The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a language for creating ontologies on the Web. It does exactly what it says on the tin. But what is an ontology? One way to think of it is as a better way of storing data and knowledge. Instead of just capturing and describing data in a databases, ontology languages like OWL provide ways to capture and describe knowledge in a knowledge base. Ontologies can allow more intelligent querying, integration and understanding of data than is possible using a plain old relational database.
Since 2003 developers and users of the Web Ontology Language, abbreviated to OWL (not WOL), have been gathering at a two-day workshop called OWLED (OWL Experiences and Directions). This year the workshop is in Karlsruhe in Germany. The full list of accepted papers is available, as with previous years, this years workshop has a distinctly biological flavour to the proceedings: (more…)
O'Really? 