Information Sharing on the Semantic web

Citation

Mann, C.J.H. (2005), "Information Sharing on the Semantic web", Kybernetes, Vol. 34 No. 7/8. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.2005.06734gae.003

Information Sharing on the Semantic web

Information Sharing on the Semantic web

Heiner Stuckenschmidt and Frank van HarmelenSpringer-VerlagHeidelberg2005ISBN 3-540-20594-2xix, 216 pp., Hardcover59.95, £46.00, sFr106.00, $79.95

Published in the series “Advanced information and knowledge processing” (Eds X. Wu and L.C. Jain) the authors from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands tackle the difficult task of helping us use and understand the semantic web. We all appreciate the problems of having too much information and the way in which we should access it and process it in relation to our needs. Finding what we need and then using it in relation to other information is an increasingly complex operation. We are told that in this book the problem which, of course, occurs at many different levels, ranges from:

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  overcrowded disks of our own PCs to the mass of unstructured information on the World Wide Web. It is commonly understood that this problem of information sharing can only be solved by giving computers better access to the semantics of the information. While it has been recognized that ontologies play a crucial role in solving the open problems, most approaches rely on the existence of well-established data structures.

To overcome some of these shortfalls the authors describe ontology-based approaches for resolving semantic heterogeneity in weakly structured environments particularly the world wide web. The five parts of the book cover are:

Part I: Information Sharing and Ontologies: Semantic Integration; Ontology-Based Information Integration; Ontology Languages for the Semantic Web – Part II: Creating Ontologies and Metadata: Ontology Creation; Metadata Generation – Part III: Retrieval, Integration and Querying: Retrieval and Integration; Sharing Statistical Information; Spatially-Related Information; Integration and Retrieval Systems – Part IV: Distributed Ontologies: Modularization; Evolution Management – Part V: Conclusions: Conclusions – Proofs of Theorems – References – Index.

The book is considered to provide not only a comprehensive overview of the “State of the art”, but also research recently published in relevant areas such as ontology design for information integration, metadata generation and management, and the representation and management of distributed ontologies. The text aims to be directed at researchers and students as well as for professionals in many areas such as e-commerce and knowledge management.

C.J.H. MannSection Editor