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Full article in IEEE Intelligent Systems, May 2005
 

Team presentations:

- The
- Semantic
- Web
- In
- One
- Day

Can you build the Semantic Web in one day? Most likely your answer would be "No, that’s impossible."

Let’s look at a simpler question: Can you build the Web in one day? If you consider the Web in its entirety, your answer would also be "No."

But what if you think of it as magnitudes smaller? You can build HTML pages in minutes and a simple Web shop in a few hours, including, for example, applying for Web space. All this in the same amount of time it takes your kids to set up a wireless LAN, install a Web server, and create a Web site for the home intranet to show family vacation pictures. You can realize a broad range of applications quite easily.

To determine just how far Semantic Web technologies have come, we wanted to create a snapshot of what you could do by applying and assembling existing Semantic Web technologies — in one day. Our experiment’s main aim was to get a feel for the practical applicability of current research by integrating different technologies into something "up and running." As an added benefit, we learned a lot about the areas in which the Semantic Web’s many research directions intersect, such as knowledge representation, natural language processing, and peer-to-peer.

The scenario: 24 hours, teams of three or four people, unlimited access to the Web, and availability of all tools developed in Karlsruhe. The teams received a general problem description, which gave them plenty of room for interpretation. The task was to design and create a Web information system concerned with publications, authors, research topics, and so on. During the 24 hours, each team had to perform a project cycle with requirements analysis, specification, implementation, and presentation.