The Role of Explicit Semantics in Search and Browsing
Michiel Hildebrand, Jacco van Ossenbruggen, Lynda Hardman · 2011
In recent years several Semantic Web applications have been developed that support some form of search.These applications provide different types of search functionality and make use of the explicit semantics present in the data in various ways.The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of the semantic search functionalities provided by the current state of the art in Semantic Web applications.Excluding search based on structured query languages such as SPARQL (Prud'homme and Seaborne 2007), we focus on queries based on simple textual entry forms and queries constructed by navigation (e.g.faceted browsing).We provide a systematic understanding of the different design dimensions that play a role in supporting search on Semantic Web data.Using the required insights, we describe the design decisions made in two of our own tools with practical use cases.Section 15.1 establishes the basic search terminology used throughout the chapter.Section 15.2 provides an in-depth analysis of the different types of search functionality based on a survey of 35 Semantic Web applications.We argue that search is far from trivial, and list the different roles semantics currently plays throughout the various phases of the search process.Then we show with two use cases how 'semantic' functionality can support the user while searching for museum objects in Section 15.3 and use faceted navigation to explore a collection of news images in Section 15.4.We summarize our main conclusions in Section 15.5. 15.