Ontology based qualitative information collection

Abstract

The World Wide Web is an information resource with essentially limitless potential. However, this potential is relatively untapped because it is tough for machines to process and integrate this information meaningfully. Recently, researchers have started to explore to combine web content with specified meaning, in order to create a Semantic Web. It is one of the most encouraging and rising areas of computer science. Its capabilities to make information that is understandable to be understood and processed by machines and humans. Semantic Web approach will strictly change the effectiveness of the Internet and will enable the reuse of information and increase the representative power of information. It will be possible to combine information from different locations and process them together since they are defined in a standard way. The potential of the Semantic Web is demonstrated with “Semantic Hotel Search” application. Also basic concepts referring knowledge with a Semantic Web language, ontology processing, reasoning and querying on ontologies are presented. Semantic Hotel Search application that contains a dynamic knowledge base holding hotel related information, which is updated at every day from the information provided in the hotels‟ websites. All the information and application logic have been moved into an OWL file which controls all the content and the structure of the application. In addition to, sentimental analysis is associated with this application. Therefore, users can see what the other people said about hotels and whether user has positive or negative comment in order to make better decision. Both travelers and travel service providers can benefit from the implemented semantic web based application. Semantic Web based travel portal can reduce search costs and a case study shows that the system provides time efficiency and is helpful in decision making.