces would seamlessly become interoperable and easy to integrate.

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Not unlike the document web,

integration of structured and unstructured data

involves universal, agreed upon standards.

It is important that

data pieces are available in such standard formats.

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For example, just like there’s lingua franca for representing documents on the Web and that is the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), RDF is a common format for data to be represented and shared.

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A standard model for data interchange , RDF is among the main building blocks of the Semantic Technology Stack, together with other Semantic Web technologies, such as OWL, SKOS, SPARQL etc.

These standards, along with the other Web standards, are being developed at The World Wide Web Consortium. They are solid and have as much industry support as the basic specifications that make WWW work: HTTP and HTML.

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It is these Semantic Technology standards, that will make the Semantic Web function.

And these standards are not only limited for Web use.

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Semantic Technology is also a cost-effective way for enterprises to manage their data internally.

Using universal data representation standards will allow for more effective search, automation, integration, and reuse of content across various applications, opening countless opportunities for more cooperation.

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People and organizations, as the W3C Data Activity’s vision has it, will be able to share data in a way that enables others to derive and add value, and to utilize it in ways that suit them.

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The use of Semantic Technology will ease the communication of

computer systems and make machines (and us)

capable of understanding mountains of data.

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And this is how Semantic Technology will add machine analytical power to our creative processes of knowledge management and discovery, be it across the Web or within various enterprise datasets.

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Interested to learn more about how and why Semantic Technology Standards are serving more and more enterprises to make sense of their

data? Check the Knowledge Hub section on ontotext.com for white papers, case studies and more resources on semantic technologies.