Multi-agent Semantic Web Systems



Multi-agent Semantic Web Systems is a Level 10 and Level 11 course given in Semester 2.

The Semantic Web has been held up as an extension of the current Web by Tim Berners-Lee. According to this vision, the Web becomes a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge. For this to happen, Web content needs to be expressed in a form where it can be processed intelligently by software agents.

Some aspects of the Semantic Web have already been developed as specifications and implementations. Other parts are still highly speculative or too challenging to solve yet, but are the subject of considerable research and experimentation. As well as addressing techniques for representing information on the Web, we need to consider techniques for allowing agents to cooperate in using this information, and here we draw on techniques and results from agent-based systems.

Lecture Schedule

Lectures are held on Mondays and Thursdays at 12:10 pm – 1.00 pm, in 7 George Square, Psychology, Room F21. Lectures start on Monday of Week 1 (16th January) of Semester 2.

Please note that the links below point to last year's slides and are provisional in this sense; they will be updated before each lecture. In the Reading column of the following table, 'SWWO' refers to the textbook, Allemang and Hendler (2008) Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, and 'IMS' refers to the book Michael Wooldridge (2009), An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems, second edition, John Wiley & Sons, 2009.

Week Date Topic Slides Handouts Reading
Week 1 16-Jan-12 1 Course Intro slides 4up handout Berners-Lee et al (2001), Shadbolt et al (2006)
19-Jan-12 No lecture      
Week 2 23-Jan-12 2 Ontologies, Formal and Informal slides 4up handout SWWO Chs 1–2, Folksonomy links
26-Jan-12 3 Resources and Metadata slides 4up handout
Week 3 30-Jan-12 4 Resource Description Framework (RDF) slides 4up handout SWWO, Ch3
2-Feb-12 5 RDF Continued slides 4up handout SWWO, Ch3
Week 4 06-Feb-12 6 RDF Schema slides 4up handout, Jena notes SWWO, Ch4
09-Feb-12 7 SPARQL slides 4up handout, SPARQL guide SWWO, Ch5, Ch6
Week 5 13-Feb-12 8 Linked Open Data slides
4up handout SWWO, Ch6
16-Feb-12 9 Kate Byrne: Constructing RDF Datasets slides
4up handout
 
Week 6 20-Feb-12 No lecture: Innovative Learning Week      
23-Feb-12   No lecture: Innovative Learning Week      
Week 7 27-Feb-12 9 William Waites: Indexing and Information Content in Linked Data slides 4up handout  
1-Mar-12 10 The Programmable Web slides 4up handout  
Week 8 5-Mar-12 11 Web Services, Part 1 slides 4up handout  
8-Mar-12 12 Web Services, Part 2 slides 4up handout  
Week 9 12-Mar-12 13 Agent Coordination slides 4up handout  
15-Mar-12 14 Agent Communication slides 4up handout IMS, Ch6, Ch7
Week 10 19-Mar-12 15 BDI and Practical Reasoning slides 4up handout  
22-Mar-12 16 Steven Lynden: Distributed RDF Data Integration slides 4up handout  
Week 11 26-Mar-12 17 Fiona McNeill: Ontology Matching slides 4up handout  
29-Mar-12 18 Review Topics slides 4up handout  
Note: The details given in the schedule are being updated for 2011/12 and new material will be posted as the course progresses.

Course Information

Coursework

There will be two pieces of coursework for the level 10 course, and three pieces of coursework for the level 11 course. In both cases, the total worth of the coursework is 30%. There is a near-final draft of the coursework assignments for you to look at: [PDF], [HTML]. This will be discussed in class on Monday 23rd Jan.


Ewan Klein


Home : Teaching : Courses 

Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB, Scotland, UK
Tel: +44 131 651 5661, Fax: +44 131 651 1426, E-mail: school-office@inf.ed.ac.uk
Please contact our webadmin with any comments or corrections.
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all material is copyright © The University of Edinburgh