Now that you have learned the mechanics of RDF (see worked-problem-in-JENA), I will show you the technologies stacked on and around RDF. The schema languages RDFS and OWL allow you to learn more about your data and find bugs in your use of RDF (stemming from inconsistencies in your understanding of the world!). You will get a very practical understanding of ontologies and how they help you represent everything from your CD collection to the interactions of proteins and receptors in your brain. You will see how groups at the W3C are exploiting these tools for drug discovery, patient care, and everything in between.

This work on Health Care and Life Sciences represents RDF in different forms depending on the application. I will show examples of RDFa which allows RDF data to be embedded in HTML enabling both a human and a machine to process it. I will also illustrate the use of RdfRDB tools that offer an RDF view of an existing relational database. RDFa combines human-readable and machine-useful data in HTML. RdfRDB tools allow you to use your relational data as if it were RDF, but leave it in its current (very efficient) form.

Where Web 2.0 uses code to interpret and integrate data, the Semantic Web uses queries over a fabric of information. These talks will give you the tools to use and contribute to that fabric.