Your guide to building working solutions for the Semantic Web.

We wrote Semantic Web Programming to offer a useful guide to get the Semantic Web to do stuff – such as data integration and rich data analysis. We are active developers in this space and directly see its potential.  We outline the key concepts, tools, and methods you need to program the Semantic Web to achieve these goals.  Our book is filled with practical, easy-to-follow, examples using working code to illustrate how to take advantage of the many data sources and services available today, especially non-semantic ones like instant messaging, relational databases, and web services such as those offered by Facebook. 

We make sense of the Semantic acronym soup by building real solutions based on Java - not just explaining the acronyms.  You see the role each plays through its contribution to a working solution. The book is divided into four main sections:

1. Introduces the terms and then quickly builds a working Hello Semantic Web application that touches all the key areas from building the knowledge model to reasoning about it.  This working example introduces the major Semantic Web topics covered in the rest of the book.
2. Covers the foundations of building a semantic model; the raw material and structure of a Semantic Web application.  This portion covers basic and advanced modeling concepts including OWL 2, using rules and inference to expand and validate those concepts.  In addition, methods to navigate, search, and query the working model are covered at length.
3. Takes you directly into useful applications that import information directly from relational databases, instant messaging, and web services to form the knowledge model.  This section continues by unifying the various data elements to form a cohesive knowledge model.  It concludes by exporting the knowledge in many formats including SPARQL endpoints, microformats and RDFa to make the information useful and accessible to others.
4. Expands on the programming examples by adding methods for properly managing space and time, semantic web services, and best practices. The section ends with the bleeding edge of the Semantic Web including ontology management, advanced automatic alignment, advanced reasoning, and rich visualizations.

Our interest in this topic didn’t stop at our last written word (we continue to code each day!).   We welcome questions, comments, and concerns as we partner with you on your quest for Semantic Web solutions.  Visit us on our book website; semwebprogramming.org or email us directly. We hope you enjoy reading and learning about the Semantic Web as much as we did creating and writing it.  John Hebeler, Matt Fisher, Ryan Blace, and Andrew Perez-Lopez.