On deep annotation

TLDR

The success of the Semantic Web depends on the easy creation, integration, and use of semantic data. The study considers an integration scenario that challenges core assumptions of existing metadata construction methods. The authors propose a framework that combines the presentation and data description layers, defines ontology mapping rules via manual semantic annotation, and uses web services for semantic queries to create metadata for database‑generated web pages. They name the framework deep annotation and argue it is valid because database‑generated pages dominate, page annotation intuitively creates semantic data, and database data should remain in its native form rather than being materialized as RDF.

Abstract

The success of the Semantic Web crucially depends on the easy creation, integration and use of semantic data. For this purpose, we consider an integration scenario that defies core assumptions of current metadata construction methods. We describe a framework of metadata creation when web pages are generated from a database and the database owner is cooperatively participating in the Semantic Web. This leads us to the definition of ontology mapping rules by manual semantic annotation and the usage of the mapping rules and of web services for semantic queries. In order to create metadata, the framework combines the presentation layer with the data description layer -- in contrast to "conventional" annotation, which remains at the presentation layer. Therefore, we refer to the framework as deep annotation 1.We consider deep annotation as particularly valid because, (i), web pages generated from databases outnumber static web pages, (ii), annotation of web pages may be a very intuitive way to create semantic data from a database and, (iii), data from databases should not be materialized as RDF files, it should remain where it can be handled most efficiently -- in its databases.