URL: http://www.roetzel.de/swa/
Date created: 2004-12-07
Description:
The Semantic Web Assistant explores the possibilities of a combination of Semantic Web technologies with production rule systems for letting end-users discover some of the powerful applications of the SemanticWeb on their desktop and was developed as a prototype on top of the Jena Semantic Web Framework.
The Semantic Web Assistant combines the data on the Semantic Web with the capabilities of forward chaining production rule systems. It lets the user define simple if-then rules that operate on RDF data obtained from the Web. RDF Schema and OWL Ontologies can be used to deduce additional data. Conclusions of rules include actions that are carried out when a rule instance fires. The Semantic Web Assistant includes some predefined actions, eg. e-mail notification, downloading of web resources and execution of arbitrary system commands. Adding additional actions should be easy.
Possible applications of the Semantic Web Assistant include the monitoring of news sites or weblogs using the RSS 1.0 RDF vocabulary. Given the generic nature of the rule mechanisms applications are only limited by the availability of RDF data and the user's imagination.
Author:
David Roetzel
University of Applied Sciences
Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Germany