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3.3 Metadata and Ontologies 79
The representation from Figure 3.3 is far easier to process by machines. The term metadata
refers to such information: data about data. Metadata capture part of the meaning of data,
thus the term semantic in the Semantic Web.
Let us relate the situation today to the early days of the Web. The first users decided
to adopt HTML because it had started to establish itself as a standard. They were expecting
benefits from being early adopters. Similarly, many organizations are embracing the Semantic
Web to derive benefits from early adoption.
Although XML is not enough ...