Agents and the Semantic Web 2014

Teachers:
Viviana Mascardi, DIBRIS, Unige
Laura Papaleo, LRI - Université de Paris-Sud

Period: 
June 18-20, 2014

Number of hours:
18

Summary:
According to the seminal work of Berners-Lee, Hendler and Lassila (2001) "The
Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which
information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people
to work in cooperation."
Thanks to Semantic Web technologies, today, the World Wide Web has enabled the
creation of a global information space comprising linked documents and data. As the
Web becomes ever more enmeshed with our daily lives, there is a growing desire for
direct access to raw data not currently available on the Web or bound up in hypertext
documents.
Linked Data provides a publishing paradigm in which not only documents, but also
data, can be a first class citizen of the Web, thereby enabling the extension of the
Web with a global data space based on open standards - the Web of Data.
Thus, Linked Data is "about using the Web to create typed links between data from
different sources. These may be as diverse as databases maintained by two
organizations in different geographical locations, or simply heterogeneous
systems within one organization that, historically, have not easily interoperated at the
data level." (Bizer, Heath, Berners-Lee, 2009). The course will survey enabling
technologies for the semantic web and for linked data, including languages, tools
and infrastructures for knowledge representation and rational agents. Indeed,
enabling technologies for the semantic web are now enough established to build
intelligent applications that take advantage of the semantics associated with web
resources. In particular, research on intelligent software agents (Jennings, Sycara,
Wooldridge, 1998) has now reached a great degree of maturity that makes its
exploitation feasible for real applications. The Linked Data, needing to exploit
semantic technologies to cope with the messiness of "the web of data", can take
advantage of intelligent agents as well.

Prerequisites:
Basic computer science knowledge, in particular programming and logic; knowledge
on HTML and XML; no other knowledge on specific tools/languages is required.

Final exam:A SW project or a report followed by an oral presentation or other forms
of evaluation to be defined together with each student.

Registered students:
AMR, Cambiaso, CORRADI,De Nart, Koceva,Leotta, OREGGIA, PICCIAU, Secco,
SCHIAPPACASSE, STOCCO + Vercelli, Novali