Product Details
Explorer's Guide to the Semantic Web

Explorer's Guide to the Semantic Web
By Thomas B. Passin

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Product Description

Written for developers and programmers, this guide acquaints users with the basic technologies and their interrelations that will be instrumental in the development of the Semantic Web. Key technology areas are covered, such as knowledge modeling (RDF, Topic Maps), agents (DAML, FIPA), and Trust and Authentication. This broad introduction takes a basic conceptual approach so that developers and programmers with a wide range of backgrounds understand the essential nature of the Semantic Web, how it works, and which technologies are being used or proposed for the Semantic Web's development. Important points are illustrated with diagrams and code fragments to help develop a familiarity with the latest Semantic Web initiatives.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #584390 in Books
  • Published on: 2004-03-01
  • Format: Illustrated
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 300 pages

Editorial Reviews

Review
"I recommend this book to students, developers, and researchers." -- Computing Reviews

"Particularly well written . . . highly recommended." -- Choice

About the Author
Thomas B. Passin is principal systems engineer at Mitretek Systems, a nonprofit systems and information engineering firm. He has been involved in data modeling and created several complex database-backed web sites and has also became engaged in a range of conceptual modeling approaches and graphical modeling technologies. He was a key member of a team that developed several demonstration XML-based web service applications, and worked on creating XML versions of draft standards originally written in ASN.1. He is the coauthor of Signal Processing in C. He lives in Reston, Virginia.

Customer Reviews

Excellent overview for the non-expert.5
This book helped me a lot. I am not a Web expert. It provided me with a basic understanding of the principles and technologies involved in the Semantic Web. Good overview with just enough depth. It is starting to get out dated (published 2004). Some technologies are beyond the point described in the book (e.g. DAML-S replaced by OWL). Great book.

A layperson's read....4
I am a semantic web researcher and as someone actively working in this field, this book was a breath of fresh air. Since lots of the other SemWeb books either seemed like conference proceedings or hoity-toity handwaving. This book is an excellent read for people who have some basic understanding of web technologies and want to learn where they are headed next. Business analysts, CEOs, CIOs, Computer Programmers, poets and painters- anyone and everyone with an interest in web-related development should read this book.

The only reason that I did not give a 5-star is because it tried to be more concise than necessary, when I felt more detail should be given.

A mixed bag...3
This book is a bit of a mixed bag for me. The book's organization, content, and layout were well thought out. There are excellent high

level explanations of RDF, OWL, and other Semantic Web concepts. This is all well and good, but it fails with respect to one major point:

what exactly am I supposed to be exploring? The Semantic Web as described in the book sounds great... but there are more technologies

required to make it work than those described in this book. The most telling thing in this book is the fact that most of the technologies

are already available, smoe in limited form, some better defined, and yet, the author has difficulty coming up with practical applications

for almost any of it, outside of the passing mention of RSS, and an appendix detailing Friend of a Friend (FOAF).

Bottom line: if you're looking for a good, high level explanation of the various technologies, this a very good book to read. If you're

looking for something that can provide you with a springboard to develop ideas for the Semantic Web, this is definitely not the book for you.