Semantic Connectivity - Essay Example

Introduction Semantic connectivity has been incorporated by the search engines 'to build their own thesaurus and dictionary to help them to determine how certain terms & topics are related' (Studer, 2003). The semantic connectivity is adopted through the scanning of 'their massive databases of content on the web' (Menzel, 2003). It has been researched by the professionals that the use of the semantic connectivity measurement tools does not necessarily optimize the search operations, but however helps in the measurement of the keyboard phrases to be targeted, and measures the keyword phrases to be included on the page related to particular topic (Chee, 2005). The semantic connectivity also helps in the measurement of the relationships of text on other high rankings sites or pages. Semantic Connectivity: Discussion The semantic connectivity measurement help in the search of the pages which provide the relevant themed links, although the source for this material is highly technical, SEO specialists need only know the principles to take away valuable information' (Studer, 2003). The Information Retrieval has several technical terms which are difficult to comprehend, 'these can be broken down and understood even by an SEO novice' (Pollock, 2004). In the software technology, 'the encoding of the meanings individually from the data and the contents files' (Pollock, 2004), and similarly the encoding of the meanings from the application code is achievable through semantic technology. The semantic technology has enabled the people and the machines to understand, comprehend, share and reason at the time of execution. The evolution of the semantic technology has been responsible for the implementation, variation and addition of the 'new relationships or interconnecting programs in a different way can be just as simple as changing the external model that these programs share' (Studer, 2003). It is essential to explain the meanings and relationships, and 'hard wired into data formats and the application program code at design time' (Menzel, 2003), therefore at the instance of making changes, there is need to amend the previously un-exchanged information i.e. 'two programs need to interoperate in a new way, the humans must get involved' (Michael, 2003). It is essential that the parties under off-line condition should explain and communicate among themselves the knowledge of the incorporated changes, and the extent of the changes, 'and then recode the data structures and program logic to accommodate it' (Pollock, 2004), in later stages the application of these changes have to be incorporated into the database and the application, it is fundamental to regard 'semantic technologies as meaning-centered' (Michael, 2003) with inherited features and modules for the 'auto recognition of topics and concepts, the extraction of the information and the interpretation of the meaning, categorization' (Michael, 2003). The semantic technology is capable to answer any given question, and the scope of the search is itself wide, therefore the technology is capable of searching for 'topics, concepts, associations that span a vast number of sources' (Pollock, 2002). Furthermore, the semantic technology has provided 'an abstraction layer above existing modules of the Information Technology that enables bridging and interconnection of data, content, and processes' (Michael, 2003), and the technology has proven to be an additional dimension which has provided 'far more intelligent, capable, relevant, and responsive interaction than with information technologies alone' (Menzel, 2003). The semantic technology has been responsible for the evolution of the World Wide Web, through this medium the web literature can be read in the format acceptable by the software agents, beside the natural language. The semantic technology has provisions for the exchange of information, and its integration (Chee, 2005). Semantic Technology: Holy Grail It is commonly acknowledged that, 'the holy grail is the achievement of fully automatic semantic interoperability among independently developed and heterogeneous agents' (Michael, 2003). The problem associated with the semantic connectivity has been responsible for the cryptography, and is intractable. The technology experts have incorporated many assumptions, 'then relax them one by one as technology progresses' (Menzel, 2003). The assumptions include, 'that all parties use a single language for representing ontology; that all members in a given exchange community use a single shared ontology, or a single shared upper ontology, with distinct domain ontology, or a shared interlingua ontology to map individual ontology to and from; that semantic mapping among ontology will be human-assisted, rather than fully automated; that mapping will be done between lightweight ontology, with a limited role for automated reasoning; that there is adequate infrastructure support for community repositories of both ontology and inter-ontology mappings'. The community related to the semantic connectivity has invested efforts which have focused upon the viability of the certain assumptions, for this purpose, the vendors of the ontology tool have supported the Web Ontology Language, which has been approved by the W3C as the 'standard ontology language for the web' (Michael, 2003). The assumptions also include aspects relevant to 'the theoretical extremes for semantic integration' (Bernstein, 2003). The creation of maps is considered to be 'a labor-intensive and error prone activity, even for humans' (Pollock, 2002), therefore many of the software related to the current mapping tools are semi-automated, the semi-automated nature of the tools have helped the users to communicate in an interactive manner. The cases where the accuracy is of fundamental importance, such an approach is expected to provide good results. The application of the linguistic and learning techniques assist in the mapping operation in automated manner. The use of the fully automated features has reflected series of error, 'the ontology that these techniques are used on tends to be less formal'(Pollock, 2002). The