OWL-QL—a language for deductive query answering on the Semantic Web

This paper discusses the issues involved in designing a query language for the Semantic Web and presents the OWL query language (OWL-QL) as a candidate standard language and protocol for query–answering dialogues among Semantic Web computational agents using knowledge represented in the W3Cs ontology web language (OWL). OWL-QL is a formal language and precisely specifies the semantic relationships among a query, a query answer, and the knowledge base(s) used to produce the answer. Unlike standard database and Web query languages, OWL-QL supports query–answering dialogues in which the answering agent may use automated reasoning methods to derive answers to queries, as well as dialogues in which the knowledge to be used in answering a query may be in multiple knowledge bases on the Semantic Web, and/or where those knowledge bases are not specified by the querying agent. In this setting, the set of answers to a query may be of unpredictable size and may require an unpredictable amount of time to compute.     

WebOWL: A Semantic Web search engine development experiment

This paper presents WebOWL, an experiment in using the latest technologies to develop a Semantic Web search engine. WebOWL consists of a community of intelligent agents, acting as crawlers, that are able to discover and learn the locations of Semantic Web neighborhoods on the Web, a semantic database to store data from different ontologies, a query mechanism that supports semantic queries in OWL, and a ranking algorithm that determines the order of the returned results based on the semantic relationships of classes and individuals. The system has been implemented using Jade, Jena and the db4o object database engine and has successfully stored over one million OWL classes, individuals and properties.     

An architectural design for effective information retrieval in semantic web

The current web IR system retrieves relevant information only based on the keywords which is inadequate for that vast amount of data. It provides limited capabilities to capture the concepts of the user needs and the relation between the keywords. These limitations lead to the idea of the user conceptual search which includes concepts and meanings. This study deals with the Semantic Based Information Retrieval System for a semantic web search and presented with an improved algorithm to retrieve the information in a more efficient way.This architecture takes as input a list of plain keywords provided by the user and the query is converted into semantic query. This conversion is carried out with the help of the domain concepts of the pre-existing domain ontologies and a third party thesaurus and discover semantic relationship between them in runtime. The relevant information for the semantic query is retrieved and ranked according to the relevancy with the help of an improved algorithm. The performance analysis shows that the proposed system can improve the accuracy and effectiveness for retrieving relevant web documents compared to the existing systems.     

一种本体知识文摘方法的研究和实现

本体作为领域知识的表示方法，已经成为语义Web的基础。本体通常由领域专家建立，用于表示领域中概念以及概念与概念之间的关系。但这也使得普通用户难以理解本体中描述的信息。普通用户往往希望本体中的信息能够以自然语言的形式描述。这正是本文讨论的主要问题。本文采用分治策略，利用基于嵌套复杂模板的解决方案，设计并实现了本体知识文摘的算法。我们开发了一个原型系统SWARMS，并将该文摘算法进行了运用。初步的实验表明，本文提出的方法取得较好的结果。     

WESONet: Applying semantic web technologies and collaborative tagging to multimedia web information systems

The publication of different media types, like images, audio and video in the World Wide Web is getting more importance each day. However, searching and locating content in multimedia sites is challenging. In this paper, we propose a platform for the development of multimedia web information systems. Our approach is based on the combination between semantic web technologies and collaborative tagging. Producers can add meta-data to multimedia content associating it with different domain-specific ontologies. At the same time, users can tag the content in a collaborative way. The proposed system uses a search engine that combines both kinds of meta-data to locate the desired content. It will also provide browsing capabilities through the ontology concepts and the developed tags.     

Magpie: Experiences in supporting Semantic Web browsing

Magpie has been one of the first truly effective approaches to bringing semantics into the web browsing experience. The key innovation brought by Magpie was the replacement of a manual annotation process by an automatically associated ontology-based semantic layer over web resources, which ensured added value at no cost for the user. Magpie also differs from older open hypermedia systems: its associations between entities in a web page and semantic concepts from an ontology enable link typing and subsequent interpretation of the resource. The semantic layer in Magpie also facilitates locating semantic services and making them available to the user, so that they can be manually activated by a user or opportunistically triggered when appropriate patterns are encountered during browsing. In this paper we track the evolution of Magpie as a technology for developing open and flexible Semantic Web applications. Magpie emerged from our research into user-accessible Semantic Web, and we use this viewpoint to assess the role of tools like Magpie in making semantic content useful for ordinary users. We see such tools as crucial in bootstrapping the Semantic Web through the automation of the knowledge generation process.     

