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ASemanticWebPrimerforObjectOrientedSoftwareDevelopers
likequeries,butourfocusliesonRDFSchemaandOWLinthis
discussion.

Domainmodelsinanyoftheselanguagescanbeuploadedand
linkedintotheWebjustlikeyouwouldpublishanHTMLpage.
OnceanRDForOWLfileisonline,otherWebresourcesor
applicationscanlinktoit.Forexample,aHTMLpageshowing
aspecificproductcouldencodemetadatatolinkbacktothe
correspondingentityinanOWLmodelsothatallapplications
thatunderstandwhata"product"iscanmakesenseoutofthe
HTMLpage.Or,providersofspecificproductscaninstantiate
theRDFSchemaclassestoannouncetheirportfolioto
shoppingagentsinanunambiguousexchangeformat.Atypical
scenarioforsuchaSemanticWebapplicationisshownin
Figure2.

Figure2:AnapplicationusingSemanticWebtechnologycan
exploitdomainmodelsandservicesfromtheWeb.Theyellow
boxesrepresentOWLfilesinaUMLlikegraphicalnotation.
NotethatUMLnotationismerelyusedasanexampleother
visualizationsmaybemoreappropriatetocapturethefull
semanticsofOWL.
Whileacertainlevelofinteroperabilitycouldalsobeachieved
usingtraditionalXMLbasedapproaches,SemanticWeb
languageshavericherexpressivity.Similartoobjectoriented
languages,RDFSchemaandOWLmakeitpossibletodefine
subclassesandgeneralizationsofconcepts.Theorganization
ofadomainmodelintoclassessuggestsnaturalmappingsto
integratemodelsintotheremainingsoftwarecomponents.
Furthermore,sinceeverySemanticWebresourcehasaunique
URI,itispossibletoestablishlinksamongexistingmodels.This
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