Pascal Hitzler

New Textbook: Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies

Foundaqtions of Semantic Web TechnologiesHolding the printed version of our new book in hand – that’s quite a sense of achievement: Pascal Hitzler, Markus Krötzsch, Sebastian Rudolph, Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies, Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2009. And I think we made a difference with this book, since it not only provides intuitive introductions to RDF(S), OWL 1+2, RIF, SPARQL, but also an in-depth treatment of the formal semantics (including tableau algorithms) – plus applications, tools, a bit on ontology engineering, OWL+Rules, conjunctive queries, and exercises+solutions. Ready-to-use for self-study or teaching. We will also collect slides on the book webpage.

Since our German book has become a widely used textbook for university courses in the German speaking countries, we expect no less from the new book: The didactic rationale is basically unchanged, but we cover much more material, and have obviously brought the contents up to date.

And we’ve already found a first typo: The heading to Section 1.4 reads: “Semanic Web Technologies.” Is that a Freudian Slip?

Pascal Hitzler

Pascal Hitzler

OWL 2 core documents have moved to W3C Candidate Recommendation

OWL 2, the currently ongoing revision of the Web Ontology Language, has become a W3C Candidate Recommendation.  This means that there is a call for implementations now, and if they meet the requirements, it is intended that the documents proceed to Proposed Recommendation status – just one step away from being a full W3C Recommendation.

The general entry point is the Document Overview. For OWL 2 in a nutshell, see the Primer. Or have a look at our ESWC09 tutorial (Part 1).

Pascal Hitzler

Pascal Hitzler

AI Mashup Challenge 2009

The Annual (German) AI Conference goes semantic: In 2009 there’s an “Ontologies & Semantic Web” track, Franz Baader and Frank van Harmelen are invited speakers, and there’s a tutorial on OWL 2 and Rules.

As a special treat, there’s also going to be a Mashup Challenge – which promises to be a fun event.

  • Dates: September 15 – 18, 2009
  • Location: Paderborn, Germany
  • Paper submission: April 26, 2009
  • Mashup Challenge Deadline: July 15, 2009

[Pascal Hitzler]