Description

During the past years large-scale systems have experienced a constant evolution, addressing data ecosystems of an increasing scale and complexity. The persistent demand for advanced interoperability models has pushed the progressive development of the semantic technology. Such a technology, as the name itself suggests, aims at the specification of formal semantics that are adopted in order to give meanings to disparate raw data, information and knowledge, enabling in fact ecosystems suitable to advanced reasoning.

The core difference between the semantic technology and other data technologies, for instance the relational database, is its focus on the meaning of the data rather than on its structure only. The most relevant branch of the semantic technology is the Semantic Web technology, which uniquely identifies concepts and builds relationships among them through the Web infrastructure, enabling a global mechanism for linking data with each other.

This course is aimed at providing the principles underpinning the current Web semantic technology, as well as the skills required to enable that technology in real environments, eventually within complex systems. Bridging the gap between theory and application requires a contextual understanding of the semantic technology, in which the different aspects of knowledge and software engineering converge according to an integrated methodology.

We will establish such a methodology holistically and step-by-step, involving progressively all the assets required (languages, tools, software APIs) to build complete semantic ecosystems. An overview of the most popular applications, both with the empirical evaluation of the performance, will be an added value for the course which will end exploring the possible evolution of the semantic technology as well as some research open issues.