SDArch - Semantic Document Architecture

Administrative information

Synopsis

SDArch - Semantic Document Architecture is an atempt to bring the vision of the Semantic Web to desktop office-like documents. It aims at enabling desktop document data to be efficiently discovered, linked and shared across application, enterprise and community boundaries. It introduces 'semantic documents' as completely open and queryable resources, containing data which is uniquely identified, semantically annotated and understandable by both humans and software agents.

Semantic documents enable unique identification, semantic annotation, and semantic linking of fine-grained units of documents’ data. Semantic links can be established between the semantically related document data units, whether they are stored on the same personal desktop or shared within social networks. Therefore, semantic documents integrate data of desktop documents into a unified desktop information space as well as fill the gap between the desktop information space and the information space of the social network communities. New processes such as the semantic document search and navigation, which are enabled by such integrated desktop information space, improve the effectiveness and efficiency of desktop users in carrying out their daily tasks.

Main visible results of the project include:

• the Semantic Document Model (SDM) that describes semantic documents;
• the architectural design of the SDArch system providing solutions for semantic document storage, services that support semantic document management, and tools that enable desktop users to interact with semantic documents;
• the SDArch prototype, which is a fully-functional software providing the implementation of all the intended SDArch functionalities.