Lightweight Data Modeling in RDF

Abstract

When looking at what “information” means in the context of the Semantic Web, there is an interesting dichotomy (Spyns, Meersman, & Jarrar, 2002; Motik, Horrocks, & Sattler, 2007): On one hand, there is ontology engineering where knowledge is being universally represented and reasoned about. On the other hand, there is data modeling where Semantic Web technology is used to store and process information that is mainly application- dependent. The former receives most of the attention of the research community, but one must not forget that, even in semantic work environments, one frequently encounters the latter: citations, contacts, product information, events, and so forth. In this chapter, we present the editing meta-model (EMM), which provides standards and techniques for implementing RDF editing: It defines an RDF vocabulary for editing and clearly specifies the semantics of this vocabulary. It also sketches user interface mechanisms to illustrate how the vocabulary would be used in practice.