基于语义主题相似度的Web教育资源查询方法

针对传统Web教育主体难以获得高可用教育资源的问题,提出了一种面向语义主题相似度的Web教育资源查询方法。该方法建立了本体概念语义网络（Ontology Concept Semantic Network,OCSN）,在此基础上,设计了基于语义主题相似度匹配的概念检索方法：在检索前主动将教育资源根据其语义和主题组织到本体概念语义网络中,然后建立一个基于语义特性的Web教育资源发现的垂直搜索引擎,并通过构造满足条件的相似度函数,将对应的语义距离映射为相似度,有效地提高了查询效率。实验结果表明此方法能够提高Web教育资源的查准率和查全率。     

SemSearchPro – Using semantics throughout the search process

Semantic search attempts to go beyond the current state of the art in information access by addressing information needs on the semantic level, i.e. considering the meaning of users’ queries and the available resources. In recent years, there have been significant advances in developing and applying semantic technologies to the problem of semantic search. To collate these various approaches and to better understand what the concept of semantic search entails, we study semantic search under a general model. Extending this model, we introduce the notion of process-based semantic search, where semantics is exploited not only for query processing, but might be involved in all steps of the search process. We propose a particular approach that instantiates this process-based model. The usefulness of using semantics throughout the search process is finally assessed via a task-based evaluation performed in a real world scenario.     

An ontology-based retrieval system using semantic indexing

In this paper, we present an ontology-based information extraction and retrieval system and its application in the soccer domain. In general, we deal with three issues in semantic search, namely, usability, scalability and retrieval performance. We propose a keyword-based semantic retrieval approach. The performance of the system is improved considerably using domain-specific information extraction, inferencing and rules. Scalability is achieved by adapting a semantic indexing approach and representing the whole world as small independent models. The system is implemented using the state-of-the-art technologies in Semantic Web and its performance is evaluated against traditional systems as well as the query expansion methods. Furthermore, a detailed evaluation is provided to observe the performance gain due to domain-specific information extraction and inferencing. Finally, we show how we use semantic indexing to solve simple structural ambiguities.     

一种基于文档内容的语义标注方法

互联网上存在海量数据,如何在大量的信息中查找到有用信息就变成了一个至关重要的问题。语义网为解决这一问题带来了曙光。然而当今网络现状与语义网之间存在巨大差距,即海量非结构化的页面内容难直接转化为语义的知识。提出了一种基于文档内容的语义标注方法,利用本体所表达的语义环境,即本体知识相关词汇及其所处的语义上下文环境在文档中出现频率,实现对文档的语义标注。实验显示方法取得良好的效果,但受本体知识质量和标注文档质量两个因素影响较大。     

用户需求概念图的生成方法研究

网络信息检索在当前互联网社会得到了广泛应用,但是其检索准确性却不容乐观,究其原因是割裂了检索关键词之间的概念联系。从一类限定领域的用户需求入手,以搜索引擎作为网络语料资源的访问接口,综合利用规则与统计的方法,生成查询需求的语义概念图。可将其作为需求分析的结果,导引后续的语义检索过程,提高用户查询与返回结果的相关性。实验结果表明,生成方法是有效可行的,对基于概念图的语义检索有一定的探索意义。     

Comparing keyword search to semantic search: a case study in solving crossword puzzles using the Google™ API

Keyword‐based search engines such as Google? index Web pages for human consumption. Sophisticated as such engines have become, surveys indicate almost 25% of Web searchers are unable to find useful results in the first set of URLs returned (Technology Review, March 2004). The lack of machine‐interpretable information on the Web limits software agents from matching human searches to desirable results. Tim Berners‐Lee, inventor of the Web, has architected the Semantic Web in which machine‐interpretable information provides an automated means to traversing the Web. A necessary cornerstone application is the search engine capable of bringing the Semantic Web together into a searchable landscape. We implemented a Semantic Web Search Engine (SWSE) that performs semantic search, providing predictable and accurate results to queries. To compare keyword search to semantic search, we constructed the Google CruciVerbalist (GCV), which solves crossword puzzles by reformulating clues into Google queries processed via the Google API. Candidate answers are extracted from query results. Integrating GCV with SWSE, we quantitatively show how semantic search improves upon keyword search. Mimicking the human brain's ability to create and traverse relationships between facts, our techniques enable Web applications to ‘think’ using semantic reasoning, opening the door to intelligent search applications that utilize the Semantic Web. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Web资源的多粒度语义标注及其应用技术研究

