Milestones in Semantic Web adoption

Legacy questions from answers.semanticweb.com
#1

I'm preparing to give a lecture about the Semantic Web next week, and to put some things in context, I'm talking about how the Semantic Web has gotten to where it is today. Could you help me identify significant milestones in the growth and adoption of Semantic Web?

I'm making this a community wiki, as I hope people will contribute to help build a good summary.

Consuming SW data on the Web:

  • Yahoo! SearchMonkey (2008)
  • Google RDFa support (2009)

Producing SW data on the Web:

  • LOD project, including DBPedia and much more (2007)
  • Best Buy (2008)
  • Digg (2008)
  • Data.gov (2009)
  • Data.gov.uk (2009)
  • NY Times (2009)
  • Drupal (2009)
  • overstock.com (2010)
  • BBC (?)
  • FaceBook Open Graph Protocol (2010)

SW major vendor support:

  • Oracle (Oracle 10g2, ~2007?)
  • Drupal (added in version 7)

SW uses inside enterprises:

(Some documented at http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/, but not sure which, if any, are widely-enough known or publicized to be considered a significant milestone.)

(Thanks for any help. I will gladly share the slides that I'm putting together for this lecture so that others may benefit as well.) --

#2

I think you've caught most, but...

SW within enterprises

Producing SW data on the Web:

...I'll be disappointed if the Pokédex doesn't make it into your slides (after all, success on the Web is measured by the length of its tail).

#3

I'd say SPARQL 1.1.

SPARQL 1.1 lets developers who are familiar with relational databases to use the whole bag of tricks that they use for RDBMS-based webapps and bizapps use that same bag of tricks for RDF apps.

RDF adds inference and logic on top of that, but a query language comparable in power to SQL and with a similar API makes it easy for developers to build many sorts of applications right here and now.

#4

My trigger finger is itching to give you

SPARQL Endpoint for Volkswagen UK

to add to your list of 'Producing SW Data on the Web'. We are only a few days away from this (although that is never a guarantee).

In the meantime, you are welcome to add us to the list of RDFa publishers (if there is one):

http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/new/polo-v/which-model/compare/overview?noflash

(along with urls for entire model range. Try to ignore the fact that we invalidated our strict HTML in doing so;). Someone needs to bridge that gap ASAP)

We also published an Ontology for all car manufacturers to describe their Models, Trims and Derivatives along with the available configuration/component options and compatability, along with the effects on pricing:

http://purl.org/coo/ns

http://purl.org/vvo/ns

http://purl.org/vso/ns

#5

Siri (2009) - http://semanticweb.com/keynote-the-game-changer-siri-a-virtual-personal-assistant_b15877

#6

This article from 2007 includes some major Semantic Web adopters as well, e.g., NASA.