Colloquium Details
Investigations into the Scalability of the Semantic Web
| Author: | Jeff Heflin Lehigh University |
|---|---|
| Date: | March 09, 2006 |
| Time: | 15:30 |
| Location: | 220 Deschutes |
| Host: | Dejing Dou |
Abstract
Proponents of the Semantic Web dream of a world in which all resources on the Web are completely integrated. However, critics of the Semantic Web have suggested that the vision is pipe dream. In this talk, I will consider one of the common criticisms: "The Semantic Web will never scale!" First, I will discuss the details of a knowledge base system developed at Lehigh that has many of the properties we consider desirable in a scalable Semantic Web repository. Second, I will present a benchmarking approach that allows us to compare different knowledge base systems on arbitrarily large data. This approach builds extensively on database benchmarking techniques but has some novel features specific to the Semantic Web. I will also discuss an experiment that uses the benchmark to compare the capabilities of various systems. Third, I will describe an approach for quickly developing large datasets that are representative of real-world domains for use in benchmarking systems. I will conclude with some thoughts on the scalability of contemporary Semantic Web knowledge base systems, and on the general question of the scalability of the Semantic Web.
Biography
Dr. Heflin is an assistant professor in the department of Computer Science and Engineering at Lehigh University and is head of the Semantic Web and Agent Technologies (SWAT) lab. His specific research interests include establishing semantic interoperability between heterogeneous information systems, scalable ontology reasoning, and developing formal theories of distributed ontology systems. He is one of the pioneers of Semantic Web research and wrote the first Ph.D. dissertation on the subject. He has been involved in the design of many important Semantic Web languages, including SHOE, DAML+OIL, and OWL. In addition to serving on numerous program committees, he was the demonstrations chair at the second International Semantic Web conference, the chair of the special track on AI and the Web at FLAIRS 2004, a guest editor for IEEE Internet Computing, and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Web Semantics. Dr. Heflin received his B.S. in computer science from the College of William and Mary. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland. Dr. Heflin received the NSF CAREER award in 2004.