For researchers and students in areas related to the Semantic Web, the authors provide not only a comprehensive overview of the state of the art, but also present in detail recent research in areas like ontology design for information integration, metadata generation and management, and representation and management of distributed ontologies. For professionals in areas such as e-commerce and knowledge management, the book provides decision support on the use of novel technologies, information about potential problems, and guidelines for the successful application of existing technologies, useful as a quick reference on the key techniques in intelligent data analysis.