Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

After years of mostly theoretical research, Semantic Web Technologies are now reaching out into application areas like bioinformatics, eCommerce, eGovernment, or Social Webs. Applications like genomic ontologies, semantic web services, automated catalogue alignment, ontology matching, or blogs and social networks are constantly increasing, often driven or at least backed up by companies like Google, Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and others. The need to leverage the potential of combining information in a meaningful way in order to be able to benefit from the Web will create further demand for and interest in Semantic Web research.

This movement, based on the growing maturity of related research results, necessitates a reliable reference source from which beginners to the field can draw a first basic knowledge of the main underlying technologies as well as state-of-the-art application areas. This handbook, put together by three leading authorities in the field, and supported by an advisory board of highly reputed researchers, fulfils exactly this need. It is the first dedicated reference work in this field, collecting contributions about both the technical foundations of the Semantic Web as well as their main usage in other scientific fields like life sciences, engineering, business, or education.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Semantic Web technologies are the methodologies and techniques for annotating and analyzing the Web to support the automatic review and analysis of Web page content by software. This handbook is a massive two-volume, 1,000-page, 22-chapter work on the topic. Each chapter in these two volumes appears to be written somewhat independently, with an individual table of contents and separate set of references. For some chapters, the reference list is somewhat sparse, but that may be a function of the relative newness of the subject. Volume 1, comprising 14 chapters, covers semantic Web basics and various technologies. There does appear to be some overlap between the content of several chapters, especially in the first part of the book. The second volume contains eight chapters, each detailing an applications area of semantic Web technology. In general, the applications chapters have quite substantial sets of references. A comprehensive glossary of terms and a fairly modest index appear at the end of volume 2. The first volume of this set may be useful to those who want to learn more about the subject, while the second volume may be of more interest to practitioners in the discipline. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and above. J. Beidler University of Scranton