1. Tools for the Jim Hendler http://www.mindswap.org Semantic web

2. 2 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 2 www.mindswap.org Sem Web: What it’s all about Knowledge representation, as this technology is often called, is currently in a state comparable to that of hypertext before the advent of the web: it is clearly a good idea, and some very nice demonstrations exist, but it has not yet changed the world. It contains the seeds of important applications, but to unleash its full power it must be linked into a single global system. -- Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the WWW, 2001.

3. 3 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 3 www.mindswap.org Part I: Review of semantic WEB

4. 4 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 4 www.mindswap.org On the Web -- links are critical! <a href=URI> HTML Web page Any Web Resource RDF URI RDF is like the web! On the Semantic WEB -- links are critical!

5. 5 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 5 www.mindswap.org http://www.cs.umd.edu> DOC1 Hendler DOC1 Mind:title Jobs:placeOfWork Web Page http://www… Professor Jobs: Mind: Jobs: Sem Web models start from RDF…

6. 6 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 6 www.mindswap.org XML is NOT semantics

7. 7 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 7 www.mindswap.org http://www.w3.org/~timbl Tim Berners-Lee … XML is NOT semantics

8. 8 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 8 www.mindswap.org http://www.w3.org/~timbl Tim Berners-Lee … XML is NOT semantics Xml schema is DOCUMENT checking photo has multiple subject fields photo has one physical location etc.

9. 9 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 9 www.mindswap.org http://www.w3.org/~timbl Tim Berners-Lee … XML is NOT semantics Xml schema is DOCUMENT checking photo has multiple subject fields photo has one physical location etc. WHICH SAYS NOTHING ABOUT TALKS, SUBJECTS, PEOPLE, EVENTS, etc.

10. 10 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 10 www.mindswap.org Event:title Event:WebPage rdf:type photo:Photograph, Photo:File http://…/images#image1, Photo:topic :event1#event:speaker. Event1 a Event:event; date “May 7-11”, speaker http://…#timbl.html Title “WWW 2002…” TimBL rdf:type w3c-ont:person; name “Tim Berners-Lee” … describes a generic conceptabout events The SEMANTICS is in the links (e.g. to ontologies)!

11. Semantic Web Ontologies are “models” New SW languages add models to provide mappings and structure. XML necessary, not sufficient.       

12. 12 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 12 www.mindswap.org Semantics on the WEB Web ontologies, like the WWW itself, are not “separable”  Thinking about the ontologies, without considering The links to other ontologies The instances that link to them The crawling and collecting of ontological terminologies Is like thinking about the Web without the links!! Hendler DOC1 Mind:title Jobs:placeOfWork Web Page http://www… Professor Jobs: Mind: Jobs: Other Professors Other Pages Other titles Other descriptions Other URIs

13. 13 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 13 www.mindswap.org OWL Part 2: OWL - The “Web Ontology Language”

14. 14 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 14 www.mindswap.org OWL extends RDF… rdfs:Class rdf:ID="Meeting"> 1 1 1 0 RDF-schema  Class, subclass  Property, subproperty + Restrictions  Range, domain  Local, global  Existential  Cardinality + Combinators  Union, Intersection  Complement  Symmetric, transitive + Mapping  Equivalence  Inverse

15. 15 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 15 www.mindswap.org Into a usable “Modeling” language In science, models provide interoperability across jargons  Mathematical models: equations of a system  Physical models: “sticks and balls” of the atom  Virtual models: the visualization of a complex data set  INFORMATION MODELS: taxonomies and thesauris Ontologies extend thesaurus information models to provide  Semantic restrictions on property relations Must have vs. May have vs. Doesn’t have Has some vs. has N vs. has 1 Some vs. All property restrictions  Formal underpinnings Logical entailments Note: rules, logics, proofs are parts of ontologies, but not yet at a “consensus” level for standardization  Should build as add-ons to OWL to take advantage of “terminology features”

16. 16 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 16 www.mindswap.org OWL is not OWL is NOT…  … A knowledge representation language per se Definitely not “The standard: for KR”  … A “Description Logic” per se It does support DL “idioms”  E.g. “Lymphoma” is restricted to be a subClassOf those things whose “disease” property is “Cancer” It will include a “subset” which is  Complete, decidable, in DL complexity case But, it will allow uses that DLs do not  Maybe outside the “semantics” of the model theory  …The right thing to use in KR/KA research per se But do use it to distribute your results But do use it to test your theories

17. 17 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 17 www.mindswap.org OWL is a WEB ontology langauge OWL is  WEB-BASED  DISTRIBUTED  MACHINE-PROCESSIBLE  BASED ON DAML+OIL By charter! It may become a Web recommendation  Same “language status” as HTML, XML, XML schema A starting place for further evolution  And SMIL, P3P, Standard ≠ Use

18. 18 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 18 www.mindswap.org Part 3: KA in the (OWL supported) Sem Web The good news:  DAML+OIL is already the most used ontology language in history Sept 30, 02: Crawler finds 5M+ DAML statements on 20,000+ web pages  Doesn’t include many instance KBs tied to ontologies  Doesn’t include many very large RDFS-based KBs that include some OWL OWL is being supported by large corporation labs  Web tool developers: IBM, HP, Sun, Intel, Fujitsu  Content providers: Daimler-Chrysler, Nokia, Motorola, EDS, Agfa OWL is starting to be used by thesaurus distributors  C.f. National Cancer Institute metathesaurus to be released in OWL The bad news  On the web it is a statistical blip -- the web is HUGE (HUMONGOUS!!)  The big players are still on the sidelines We could become the next XML or the next SMIL

19. 19 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 19 www.mindswap.org Do we need KA? Tom Mitchell made an interesting point  He says “users are lazy” they won’t do mark-up  He says we should use NLP + machine learning (primarily) He’s WRONG  Greatest impact likely to be non-textual, non-document content

20. 20 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 20 www.mindswap.org So who is going to mark it up? There are not now, and never will be, enough knowledge engineers to support the important, critical applications of our technology  Government applications: NASA, US DoD …  Health Care applications: Open Health, Swiss hospitals …  Genomics/Bioinformatics: NCI metathesaurus, Gene Ontology… ...  Historians: Freedman’s project Let alone the really important stuff out there  MY information My photo archives, my home page, my daughter’s home page, my project pages, my favorite hobby pages, etc. etc. etc. Personal information created the Web!!!

