An Introduction to Semantic Web Technologies

The process of engineering cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) relies on the collaborative work of multiple and diverse teams of engineers who need to exchange and synchronize data created by their domain-specific tools. Building applications that support the CPPS engineering process requires technologies that enable integrating and making sense of heterogeneous datasets produced by various engineering disciplines. Are Semantic Web technologies suitable to fulfill this task? This chapter aims to answer this question by introducing the reader to key Semantic Web concepts in general and core Semantic Web technologies (SWT) in particular, including ontologies, Semantic Web knowledge representation languages, and Linked Data. The chapter concludes this technology overview with a specific focus on core SWT capabilities that qualify them for intelligent engineering applications. These capabilities include (i) formal and flexible semantic modeling, (ii) intelligent, web-scale knowledge integration, (iii) browsing and exploration of distributed data sets, (iv) knowledge quality assurance and (v) knowledge reuse.