Framework for the semantic Web: an RDF tutorial

The current World Wide Web supports mainly human browsing and searching of textual content. This model has become less and less adequate as the mass of available information increases. What is required instead is a model that supports integrated and uniform access to information sources and services as well as intelligent applications for information processing on the Web. Such a model requires standard mechanisms for interchanging data and handling different data semantics. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a step in this direction. RDF provides a data model that supports fast integration of data sources by bridging semantic differences. It is often used (and was initially designed) for representing metadata about other Web resources, such as XML files. However, representing metadata about the Web is not different from representing data generally. Thus, RDF can be used as a general framework for data exchange on the Web.