Abstract

Universality, the property of the Web that makes it the largest data and information source in the world, is also the property behind the lack of a uniform organization scheme that would allow easy access to data and information. A semantic web, wherein different applications and Web sites can exchange information and hence exploit Web data and information to their full potential, requires the information about Web resources to be represented in a detailed and structured manner. Resource Description Framework (RDF), an effort in this direction supported by the World Wide Web Consortium, provides a means for the description of metadata which is a necessity for the next generation of interoperable Web applications. The success of RDF and the semantic web will depend on (1) the development of applications that prove the applicability of the concept, (2) the availability of application interfaces which enable the development of such applications, and (3) databases and inference systems that exploit RDF to identify and locate most relevant Web resources. In addition, many practical issues, such as security, ease of use, and compatibility, will be crucial in the success of RDF. This survey aims at providing a glimpse at the past, present, and future of this upcoming technology and highlights why we believe that the next generation of the Web will be more organized, informative, searchable, accessible, and, most importantly, useful. It is expected that knowledge discovery and data mining can benefit from RDF and the Semantic Web.