当前的Web搜索引擎获得的搜索结果都是基于关键字标注的Web文档、页面或链接,不支持对文档内部信息的检索。为支持Wcb资源内部信息的检索,研究多粒度语义标注,即按树根结点、分支结点、叶子结点及资源信息元为粒度单位对Web资源进行组织管理,并在此基础上探讨基于本体的搜索技术。初步的分析和实验表明,这样可以提高从形式多样的海量Web资源中获取所需信息的效率。     

Improving large-scale search engines with semantic annotations

Traditional search engines have become the most useful tools to search the World Wide Web. Even though they are good for certain search tasks, they may be less effective for others, such as satisfying ambiguous or synonym queries. In this paper, we propose an algorithm that, with the help of Wikipedia and collaborative semantic annotations, improves the quality of web search engines in the ranking of returned results. Our work is supported by (1) the logs generated after query searching, (2) semantic annotations of queries and (3) semantic annotations of web pages. The algorithm makes use of this information to elaborate an appropriate ranking. To validate our approach we have implemented a system that can apply the algorithm to a particular search engine. Evaluation results show that the number of relevant web resources obtained after executing a query with the algorithm is higher than the one obtained without it.     

Standards for image annotation using Semantic Web

The impetus behind Semantic Web research remains the vision of supplementing availability with utility; that is, the World Wide Web provides availability of digital media, but the Semantic Web will allow presently available digital media to be used in unseen ways. An example of such an application is multimedia retrieval. At present, there are vast amounts of digital media available on the web. Once this media gets associated with machine-understandable metadata, the web can serve as a potentially unlimited supplier for multimedia web services, which could populate themselves by searching for keywords and subsequently retrieving images or articles, which is precisely the type of system that is proposed in this paper. Such a system requires solid interoperability, a central ontology, semantic agent search capabilities, and standards. Specifically, this paper explores this cross-section of image annotation and Semantic Web services, models the web service components that constitute such a system, discusses the sequential, cooperative execution of these Semantic Web services, and introduces intelligent storage of image semantics as part of a semantic link space.     

语义网站点的发现与排序

随着语义网中RDF数据的大量涌现,语义搜索引擎为用户搜索RDF数据带来了便利.但是,如何自动地发现包含语义网信息资源的站点,并高效地在语义网站点中收集语义网信息资源,一直是语义搜索引擎所面临的问题.首先介绍了语义网站点的链接模型.该模型刻画了语义网站点、语义网信息资源、RDF模型和语义网实体之间的关系.基于该模型讨论了语义网实体的归属问题,并进一步定义了语义网站点的发现规则;另外,从站点链接模型出发,定义了语义网站点依赖图,并给出了对语义网站点进行排序的算法.将相关算法在一个真实的语义搜索引擎中进行了初步测试.实验结果表明,所提出的方法可以有效地发现语义网站点并对站点进行排序.     

P2P中基于本体论的知识管理框架模型及实现

为了将P2P中对等体的资源描述为结构化的知识,以提高资源共享,本文提出一个基于本体论的知识管理框架模型。从知识的建立和知识的检索两方面分析了模型的实现技术。探讨了相互协作的对等体按预定义查询模式和本体论匹配的语义技术实现信息搜索和知识获取的过程。     

A personalized query expansion approach for engineering document retrieval

Engineers create engineering documents with their own terminologies, and want to search existing engineering documents quickly and accurately during a product development process. Keyword-based search methods have been widely used due to their ease of use, but their search accuracy has been often problematic because of the semantic ambiguity of terminologies in engineering documents and queries. The semantic ambiguity can be alleviated by using a domain ontology. Also, if queries are expanded to incorporate the engineer’s personalized information needs, the accuracy of the search result would be improved. Therefore, we propose a framework to search engineering documents with less semantic ambiguity and more focus on each engineer’s personalized information needs. The framework includes four processes: (1) developing a domain ontology, (2) indexing engineering documents, (3) learning user profiles, and (4) performing personalized query expansion and retrieval. A domain ontology is developed based on product structure information and engineering documents. Using the domain ontology, terminologies in documents are disambiguated and indexed. Also, a user profile is generated from the domain ontology. By user profile learning, user’s interests are captured from the relevant documents. During a personalized query expansion process, the learned user profile is used to reflect user’s interests. Simultaneously, user’s searching intent, which is implicitly inferred from the user’s task context, is also considered. To retrieve relevant documents, an expanded query in which both user’s interests and intents are reflected is then matched against the document collection. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can substantially outperform both the keyword-based approach and the existing query expansion method in retrieving engineering documents. Reflecting a user’s information needs precisely has been identified to be the most important factor underlying this notable improvement.