The idea of the Semantic Web is to
illustrate the contents
of the Internet in such a way that; we can understand what is all about, and see the
relationship between all the data. Then it is possible for the search engine to
understand and satisfy the requests of its users. However, to enable this
function, the search engine needs to know the context of the content and the
request.
First, let's examine the process of searching for online
content. From a computer, this task may seem simple, but researching documents
that are on the Internet can be quite complicated and demanding.
1.
Retrieval of contents can be supported by providing a unique web address to the
user.
2. Computer systems that crawl the Internet (like WebCrawler)
indexes the "title" and "location" of all documents. This pre-search index
allows the user to specify search terms, which typically match those with
'titles' and returns a list of document locations. However, some of the
documents may not be related to the specific content.
3. More advanced
techniques (like Google) provide the capability to specify multiple keywords and
to match phrases that are expected to exist within the documents. The retrieval
of this type of inquiry is supported by metadata, which is previously inserted
into documents, and then copied to search engine computers.
Whether or not, this
is the most common and powerful way to index the Internet, those solutions are
far away to that of the Semantic Web. The reason is the key ingredient
missing is a full and clear context.
There is an important
set of tools needed for developing the Semantic Web: Metadata (simply meaning
data about data), XML (eXtensible Markup Language), and HSL (Hierarchy Scheme
Layers).
One advantage of utilizing Metadata is it clarifies the
context of content more effectively. Another advantage is the XML tag, enabling
you to structure a document in schemes. The new avenue is HSL, which maps all
the schemes into layers, and links all the match points. It is now possible to
crawl through the global schemes and retrieve the content in its most
appropriate context. We can now see and use the Internet as a Semantic Web.