THE WORLD NEEDS THIS BOOK
The Semantic Web launched in 2001 with Tim Berners-Lee’s article in Scientific American. By 2004, the W3C had finalized the standardization of the OWL language for modeling ontologies. OWL and the related standards RDF and RDFS enjoyed a brief period of interest, perhaps even hype, in 2007–2009. The interest was short lived.
There were two related reasons that early adopters abandoned the Semantic Web: (1) it was perceived as being too complicated and (2) practitioners didn’t understand it.
The “too complicated” rap was partly due to the fact that it is a fairly complex spec, but it was reinforced by the many books, articles, and tutorials that came out at the time. It almost seemed as if the authors intentionally wanted to encourage the perception of a high priesthood, only able to be fathomed by the chosen few.
The “didn’t understand it” rap was partly due to the complexity, but persisted because developers and modelers tried to recreate the style of model they were comfortable with. Developers build object-oriented-looking ontologies, and relational database modelers built ontologies that looked a lot like the ER models they were familiar with. Each group was disappointed when they couldn’t implement simple constraints, and were frustrated when they finally came up against the “open world assumption.”
This is unfortunate because what we have found in the intervening decade is that this modeling language and the technologies that come along with it are the best bet for reversing the siloed mess that most large enterprises deal with on a daily basis.
What Michael has done here is to create a shallow end of this swimming pool. This is a gentle introduction that anyone, even those with the least background in technology or modeling, can easily follow. He introduces and thoroughly explains the 30% of the OWL spec that practicing ontologists use on an everyday basis. He does this without glossing over the things that make OWL and Semantics so special.
Coming away from this book, you will understand the special place that OWL should have in your enterprise datascape. You will understand how OWL fits in with other standards and technologies. You will appreciate how it can simplify your enterprise ontology like no other technology can.
Michael is uniquely suited for the task of writing this book. His Ph.D. was in Artificial Intelligence, specializing in ontology-driven development of ecological simulation software. He was a very early builder and user of ontologies.
After leaving academia he worked in industry designing and applying ontologies for Boeing and Reinvent. He joined Semantic Arts in 2010. In that time he has designed over ten enterprise ontologies and has taught hundreds of budding ontologists in the subtleties of this technology.
This combination of theoretical background coupled with pragmatic experience is, to the best of my knowledge, unequaled.
It has been a pleasure working with Michael at Semantic Arts these seven-plus years.
Enjoy this book, and welcome to the next generation of enterprise information systems!
Dave McComb