The semantic Web and its languages

The Web has drastically changed the availability of electronic information, but its success and exponential growth have made it increasingly difficult to find, access, present and maintain such information for a wide variety of users. In reaction to this bottleneck many new research initiatives and commercial enterprises have been set up to enrich available information with machine-processable semantics. The paper considers how the semantic Web will provide intelligent access to heterogeneous and distributed information, enabling software products (agents) to mediate between user needs and available information sources. The paper discusses the Resource Description Framework, XML and other languages.