Capturing Wisdom on the Web
The OWL name is derived from Ontology Web Language. It would have been more correct to refer to it as the Web Ontology Language, but the W3C felt that the owl would be a good symbol for the language. The owl has always been attributed the attribute of wisdom. The W3C also pointed out that the owl in “Winnie the Pooh” spells his name WOL.
OWL is equivalent to the term semantic-web. The semantic-web represents the concept of storing knowledge on the web and OWL is a language designed to store knowledge.
The knowledge captured and stored today on the web in HTML and other forms of documents is intended to be for human consumption. Knowledge stored using semantic-web languages is intended to be machine-readable. Having this semantic capability opens the web to even greater possibilities.
The move towards a semantic language for capturing knowledge has been steady. The W3C published the recommendation for RDF (Resource Description Framework) in 2004. RDF was developed from the contribution of many other projects. The first version of OWL was published in 2004 to provide a more comprehensive language than RDF. The current standard version, OWL 2, was published by the W3C in 2009. OWL 2 represents a substantial revision based upon member submissions.
The OWL 2 language has gained acceptance through the implementation of many innovative applications. These applications are being developed across almost every industry. Universities in England and the United States are performing the primary research in conjunction with leading technology organizations.
It appears that this explosion of applications is only setting the stage for a major breakthrough. Those working in this field have an expectation that there will be a “killer” application that will push the semantic-web to the forefront of everyone’s life.
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