Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise: A Step ...

Defining the Information Model 91
ous information systems, many different terms are used for attributes. The
notion of ontologies, in this scenario, allows us to determine whether entities
from different applications and databases are the same or noncrucial to fusing
information for the purposes of our data analysis.
Existing Web-Based Standards and Ontologies
The use of languages for ontology is beginning to appear, built on reasoning
techniques that provide for the development of special-purpose reasoning services.
In fact, the W3C created a Web standard for an ontology language as
part of its effort to define semantic standards for the Web. The Semantic Web
is the abstract representation of data on the World Wide Web based on the Resource
Description Framework (RDF) and other standards still to be defined.
It is being developed by the W3C in collaboration with a large number of researchers
and industrial partners.
In order for the Semantic Web to function, computers must have access to
structured collections of information and sets of inference rules that they can use
to conduct automated reasoning. This notion is known as knowledge representation.
To this end, and in the domain of the World Wide Web, computers will
find the meaning of semantic data by following hyperlinks to definitions of key
terms and rules for logical reasoning about data. The resulting infrastructure will
spur the development of automated Web Services such as highly functional
agents. What is important here is that the work now being driven by the W3C as
a way to manage semantics on the Web is applicable, at least at the component
level, to the world of application integration, much like XML and Web Services.
An example of the W3C contribution to the use of ontologies is the Web
Ontology Language. OWL is a semantic markup language for publishing and
sharing ontologies on the World Wide Web. OWL is derived from the
DAML+OIL Web Ontology Language and builds on the RDF. OWL assigns a
specific meaning to certain RDF triples. The future Formal Specification, now
in development at the W3C, specifies exactly which triples are assigned a specific
meaning and offers a definition of the meaning. OWL provides a semantic
interpretation only for those parts of an RDF graph that instantiate the
schema. Any additional RDF statements resulting in additional RDF triples are
allowed, but OWL is silent on the semantic consequences of such additional
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