The Role of Frame-Based Representation on the Semantic Web

A new architecture for the World Wide Web is emerging, known as the Semantic Web. In broad terms, it encompasses efforts to populate the Web with content which has formal semantics; this will enable automated agents to reason about Web content, and produce an intelligent response to unforeseen situations. We believe that to build the Semantic Web, the sharing of ontological information is required. This allows agents to reach partial shared understanding and thus interoperate. We are proposing frame-based representation as a suitable paradigm for building ontologies as well as the World Wide Web Consortium's RDF-formalism (and its extensions, such as the DARPA Agent Markup Language) as a manifestation of frame-based representation for the Web. The paper will discuss required and desirable features of ontological languages, giving examples of the possible usage of frame-based representation and ontologies on the Semantic Web