Semantic Web Challenge

The Semantic Web Challenge organizers invite proposals for the Semantic Web Challenge of 2006, where participants have the chance to demonstrate the possibilities of current Semantic Web technologies through end-user applications. Since a number of ontology languages, storage facilities, reasoning engines, etc. have become widely available, now is the time to develop integrated, useful and attractive applications that convincingly demonstrate the benefits of semantics for a wider audience. The best applications will receive an award (see below).

Specific Goal for Semantic Web Challenge 2006

Everyone from academia and industry is invited to submit applications that illustrate the possibilities of the Semantic Web. The applications should integrate, combine, and deduce information from various sources to assist users in performing specific tasks. The submissions should at least satisfy the minimal requirements for a Semantic Web Application and preferably exhibit some of the additional desires. Although we expect that most applications will use RDF, RDF Schema, and OWL, this is not an official requirement.

Furthermore, Semantic Web applications should be written in a true Web spirit, open to supporting reuse even in situations that have not been foreseen by the original authors. Thus a specific, additional goal of the Semantic Web Challenge 2006 is motivating participants to provide standard compliant web interfaces to the data and services provided by their applications, e.g. in the form of RSS feeds, SPARQL endpoints, REST or Web Services interfaces.

Minimal Requirements

A Semantic Web Application has to meet the following minimal requirements.

1. First, the information sources used should be geographically distributed, should have diverse ownerships (i.e. there is no control of evolution), should be heterogeneous (syntactically, structurally, and semantically), and should contain real world data, i.e. are more than toy examples.
2. It is required that all applications assume an open world, i.e. assume that the information is never complete.
3. Finally, the applications should use some formal description of the meaning of the data.

Additional Desires

Besides the minimal criteria, a number of desires are formulated. The more desires are met,the higher an application can score. The desires are:

• The application uses data sources for other purposes or in another way than originally intended
• Using the contents of multi-media documents
• Accessibility in multiple languages
• Other applications than pure information retrieval
• Combination of static and dynamic knowledge (e.g. combination of static ontologies and dynamic workflows)
• The results should be as accurate as possible (e.g. use a ranking of results according to validity)
• The application should be scalable (in terms of the amount of data used and in terms of distributed components working together)

How to participate

Visit http://challenge.semanticweb.org/ in order to participate and register for the Semantic Web Challenge by submitting the required information as well as a link to the application on the online registration form. The form will be open until July 14, 2006, 12pm CET. The requirements of this entry are:

1) Abstract: no more than 200 words.

2) Description: The description will show details of the system including why the system is innovative, which features or functions the system provides, what design choices were made and what lessons were learned. Papers should not exceed eight pages and must be formatted according to the same guidelines as the papers in the Research Track (see Formatting Guidelines).

3) Web access: The application should be accessible via the web. If the application is not publicly accessible, passwords should be provided. We also ask to provide a (short) instruction on how to start and use the application.

Accepted descriptions will be published in the conference proceedings.

Prizes

The prizes for the winners will be available as travel support and book vouchers. The winners will also be asked to give a live demonstration of their application at the ISWC 2006 conference. The best applications will also have a chance to appear as full papers in the Journal of Web Semantics.

Important Dates