The Semantic Web Explained: The Technology and Mathematics behind Web 3.0

by Peter Szeredi, Gergely Lukacsy, Tamas Benko

The Semantic Web is a new area of research and development in the field of computer science, which aims to make it easier for computers to process the huge amount of information on the Web, and indeed other large databases, by enabling computers not only to read, but also understand the information. This book is intended to be a textbook about the Semantic Web and related topics, and is based on successful courses taught by the authors. They describe not only the theoretical issues underlying the semantic web, but also practical matters (such as algorithms, optimisation ideas and implementation details) and this aspect will make the book valuable as well to practitioners. Supplementary materials available via the web include include source the code of program examples, and the syntactic description of various languages.

478 pages, Paperback

First published June 16, 2014

Reviews

[Bilal]

I wanted to get an introduction on the semantic web and the OWL, so I picked up two books: This one by Szeredi et al. and Uschold's Demystifying OWL for the enterprise. First I read the first few chapters of Szeredi et al., and then Part I of Uschold.

I found this book authoritative in its style, content, and substance. You can tell immediately that the authors are masters of the subject. The concepts are explained in great detail, and the various possibilities that might arise in any scenario are discussed explicitly. I found the book very readable, and the concepts easily understandable. However, thinking about knowledge representation and automated reasoning is a bit different from most subjects, so some initial difficulty might be natural.

If your need is like mine, i.e., to understand the basics of the semantic web, RDF, ontologies, and OWL, then go ahead and read the first parts as I did. Since I didn't read through the entire book, I can't say anything about its latter parts.