Automatic creation and simplified querying of semantic web content: An approach based on information-extraction ontologies

Abstract

The semantic web represents a major advance in web utility, but it is currently difficult to create semantic-web content because pages must be semantically annotated through processes that are mostly manual and require a high degree of engineering skill. Furthermore, users need an effective way to query the semantic web, but any burden placed on users to learn a query language is unlikely to garner sufficient user support and interest. Unfortunately, both the creation and use of semantic-web pages are difficult, and these are precisely the processes that must be made simple in order for the semantic web to truly succeed. We propose using information-extraction ontologies to handle both of these challenges. In this paper we show how a successful ontology-based data-extraction technique can (1) automatically generate semantic annotations for ordinary web pages, and (2) support free-form, textual queries that will be relatively simple for end users to write. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.