The Semantic Web: the roles of XML and RDF

• DOI: 10.1109/4236.877487
• Publication Date: 2000-01-01
• Authors: Decker, Stefan; Van Harmelen, Frank; Broekstra, Jeen; Erdmann, Michael; Fensel, Dieter; Horrocks, Ian; Klein, Müge; Melnik, Sergey; S. Decker; S. Melnik; F. van Harmelen; D. Fensel; M. Klein; J. Broekstra; M. Erdmann; I. Horrocks; Stefan Decker; Sergey Melnik; Frank van Harmelen; Dieter Fensel; Michel Klein; Jeen Broekstra; M. Erdmann; Ian Horrocks
• Keywords: RDF Schema; RDF/XML; Cwm; Ontology Inference Layer; ddc:004; DATA processing & computer science; 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; 02 engineering and technology; info:eu-repo/classification/ddc/004; 004

The role of ontologies in the architecture of the Semantic Web was described. XML and RDF are the current standards for establishing semantic interoperability on the Web, but XML addresses only document structure. RDF better facilitates interoperation because it provides a data model that can be extended to address sophisticated ontology representation techniques. A general method for encoding ontology representation languages into RDF/RDF schema was proposed to establish a inference layer on top of the Web's current layers.