Using the Semantic Web technologies in virtual engineering tools to create extensible interfaces

Ideas and tools developed for the Semantic Web can also be applied to and integrated with engineering tools and software. The ideas upon which the Semantic Web are founded, along with the technologies that are used to implement it, provide a platform on which virtual engineering tools and interfaces can be extended to create a web in which contextual information is readily accessible to engineers. When the Semantic Web and virtual engineering methods are fully realized, computer hardware and networking capabilities will work to provide information and tools to access information meaningfully. The question that must be answered today is: how will information be integrated in a manner that will allow commercial and proprietary software tools to remain separate while also being integrated so that the end user can control and query these tools with little to no knowledge of the tools’ implementation or inner-working details? The answer to this question will depend largely on the ability to implement open interfaces and schemas that can evolve over time as well as open source toolkits that enable development teams to collaborate at a high level. This paper discusses potential applications of the Semantic Web to explore these questions. In addition, specific capabilities being developed in VE-Suite are discussed.