The Semantic Web is not a well established field yet. It is a new ongoing international initiative. The concepts, the ideas and the tools are still in the forming state. Computer Scientists from industry and academia are exploring the possibility of creating a "Semantic Web," in which meaning is made explicit, allowing machines to process and integrate Web resources intelligently. In this course, we will study the world of the next generation Web. Topics will include World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards such as the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and the Resource Description Framework (RDF), as well as Description Logic and Ontologies.

This is a special topics graduate course with a strong emphasis on research. It will consist of lectures given by the instructor as well as presentations by students about their project and assignments.

Homework will consist of both written assignments and programming assignments. Each student has to submit a written critiques of research papers. The exam will be held in class at some point near the middle of the semester. There will be two mini-projects involving developing an application of the Semantic Web. Class participation includes class attendance and active participation in the discussion of readings.

1. Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila, The Semantic Web: A new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities, Scientific American, May, 2001
2. XML online tutorials: XML Revolution: Technologies for the Web
3. Frank Manola, Eric Miller, RDF Primer, January 23, 2003
4. RDF Tutorial - Part 1: Basic Syntax and Containers
5. Tutorial for RDF and RDFS
6. Dave Beckett's guide contains links to many RDF resources including examples, documents, software, tools and projects that use it.
   
7. XML Watch: Finding Friends with XML and RDF: The Friend-of-a-Friend vocabulary can make it easier to manage online communities, Edd Dumbill, June 1, 2002.
8. R. Davis, .H. Shrobe, and P. Szolovits, What is a Knowledge Representation? AI Magazine, 14(1):17-33, 1993
9. W. Pidcock, What are the differences between a vocabulary, a taxonomy, a thesaurus, an ontology, and a metamodel?
10. N. Noy and D. McGuinness, Ontology Development 101: A guide to Creating Your First Ontology, Stanford University.
11. O. Lassila and D. McGuiness., The Role of Frame-Based Representation on the Semantic Web, Linkoping Electronic Articles in Computer and Information Science, vol.6, no. 5, 2001.
12. T. Berners-Lee, D. Connolly, and S. Hawke, Semantic Web Tutorial Using N3, WWW2003 Conference May 2003
13. D. L. McGuinness, Inference on the Web
14. Sean B. Palmer, The Semantic Web: An Introduction(SWAG)
15. J. F. Sowa, Ontology, Agents, Knowledge Representation
16. T. Berners-Lee, World Wide Web Services: keynote-audio, "Are we done yet? presentation on Semantic Web and Web Services
17. T. Berners-Lee, with M. Fischetti, Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor, Harper, San Francisco, 1999.
18. W3C: Presentation at November 2001 meeting, Semantic Web Activity: Advanced Development, Dan Brickley's Notes
19. OntoWeb: Ontology-based information exchange for knowledge management and electronic commerce
20. DARPA Agent Markup Language Homepage
21. The Semantic Web Community Portal
22. Metadata Resources
23. Conceptual Graphs and the Semantic Web