Customer Reviews

Introduction to the Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services

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This book is definitely a great resource. I have also read "Explorer's Guide to the Semantic Web", yet as a technical person myself, I found a weak coverage on the "how to" part. However, Yu's book covers very nicely and carefully on the how-to part. First off, the discussion of RDF, RDFs and OWL are very easy to follow, and a large number of real life examples greatly demystify the secrets behind RDF/RDFs/OWL. Secondly, the detailed description of semantic Web search engine is the first concrete example I have ever read that carefully shows the benefit of having semantics added to the Web documents. Thirdly, Yu's book touches nicely some popular real semantic Web applications, such as FOAF and Swoogle, and his insightful discussion truly saved me tons of effort. Also, it is worth mentioning that his writing style has made understanding semantic Web easy: he explains each and every step in detail that one should not be having any problems to follow. Overall, a good book worth owning.

If the elegance of a technology is the unassuming way it fits into our daily lives, what could be more elegant than the Worldwide Web? "Google it", has become as much a part of our lexicon as "Ok?" and yet with the Semantic Web "Googling" will seem like child's play.

In "Introduction to the Semantic Web & Semantic Web Services", Dr. Liyang Yu provides a most understandable explanation of the Semantic Web and what it has to offer. In four major parts Dr. Yu not only helps us understand the limitations of the existing WWW but also how it can be extended to make it more understandable to computers and provide more automated reasoning for people.

From an architectural and engineering perspective we learn that the Semantic Web requires three major components for it to deliver on its promise. These include:
a. Ontology- Which brings together domain relevant information and identifies relationships among the information to make it even more valuable
b. Web-Page Mark-up - Which links decentralized Web pages to the Ontology. These links announce to all readers of a Web-Page that its meaning can be better understood by understanding the larger body of information of which it is a part.
c. Enhanced Search Engine - Which has the capability to apply enhanced reasoning and inference capabilities using the added information provided by the Ontology.

Realizing the benefits of the Semantic Web will require solving a classic chicken and egg problem. Clearly, Ontologies are the added value of the Semantic Web. They create information that never existed before and was never known to the creators of the Web's decentralized and uncoordinated objects.

However, investors are reluctant to create Ontologies without consumers of the information they provide. At the same time Search Engines and Web Page owners are reluctant to make the investments that make Ontologies usable until Ontologies demonstrate the new information they will make available. The key to this problem is jumping starting Ontologies. Entrepreneurs must come forward and imagine the customers that will pay for the value added by Ontologies and simply sell their customers on their value. It is what entrepreneurs do and the Semantic Web is certainly in an entrepreneurial state of its life cycle.

In summary, Dr Yu provides us a clear understanding the continued elegance of the WWW and why it will continue to be an even more unassuming but vital part of our every day lives when it becomes the Semantic Web.