The Semantics of Anonymous Identity and Reification

Prof. Michael Kifer
Department of Computer Science, SUNY Stony Brook

February 11, 2005
11 a.m. - 12 noon
Fuller Labs 320

Abstract

Anonymous resources and meta statements are two of the more intriguing features of RDF --- a popular base-level proposal for representing semantic information on the Web. Ironically, when RDF was standardized by W3C, it came without a semantics. A subsequent realization that a Semantic Web language without a semantics is an oxymoron led to an effort to define a precise semantics to RDF. However, many still view this semantics as unsatisfactory.

In this talk we will propose a simple semantics for anonymous resources and meta statements using F-logic --- a frame-based logic language, which is a popular formalism for representing and reasoning about semantic information on the Web.

The choice of F-logic (over RDF) as a basis for our semantics is motivated by the fact that F-logic provides a comprehensive solution to the problem of integrating frames, rules, inheritance, and deduction, and it has been shown to provide an effective inference service for RDF and beyond.

* Joint work with Guizhen Yang

Biography

Michael Kifer is a Professor with the Department of Computer Science, State University of New York at Stony Brook (USA). He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1984 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and the M.S. degree in Mathematics in 1976 from Moscow State University, Russia.

Dr. Kifer's interests include intelligent database systems, knowledge representation, and Web information systems. He has published two text books and numerous articles in these areas. In 1999 and 2002 he was a recipient of the ACM-SIGMOD "Test of Time" awards for his works on F-logic and object-oriented database languages.

Host

Murali Mani
Refreshments will be served.

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Last modified: Sep 27, 2006, 16:05 EDT