21. 21 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 21 www.mindswap.org Then a miracle occurs

22. 22 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 22 www.mindswap.org Key: The Value Proposition Tools must consider work v. value  People will NOT use tools that require a lot of work and have little (perceived) value  People WILL use tools that save them work and/or provide high (perceived) value “Perceived” value ≠ “real” value in many cases  Creating Web pages (ca. 1993) was “cool”  No study has yet shown a positive work value for the Web as a whole But it has changed the way we live Viral: My friend sees it, wants one. My competitor sees it, needs one TBL’s “secret” advice: Start small but viral and you can change many things (July, 02)

23. 23 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 23 www.mindswap.org Value Proposition 1: Semantic Page Creation The personal info killer application? Many people don’t have home pages Value: Hints for useful properties (using ontology classes) Help create content (using ontology instances). Note: Useful libraries (lots of stuff) already exist (see daml.org) Many people don’t have home pages Value: Hints for useful properties (using ontology classes) Help create content (using ontology instances). Note: Useful libraries (lots of stuff) already exist (see daml.org) Ont Library Tell me about your : Important Person Hobby Job Query classes I know about - Scuba shop - Scuba vacation 1 - Scuba vacation 2 - Scuba instructor Choice Marked Up Pages XHTML+OWL

24. 24 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 24 www.mindswap.org Value Proposition 2: Semantic Web Portals The MOSAIC of the Semantic Web? Combine browsing, search, and authoring Value: As I link to concepts, I find useful resources Pages, Databases, programs, etc. KB

25. 25 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 25 www.mindswap.org Value prop 3: Semantic Web Services

26. 26 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 26 www.mindswap.org VP 3: And service composition Buy the French version of a book from amazon.fr and have it sent to my mother

27. 27 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 27 www.mindswap.org Semantic Web Knowledge Acquisition Virtually no one will create ontologies from scratch  High-End ontology developers will be a tiny percentage (10,000 High end Web Designers = 1/10,000 of users)  It is easier to read then to create ontologies  Expect “cut and paste” (HTML analogy) Most used OWL editor to date is Emacs  Can Bootstrap from existing content HTML screen scrapers, structured data, Excel spread sheets,… No training allowed  Motivated users will skim the docs on occasion  Most users want to use it now  “Everyone” has a browser - deploy tools through that Common metaphors must be used: Form fill, menu, search Note : No formal justification for any of these - but it worked before!

28. 28 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 28 www.mindswap.org Adding power via Semantic Web Tools can be domain independent  Your tool should be usable in lots of contexts!  Use the standards: OWL and its successors crucial Tools should assume multiple ontologies  “It’s the links, stupid” Ontology search, collection, “integration” crucial  Check out the DAML crawler (http://www.daml.org/crawler) BackEnd technologies must be scaleable  Can co-evolve with Semantic Web size But remember, the Web is HUGE

29. 29 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 29 www.mindswap.org Allow extensibility Users MUST be able to add their own concepts  Semantic Web (and OWL) allow this Advanced users will become ontology providers  It will be “cool” to have yours be the ontology of choice in a domain Consistency CANNOT be maintained on the web  May be a useful heuristic  Insist on consistency and the Semantic Web fails!

30. 30 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 30 www.mindswap.org GIVE IT AWAY!!!!! There is, and will be, no market for any of this unless we create it! No one will make money selling their tools until we have MANY more users Make small, cheap, easy to download version of your tools available Give it away  The big winners on the web made it available for free: Browsers: Mosaic, Netscape, IE Plug-ins: Flash, RealPlayer, Quicktime Tools: Adobe, Real Media

31. 31 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 31 www.mindswap.org Part 4: Mindswap tools Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Laboratory Semantic Web Agents Project http://www.mindswap.org/

32. 32 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 32 www.mindswap.org Practicing what I preach Open source Tools at http://www.mindswap.orghttp://www.mindswap.org  Described in proceedings But out of date - open source moves fast  Based on the principals outlined in this talk RIC : Ontologies make it EASIER to enter knowledge  Turn properties into forms, use restrictions to check form filling  Creates a KB of the results that can be used for search  Coming soon: create a nice web page (using SXMLT) SMORE : Create content and markup as you go  Multiple ontology ConvertToRDF : Dump spreadsheets to RDF using mapping ontology RDFScreenScraper : turn semi-structured web pages into ParkaSW : Scaleable, data-based KB back-end  Some built in inferencing  Pulled from the patent system to become open source!

33. 33 Kyoto U, Oct 2002 33 www.mindswap.org Conclusions The Semantic Web is real, and it is moving fast  Two years ago you hadn’t heard of it, now it’s on the cover of your proceedings We’ll win if we remember the “rules of the web”  Berners-Lee Principle : Build small but viral  Hendler’s Rule : On the web there is no “THE” Yours is ONE of the ways of doing it Consensus is hard, but critical  We did it once and created DAML+OIL, the most-used AI language ever Everyone’s application is needed  Value proposition : Make it fun, cool, and useful and people will kill to do the markup (The Web proves this)  Give it away : Create the markets and we’ll all win YOUR work is important!  This time it could be for real! THE