Semantic University



Our Vision

Getting started with Semantic Web technologies seems much harder today than it should be. There is little material accessible to those new to the space, and almost none geared to a less technical audience that might be involved in funding semantic technology projects. The irony is that Semantic Web technologies should be easier for people to understand than other technologies, because they use language! In fact, Semantic Web technologies can enable end users—those without any experience using databases—to curate much of their own information.

Our goal at Semantic University is to make it easy for anyone to get started with the Semantic Web and related semantic technologies. The content will start from the beginning, introducing vocabulary and concepts with each lesson and hands-on training online. However, we’re not going to stop with beginner material. There are gaps in existing literature and documentation that need to be filled. We’re going to include badly missing comparisons with other, modern data trends, including NoSQL databases and big data systems.

Semantic Web

  1. Getting Started

    If you're brand new to semantic technologies the topic can be very overwhelming. Different sites and people will talk about everything from artificial intelligence to natural language processing to linked data and the Semantic Web. What are they all?

  2. Semantic Technologies Compared

    Semantic technologies don't refer to a single technology, but rather to a side variety of tools and technologies that have to do with meaning. Some focus on structure, some on text, and some on intelligence.

  3. Semantic Technologies Applied

    Once you've understood the basics of Semantic Web technologies and how they can be combined with other semantic technologies you can start to really appreciate real-world semantic applications.

Lesson Tracks

  1. Learn RDF

    This set of lessons is an introduction to RDF, the core data model of the Semantic Web and the foundation of all other Semantic Web technologies.

  2. Learn OWL & RDFS

    This set of lessons is an introduction to OWL and an introduction to RDF Schema (RDFS).

  3. Learn SPARQL

    This set of lessons is an introduction to SPARQL, the Semantic Web query language.

  4. Semantic Web Design Patterns

    Like a question on Stack Overflow, a design pattern is often posed as a question: how do we solve some design problem?