WATSON: A Gateway for the Semantic Web

As the Semantic Web is gaining momentum, more and more semantic data is available online. The second generation of Semantic Web applications already exploit this phenomenon by relying on this huge amount of semantic content. Looking at the requirements of these applications, we show that there is a need for an efficient access point to the Semantic Web, designed to take into account the semantic nature of the knowledge available online. However, because they rely on “classical Web” techniques, existing solutions fail to fulfill this need. In this paper, we describe the design of Watson, a gateway for the Semantic Web, which has been guided by the requirements of Semantic Web applications and by lessons learnt from previous systems. We show how Watson exploits the strengths of semantic technologies to provide fundamental functionalities for a more suitable access to online knowledge. We also report on using these functionalities to analyze some of the characteristics of the content of the Semantic Web.