Aims of Semantic Web
The Semantic Web aims to add a machine tractable, re-purposeable layer to compliment the existing web of natural language hypertext. In order to realise this vision, the creation of semantic annotation, the linking of web pages to ontologies, and the creation, evolution and interrelation of ontologies must become automatic or semi-automatic processes.
In the context of new work on distributed computation, Semantic Web Services (SWSs) go beyond current services by adding ontologies and formal knowledge to support description, discovery, negotiation, mediation and composition. This formal knowledge is often strongly related to informal materials. For example, a service for multi-media content delivery over broadband networks might incorporate conceptual indices of the content, so that a smart VCR (such as next generation TiVO) can reason about programmes to suggest to its owner. Alternatively, a service for B2B catalogue publication has to translate between existing semi-structured catalogues and the more formal catalogues required for SWS purposes. To make these types of services cost-effective we need automatic knowledge harvesting from all forms of content that contain natural language text or spoken data.
Other services do not have this close connection with informal content, or will be created from scratch using Semantic Web authoring tools. For example, printing or compute cycle or storage services. In these cases the opposite need is present: to document services for the human reader using natural language generation.