Reasoning Web Semantic Technologies For Information Systems

The Semantic Web is one of the major current endeavours of applied computer science. The Semantic Web aims at enriching the existing Web with meta-data and processing methods so as to provide Web-based systems with advanced (- called intelligent) capabilities, in particular with context-awarenessand decision support. TheadvancedcapabilitiesrequiredinmostSemanticWebapplicationscen- ios primarily call for reasoning. Reasoning capabilities are o?ered by Semantic Web languages that are currently being developed. Most of these languages, however,are developed mainly from functionality-centred perspectives (e.g., - tology reasoning or access validation) or application-centred perspectives (e.g., Web service retrieval and composition). A perspective centred on the reasoning techniques complementing the above-mentioned activities appears desirable for Semantic Web systems and applications. The Summer School is devoted to this perspective. The “ReasoningWeb” series of annual Summer Schools was started in 2005 on behalf of the work package “Education and Training (ET)” of the Network of Excellence REWERSE. This year’s edition focused on the use of semantic technologies to enhance data access on the Web. For this reason, courses presented a range of techniques and formalisms which bridge semantic-based and data-intensive systems.

This book contains a collection of seven thoroughly revised tutorial papers based on lectures given by leading researchers at the 5th International Summer School on the Reasoning Web, held in Brixen-Bressanone, Italy, from August 30 to September 4, 2009. The objective of the book is to provide a coherent introduction to semantic web methods and research issues with a particular emphasis on reasoning.

The focus of this year’s event was on the use of semantic technologies to enhance data access on the web. Topics covered include design and analysis of reasoning procedures for description logics; answer set programming basics, its modeling methodology and its principal extensions tailored for semantic web applications; languages for constraining and querying XML data; RDF database theory and efficient and scalable support for RDF/OWL data storage, loading, inferencing and querying; tractable description logics and their use for ontology-based data access; and the social semantic desktop, which defines a user’s personal information environment as a source and end-point of the semantic web.