The Web has evolved from HTML quite dramatically over the last few years with revolutionary techniques for content and structural modeling, including XML (eXtensible Markup Language), OWL (Web Ontology Language), RDF (Resource Definition Framework) and Topic Maps. Compared to HTML, the content of XML documents is enriched with semantic and structural features, completely separated from its visual appearance. This allows a web document to be displayed in any desired form. Given such an unrestricted choice, many companies and end users prefer a graphically rich document appearance with effective visual access to semantic and structural information.
The first edition of Visualizing the Semantic Web: XML-based Internet and Information Visualization, published in 2002, was the first ever monograph on the visualization of the emerging new generation of the Web. The current second edition has undergone the following changes: 2 chapters have been removed, 4 new chapters have been added and the 10 remaining chapters have been completely revised and updated. The current edition of the book presents the state-of-the-art research in the emerging field and focuses on key topics such as:
- Visualization of semantic and structural information and metadata
- Exploring and querying XML documents using interactive multimedia interfaces
- Topic Maps visualizations
- Visual modeling of XML/RDF/OWL ontologies and schemas
- Rendering and viewing of XML documents
- SVG/X3D as new visualization techniques for the Semantic Web
- Methods used to construct high quality metadata / metadata taxonomies
- Recommender systems, interface issues related to filtering and recommending on the Web
- Semantic-oriented use of existing visualization methods
- Web services, e-commerce and web search applications
- Semantically enhanced solutions for the medical community
The design of XML-based interfaces for information retrieval, e-commerce etc is currently a challenging area of practical web development. Most of the techniques and methods discussed can be applied now, making this book essential reading for XML and Web developers as well as visualization researchers.