semantic connectivity requires the user to select the mapping tool which provides adequate accuracy and cost-effective automation, with reduced expenses towards the labor. The semantic connectivity comprises of the 'philosophy, a set of design principles, collaborative working groups, and a variety of enabling technologies' (Michael, 2003), there are remaining prospective future possibilities which have to be materialized and implemented. The major element associated with the semantic technology is the 'balance between using semantically lightweight representations versus semantically rich representations with formal axiomatizations' (Bernstein, 2003). The Tim Berners shared his opinion regarding the evolution and the implementation of the semantic technology as, 'I have a dream for the Web in which computers become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web including the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A Semantic Web, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The intelligent agents people have touted for ages will finally materialize' (Pollock, 2002). Such situation can happen in real if the humans are successful in the efficient usage of the internet connection and application software, and are successful in the interference of these two factors so that there is coherence between the respective outcomes in the form of the semantic technology. The semantic connectivity has the potential to offer benefit to the semantic publishing, the web feature of the semantic technology has the potential to 'revolutionize scientific publishing, such as real-time publishing and sharing of experimental data on the Internet' (Michael, 2003), and such an opportunity is under discussion by the W3C HCLS group's Scientific Publishing Task Force. It has been researched that the 'many semantic mapping, integration and/or interoperability projects take place more or less in a vacuum' (Michael, 2003), therefore if the communities seek the adoption of the semantic connectivity to emerge of gigantic scale, it requires the establishment of certain infrastructure which offer an opportunity for the easy registration usage and access of different items i.e. ontology, mappings between ontology, mapping languages, and translation engines. The vision of the semantic connectivity can be determined through the elaboration of the issue requests i.e. 'given this message, encoded using ontology A, please return a translated message encoded using ontology B, and please use this particular mapping and that particular translation engine' (Menzel, 2003). The infrastructure required for the practical development of such concept has yet to be evolved and revised, however some limited progress has been materialized in this regard. Concerns Associated with the Semantic Technology Presently, the data on the web is published in the format of the Hyper Text Markup Language i.e. a markup convention that is used for coding a body of text interspersed with multimedia objects such as images and interactive forms. The semantic connectivity is based upon Resource Description Framework, which is specifically developed for the manipulation and the combination of the data. The framework is useful in the description of the 'arbitrary things such as people, meetings, and airplane parts' (Michael, 2003). The semantic connectivity is based upon 'the descriptive technologies i.e. Resource Description Framework and Web Ontology Language, and the data-centric, customizable Extensible Markup Language', such technologies have been integrated to offer substitute for the contents of the web documents. The feasibility of the semantic connectivity has been challenged, and elements relevant to the 'perspective of the human behavior and personal preferences which ostensibly diminish the likelihood of its fulfillment' (Michael, 2003), therefore the uncertainty of the human behavior has been a source of concern towards the effectiveness of the development achieved in the semantic technology. The reservation against the semantic connectivty includes the limitations which have 'stem from the current state of software engineering itself' (Pollock, 2002). The element relevant to the censorship and privacy have diluted the enthusiasm associated with the semantic connectivity, 'text-analyzing techniques can now be easily bypassed by using other words, metaphors for instance, or by using images in place of words' (Michael, 2003). The critics have expressed their concern regarding the authorship of the articles, the semantic connectivity will require the identification of the author, and therefore 'very little anonymity is associated with the semantic technology' (Dieter, 2003). The semantic connectivity consume more time to create and publish the content, because there will be two formats associated with each activity i.e. different data for machines and different data for humans. The activities of the companies which are likely to incorporate the semantic technology are expected to slowdown. References 1. Michael Uschold, Michael Gruninger. Ontologies and Semantics for Seamless Connectivity. Institute for Systems Research Publication. 2003. 2. Pollock, J. Integration's Dirty Little Secret: It's a Matter of Semantics Whitepaper, The Interoperability Company. Prentice Hall Publication. February 2002. 3. Pollock, J. Adaptive Information: Improving Business through Semantic Interoperability, Grid Computing, and Enterprise Integration. John Wiley & Sons. 2004. 4. S. Staab, R. Studer. Handbook on Ontologies. Springer Publication. 2003. 5. Melnik, S., Rahm, E., Bernstein, P. Developing Metadata-Intensive Applications. Journal of Web Semantics Volume 1, Issue 1. 2003. 6. Gruninger, M. and Menzel. Process Specification Language: Principles and Applications. AI Magazine. 2003. pp. 24-74. 7. Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. O'Reilly Publication. 2002. 8. Dieter Fensel. Spinning the Semantic Web: Bringing the World Wide Web to Its Full Potential. MIT Press. 2003. pp. 98. 9. Chee-Kit Looi. Artificial Intelligence in Education Supporting Learning Through Intelligent and Socially. IOS Press. 2005. pp. 187. Read More