Unit-2
Resource Description Framework
(RFD)
Prepared by
Vaishnavi Moorthy
Assistant Professor
What is RFD?
To create a markup file, one can use RDF (Resource Description
Framework) language
Basic building block for supporting the Semantic Web.
RDF is to the Semantic Web what HTML has been to the Web.
RDF is an XML-based language for describing information
contained in a Web resource. (A Web resource can be a Web
page, an entire Web site, or any item on the Web that contains
information in some form).
RDF is a language recommended by W3C and it is all about
metadata.
RDF is capable of describing any fact (resource) independent
of any domain.
RDF provides a basis for coding, exchanging , and reusing
structured metadata.
RDF is structured; i.e., it is machine-understandable.
Machines can do useful operations with the knowledge
expressed in RDF.
RDF allows interoperability among applications exchanging
machine understandable information on the Web.
The Basic Elements of RDF
Resource: RDF is a standard for metadata; i.e., it offers a
standard way of specifying data about something
It can be a Web page, part of a Web page (a word on a page,
for instance), the whole Web site, or even a real-world object,
such as a book, a human being, a dog it can be anything
A resource is identified by a uniform resource identifier (URI),
and this URI is used as the name of the resource
Rule #1: The name of a resource must be global. In other words,
if you have a doubt that someone else might also use the same
name to refer to something else, then you cannot use that name.
Example:
http://www.yuchen.net/photography/SLR#Nikon-D70
This resource is a real-world object, i.e., a Nikon D70 camera; it is a
single lens reflex (SLR) camera.
URL http://www.yuchen.net/photography/SLR is used as the first
part of the URI. More precisely, it is used as a namespace to guarantee
that the underlying resource is uniquely identified; this URL may or
may not exist.
At the end of the namespace, # is used as the fragment identifier
symbol to separate the namespace from the local resource name,
i.e.,Nikon-D70.
Now the namespace + # + localResourceName gives us the final URI
for the resource; it is globally named.
Property Property is a resource that has a name and can be
used as a property; i.e., it can be used to describe some specific
aspect, characteristic, attribute, or relation of the given resource.
Example: http://www.yuchen.net/photography/SLR#weight
Statement- An RDF statement is used to describe properties of
resources
resource (subject) + property (predicate) + property value (object)
http://www.yuchen.net/photography/SLR#Nikon-D70 has a
http://www.yuchen.net/photography/SLR#weight whose value is
1.4 lb
define the following namespace:
xmlns:mySLR=http://www.yuchen.net/photography/SLR#
The statement can be rewritten in a much shorter form:
mySLR:Nikon-D70 has a mySLR:weight whose value is 1.4 lb.
Rule #2: Knowledge (or information) is expressed as a statement
in the form of subject, predicate, and object, and this order
should never be changed.
RDF vocabulary consists of the following names:
Syntax names: RDF, Description, ID, about, parseType,
resource, li, nodeID, datatype.
Class names: Seq, Bag, Alt, Statement, Property, XMLLiteral,
List.
Property names: subject, predicate, object, type, value, first,
Rest_n (where n is a decimal integer greater than zero with
no leading zeros).
Resource names: nil.
Example of an RDF Document
in-scope base URI + "#" + rdf:ID value
RFD Triples
Fundamental rules of RDF
Rule #1: The name of a resource must be global. In other words, if you
have a doubt that someone else might also use the same name to refer
to something else, then you cannot use that name.
Rule #2: Knowledge (or information) is expressed as a statement in the
form of subject, predicate, and object, and this order should never be
changed.
Rule #3: The most exciting one! I can talk about resource at my will,
and if I choose to use an existing URI to identify the resource I am
talking about, then the following is true:
1. The resource I am talking about and the resource already identified
by this existing URI represents exactly the same concept.
2. Everything I have said about this resource is considered to be
additional knowledge about that resource.
Aggregation and distributed information
Relationship between DC and RDF
The Relationship Between XML And RDF
Without a shared vocabulary, the same words can always
mean different concepts, and different words can possibly
have the same meaning.
Without a shared vocabulary, there will be no way to
semantically markup a Web page.
Without a shared vocabulary, distributed information will
likely remain distributed; an automatic agent that is
capable of processing this distributed information on a
global scale is just too hard to build.
RDF Tool
the RDF validator provided by
www.w3.org at www.w3.org/RDF/validator/
RDFS (RDF Schema)
Line 8 says Nikon D70 is an instance of a class called SLR, but
where is this class defined? What does it look like?
If SLR is a class, are there any other classes that are defined as
its superclasses or subclasses?
The rest of this RDF document describes several properties of
this class (such as soldItem and review), and if you are familiar
with object oriented design, these properties can be viewed as
member variables. But the question is, are there any other
properties that one can define?
does not define the vocabulary used; that is, RDF does not say anything
about the classes, subclasses and the relations that may exist between these
classes.
RDFS is a language one can use to create a vocabulary for
describing classes, subclasses, and properties of RDF
resources; it is a recommendation from W3C
The RDFS language also associates the properties with the
classes it defines.
RDFS can add semantics to RDF predicates and resources: it
defines the meaning of a given term by specifying its
properties and what kinds of objects can be the values of these
properties.
RDFS is about vocabulary
RDFS also uses the same data model as RDF, i.e., a graph or
triples. RDFS can be viewed as an extension of RDF
A Simple Camera Vocabulary
Suppose the keyword Digital is used to search for information
about digital cameras; assume also that one Web document has
been marked up to have the aforementioned RDF triples
associated with it.
The search engine reads the RDF triples and concludes that this
Web page
the combination of RDF triples and the RDF vocabulary, which
we call RDF schema.
Core Elements Of RDFS
Core classes: rdfs:Resource, rdf:Property, rdfs:Class,
rdfs:datatype
Core properties: rdfs:subClassOf, rdfs:subPropertyOf
Core constraints: rdfs:range, rdfs:domain
rdfs:Class, rdfs:subClassOf, rdf:Property, rdfs:domain,
and rdf:range.
rdfs:Class, rdfs:subClassOf, rdf:Property, rdfs:domain,
rdf:range, rdfs:datatype, rdfs:subPropertyOf, rdfs:label,
and rdfs:comment.
Semantics, or the meaning of a given term, is defined by
specifying its properties and what kinds of objects can be
the values of these properties.
Semantics can be understood by a machine by following the
structure of resource-property-propertyValue.
The Concepts Of Ontology And Taxonomy
Web Ontology Language (OWL)
An ontology defines the terms used to describe and represent
an area of knowledge.
Properties
It is domain specific.
It defines a group of terms in the given domain and the
relationships among them.
taxonomy mainly concerns itself with classification issues
not the properties to express further constraints and
relationships.
The Benefits Of Ontology
It provides a common and shared understanding/definition
about certain key concepts in the domain.
It provides a way to reuse domain knowledge.
It makes the domain assumptions explicit.
Together with ontology description languages (such as RDF
schema), it provides a way to encode knowledge and
semantics such that machines can understand.
It makes automatic large-scale machine processing possible.
Another Look At Inferencing Based On RDF
Schema
All this reasoning power is made possible by having an
ontology defined.
The resource-property-propertyValue structure always
ensures that reasoning can be conducted in an efficient way,
even on a large scale.
OWL better than RDFS
Express relationships among classes defined in different
documents across the Web
Construct new classes by unions, intersections, and
complements of other existing classes
Add constraints on the number and type for properties of
classes
Determine if all members of a class will have a particular
property, or if only some of them might
