Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist: Effective Modeling in RDFS and OWL [Brossura]

The book is well organized, well written, and clear in its exposition of the subject. The way they build up, from the simpler concepts of RDF through RDFS to OWL, is a great way to learn the subject. The examples are instructive and well organized. The summaries at the end of each chapter help put it all in perspective.

In spite of the title of the book, I think many people who do not consider themselves "working ontologists" would benefit from reading the book.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has some familiarity with knowledge representation but needs to learn how the Semantic Web does it. (It might be a bit of a tough read for someone with no prior exposure to knowledge representation of any kind.)

I gave the first edition of this book five stars, because it really has been the first and most definitive book on the subject. That edition had some quality and editing problems, but these have been addressed in the second edition. Indeed many of the explanations have been much improved.

As a means for learning the semantic web, this is perfect.

Having previously read it and more or less understood the topic as a whole, however, a year later I am trying to solve a problem and I need a reference book. In this role, it is seriously lacking. The index is terrible. There is no glossary. I tried to look up "objectProperty" and "dataTypeProperty" (to me, the most important "properties"). Indeed, I tried to figure out exactly what the authors' definition of "property" is. "Equivalent", "intersection", "transfer", and "union" are indexed under "property", but the basic definition of the word is not to be found, nor are the two main kinds of properties I just referred to. I wanted to figure out the difference between "type" and "class". I did eventually, but neither term shows up in the index. (OK, "class" does, with 10 sub-terms, but none of them include the basic definition of the word.) What is the difference between an "rdfs:class" and an "owl:class"?

The style is as a narrative, and this is a good way to teach. As a source to answer questions, however, it is seriously lacking. Instead of "FAQ" at the end, a glossary would have been nice.

So close...

This is one of the best books I read on Semantic Web and its alternative title should be "The Most Gentle Introduction to the Semantic Web". Gentle indeed, but not in the sense of "semantic web for dummies".

One of the authors, Prof. James Hendler, is the co-author of *THE* article that introduced the concept of Semantic Web to the world (Scientific American Magazine, May 2001). Being an expert in a field and writing a top notch technical introduction that strikes a very good balance between utility and clarity do not necessarily go hand in hand, but in this particular case readers like me should consider themselves very lucky because this book is the perfect blend. Not only does it introduce and explain almost all of the concepts in a very clear and lively manner, but it is full of real-world examples. Being far from a dry technical introduction, the book shows "why"s of Semantic Web with "how"s of it.

At its current page count, it is only expected that the book avoids some implementation- and programming-related topics, but books such as A Developer's Guide to the Semantic Web can easily fill this gap. On the other hand, despite the abundance of books that jump into nitty gritty details of semantic web programming, the books that describe semantic modeling practices and kindly show the pitfalls of ontology design belong to a very rare species, and this fact alone is one of the reasons why I give five stars in this review.

One of the most original parts of the book is at the end: In a brief appendix, the authors give a list of the most frequently asked questions related to semantic web, modeling, ontology design, together with short answers and page number references for further explanations.

Creating a useful ontology for a real-world domain which can carry its weight and prove its utility in many different software applications is not something that can simply be mastered by reading this book, it takes lots of effort, trial and error. Nevertheless this book, in its updated second edition, is a very useful, thoughtful and elegant contribution to the growing literature of practical semantic web.