Technologies for
the Future Web
Vienna Meeting: W3C and Semantic Web
Vienna June 20th, 2005
Klaus Birkenbihl

W3C Deutsch-Österreichisches Büro
c/o Fraunhofer IMK

1. This presentation gives an
overview

no technical details
but concepts, scenarios and examples

in detail:

the building blocks of the web today
6 examples from the future web
summary, history of the web an the role of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

2. The building blocks of the
web today

the URL (Universal Resource Locator), a unique address for every object in the web,
the HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) a small description of objects and a means of communication
the HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) to specify content and an opportunity to referr and include other objects using URLs

This simple Web was, what Internet
and the world was looking for in 1993
3. The goal: a Web, universal for
everybody irrespective of ...

one's language
one's capabilities
the devices, one uses to access
one's geographic location
...

No technology can provide this completely, to approach the goal
we need a collection of interoperable extensible technologies!
4. Some deficits of HTML

HTML tempts you to mix content and presentation
inhibits device independance
complicates accessability
decreases maintainability
because of the simple structure of HTML Browsers can guess errors: since they do not enforce correct HTML the Web is poluted with crippled HTML
"designed for use with Internet Explorer Vx"
the browserwar: proprietary HTML extensions to dominate the web
to connect databases and HTML is cumbersome
HTML - especially false HTML - is hard to process by computers
searchengines cannot gain from HTML

5. XML - the base

1998 W3C publishes a standard for a simple, eXtensible Markup Language: XML
XML induces a treestructure on a document with named nodes and data or text as leaves
XML comes with technologies for (most of them are XML based themselves):
Datatypes (XML Schema, DTD, ...)
Mixing/overlaying vocabularies/applications (namespaces)
Hyperlinks (XLINK, XBASE, ...)
Merge/split (XInclude, Fragments, ...)
Navigation and Queries on a document (XQUERY, XPATH, ...)
Transformation (XSLT, ...)
Encrypting, signing, managing keys (XML signature, XML encryption, XML key management system...)
Interaction (DOM, Events, ...)
Formatting, Presentation (CSS ...)

These are available W3C-Technologies. But the list is not complete!
6. One content, many devices
"This site is best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0+ or Netscape Navigator 4.7+, at a minimum screen resolution of 800 x 600, and a minimum modem connection speed of 56Kbps."
(war aus http://www.pizzahut.com/browserinfo.asp ! Jetzt:)
"This site is best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0+ or Netscape Navigator 7+, at a minimum screen resolution of 1024 x 768, and a minimum modem connection speed of 56Kbps."
The web of the future stores content media- and deviceindependant and presents it taylored to the capabilities and preferences of the devices and users.
W3C technologies: XHTML for documents, SVG for graphics, SMIL for multimedia, CC/PP to describe cababilities of devices and preferences of a user, XSL und CSS separate content and presentation.
Nokia 7110 GPS Navigator smartphone WebPAd headset PDA
7. Dialogs and Inputdevices
"please click here"
The same problem with input devices: different devices provide different means for interaction.
Not every device has a mouse and a keyboard. Interaction needs to be specified independant of any devices used to interact!
W3C technologies: (same as presentation) + XFORMS for device independant data input, VoiceXML for speach dialogs;
Nokia 7110 GPS Navigator smartphone WebPAd
headset PDA
8. Multimodality
Still not available: starting a session at a computer (e.g. planning a route) and continue the session in the car (reflect recent traffic news during the ride). Use keyboard, mouse, pen and speech for input.
Has a session always to be bound to one device? Challenge: integrate several devices for input and output, simultaneously or serialised!
W3C technologien: (like dialogs) + EMMA for multimodal communication; related and new: Mobile Web Initiative
Multimodale Sitzung über mehrere Geräte
9. Services work together
Services of Travel agent
You book a travel on the internet. Wouldn't it be nice if after you have made your choices all the neccesary services would run automatically generating for you the complete itinerary, confirmations and invoices?
The problem is far from being new. RPC, CORBA, DCOM, EAI ... all addressed the Problem before. But doing it on the Web and basing it on XML adds new opportunities and challenges. Standards for interfaces, directories, processes, messaging and binding allow the exchange of messages between services and the assembly of services to form a process.
W3C technologies: SOAP1.2 for messaging; WSDL, description of interfaces; WS Choreography, definition of prozesses as an arrangement of services; WS Addressing, addressing of endpoints, passing of parameters.
10. Better search, agents,
Semantic Web
... at the doctor's office, Lucy instructed her Semantic Web agent through her handheld Web browser. The agent promptly retrieved information about Mom's prescribed treatment from the doctor's agent, looked up several lists of providers, and checked for the ones in-plan for Mom's insurance within a 20-mile radius of her home and with a rating of excellent or very good on trusted rating services. It then began trying to find a match between available appointment times (supplied by the agents of individual providers through their Web sites) and Pete's and Lucy's busy schedules. (Aus "The semantic Web", Tim Berners-Lee et al., Sc. America 2001)
Agents "understand" content of queries and documents, agents exchange information, do reasoning and planning.
W3C-Technologien: RDF, metadata to describe the content of documents; OWL, ontologies, conclusions from metadata. No AI
11. Semantic Web and
Web Services
Metadaten help to describe the web, Web Services can interpret, generate and compute metadata.
Web Services (process oriented) und Semantic Web ( data oriented ) have the potential to complement each other.
W3C technologies: The Semantic Web Services Interest Group discusses possible solutions
12. Cool multimedia
graphics, geography, simulations, interactive shows
markup for advanced multimedia that can be used on the web as well as on DVDs, animated grafics based on vectors or pixles.
W3C technologies: SVG vector graphics, anipation; PNG pixel graphics; SMIL synchronised multimedia
SVG Navigation durch W3C-Standards
13. The Web of tomorrow ...
Web-Architektur
14. A bit of history Tim Berners Lee

1989
Tim Berners-Lee writes
"Information Management: A Proposal"
1994
Tim Berners-Lee launches W3C
1997
Browserwar Microsoft Netscape
1998
W3C releases XML

15. W3C members

The big ones: Unisys, IBM, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Oracle, Software AG, SAP, Motorola, Nokia, Siemens AG, NEC ...
The innovatives: Kirusa, Inc., Nuance Communications, Voxpilot Ltd., Voxeo Corporation, V-Enable, Inc., Comverse Technology, ScanSoft, Inc., Telera Inc., NMS Communications Corporation, Volantis Systems, Altova GmbH, Harmonia, Inc., Identitech, VoiceObjects AG ...
The telecoms und providers: America Online, Inc. (AOL), AT&T, BT, France Telecom, NTT DoCoMo, T-Mobile Deutschland GmbH, T-Online International AG, TeliaSonera AB, Telefónica de España, SAU, Royal KPN NV ...
The users: American Express, The Boeing Company, Daimler Chrysler, Library of Congress, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (MEI), O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., SIZ Informatikzentrum der Sparkassenorganisation GmbH, NHS (National Health Service, UK) ...