Storing the Semantic Web: Repositories

Abstract

Semantic repositories are database management systems, capable of handling structured data, taking into consideration their semantics. The Semantic Web represents the next-generation Web of Data, where information is published and interlinked in a way, which facilitates both humans and machines to exploit its structure and meaning. To foster the realization of the Semantic Web, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) developed a series of metadata, ontology, and query languages for it. Following the enthusiasm about the Semantic Web and the wide adoption of the related standards, today, most of the semantic repositories are database engines, which deal with data represented in RDF, support SPARQL queries, and can interpret schemas and ontologies represented in RDFS and OWL. Naturally, such engines take the role of Web servers of the Semantic Web.