Semantic Web Programming

Chapter 2. Hello Semantic Web World

"Hello? Operator! Give me the number for 911!"

—Homer Simpson

Now we step directly into Semantic Web programming, saying hello to a web of data. We start with a simple hello to the Semantic Web itself and then expand to its friends via its web of data. Thus, rather than a one-shot "hello world," you'll get a hands-on tour of Semantic Web programming—a Hello Semantic Web World tour.

This tour forms a programming introduction to the rest of the book. It gets you started in code, with a code-based foundation. This gives you the immediate ability to experiment with actual programming examples. Of course, you might not understand everything at this point, nor should you expect to. The examples in this chapter provide an initial glimpse into what is ahead in the rest of the book. Hopefully, the Hello Semantic Web World tour will be a fun, insightful, and pragmatic start into Semantic Web programming.

We strongly recommend not just reading the code but running it too. You can customize it as you like or just skip to detailed description in the chapters ahead. This not only gets your hands into code but validates that your environment is set up correctly so that you can follow along with the rest of the book.

The objectives of this chapter are:

• Set up a Semantic Web programming environment.

• Illustrate a basic Semantic Web "hello world" program.

• Gain initial Semantic Web programming experience.

• Illustrate examples of the key operations involved in Semantic Web ...