Date: Sep. 21, 2001
Link: http://infomesh.net/2001/swintro/
Source Author or Organization: Sean B. Palmer

This tutorial article is offered as a clear primer on the Semantic Web, a web of data with meaning that can be processed by machines. It is one of a number of Semantic Web education and outreach materials in development to popularize these concepts so the "Semantic Web" is not perceived as the "Pedantic Web".

The article begins with a definition and discussion of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), triples of URI data, the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Notation3, a simpler teaching form of RDF developed by Tim Berners-Lee.

Closed World Machine (CWM), a Python-based XML RDF and Notation3 inference engine, is also introduced in this article, along with examinations of DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML), the act of inferencing, ontologies, the power of Semantic languages follow and the "trust and proof layer", which includes digital signatures and proof languages.