Course Description

• Introduction and Motivation. Imagine a room full of people who speak different languages, but who have to solve a common task or work together on a common project. They cannot collaborate unless they agree on a common language. Now consider computers spread around the world who have to share data, integrate information to solve common tasks and collaborate in many different ways, and they have to do all of this by themselves, without human intervention. After all, people write programs because they want to automate many of the basic activities that computers can do faster and without errors. The computers also need a common language to share/exchange data, but instead of a complex human language, the computers need a mark-up language with a precise syntax and semantics that they can process fast and without getting puzzled with ambiguities. They might actually need several common mark-up languages of varying expressive power, but most importantly data to be exchanged should have a well defined meaning. The semantics of each common language should allow the computers not only communicate meaning of data explicitly, but also implicitly by reasoning about information they communicate to each other. Semantic technologies include several recent languages designed to facilitate exchange of data between different companies and groups, integration of data from disparate sources, business-to-business transactions, and scientific collaborations. Using some of these languages, it becomes possible to express precisely common vocabularies for each application domain, and draw inferences using these vocubularies. These shared precise vocabularies are known as "ontologies", and for this reason, the language for expressing them is called Web Ontology Language (OWL). The semantic technologies are being developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) with the help from groups of experts from universities and industry. Foundations of some of these technologies are significantly influenced by research in Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR&R), specifically by formalisms called Description Logics. However, in contrast to research in artificial intelligence, these technologies are being developed not to build smart agents, or intelligent programs, but for the purposes of semantic integration in industry, health and life sciences, government, and of course, also in Web applications. However, relevance, applicability and potential of these technologies go way beyond the Web itself.
• Educational Objectives: The course will enable students to learn about some of the key semantic technologies including W3C recommended languages such as RDF (Resource Description Framework), RDF Schema, OWL2 (Web Ontology Language), an up-coming Rules Interchange Format (RIF), and related topics. More specifically, the course will focus on logical foundations of semantic technologies, but will also provide opportunities to get some hands-on experience with these technologies using well-known tools. No previous background in semantic technologies is expected.
• Required Text Book: 
  Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies by Pascal Hitzler, Markus Krotzsch, Sebastian Rudolph, ISBN:142009050X, 2009.
• Prerequisites For undergraduate students: CPS721. No previous background in logic or in Semantic Web is expected. Understanding of purposes of mark-up languages such as HTML or XML is helpful, but no experience with XML, and no working knowledge of HTML or XML are required.
• Delivery Mode: Lectures, assigned readings, in-class discussions are possible too.
• Student Evaluation is based on home assignments, 2 term exams, and student participation. More specifically, undergraduate students will be normally asked to work on home assignments, pass 2 exams, and participate in discussions. Graduate students may be asked to complete a term project in addition to work expected from undergraduate students. Home work will include mostly problem solving. Students may be asked to develop prototype ontologies using Protege (an open source editor with a GUI that supports OWL2, RDF and rules).
• Topics (tentative list): This course will provide introduction to representation issues in Semantic Web and several important semantic technologies, including W3C recommended languages for developing ontologies (i.e., common, shared, precise vocabularies). First, basics of formal logic are reviewed, including propositional logic, first order logic, and semantic tableau. Second, XML, RDF and RDF Schema are discussed. Third, description logics are introduced. Fourth, syntax and semantics of OWL2 are discussed, including distinction between fragments of OWL2. Fifth, basics of rule interchange languages RIF are introduced. If time permits, the course includes also conjunctive query answering.

Course Policies

• Examinations: The quizzes, and the tests may include problem solving and short essay questions. The duration of these examinations will be 15-45 min, 1h20min, and 2h30min, respectively. The second test will be cumulative and will include all the material covered throughout the term. To pass this course you must get a grade of 35% or better on both exams. There will be no supplemental examination. Grades are earned for the demonstration of knowledge.
  Brief quizzes may be given at any time in class without preliminary notice (marks will contribute to the class participation). A mark for a quiz will be given to a student only if (1) s/he attends the entire class for which the participation occurs, and (2) the instructor observed the student actively participating, and (3) the student signs the quiz (including a student number); (4) quizzes must be submitted when students are asked to do so; late quizzes will not be accepted. The participation mark will be given primarily for effort, and less for solution correctness. There will be no make-up quizzes. If you missed a quiz, it is recommended to ask other students for a copy and solve the quiz independently.


• Dates are subject to change, all changes will be announced in class and on the course Web pages.
• Assignments should be submitted on or before the deadline specified in the assignment (you are encouraged to submit assignments earlier). Your assignment is considered late if any part of the assignment is late and the penalty for a late assignment is 10% off. No assignments will be accepted if more than 24 hours late.
• All assignments have to be submitted electronically using a special purpose script that you can run on any moon computer (log in Linux operating system to run this script). You can submit your assignment either locally from labs, or remotely from home. If you have decided to submit it remotely, it is your responsibility to make sure that you have ssh software installed at your home computer. You need this software to login remotely into any of the moons and run a specified script there. Also, you are expected to know basic UNIX commands and utilities. Finally, make sure that your computer science account is open and is in good standing. Contact one of system administrators if you will have questions.
• From time to time, I will hand out exercises. The students are expected to solve the exercises, but they will not be graded. However, working on exercises will improve your understanding of this course (and will help you to get better marks on tests).
• Up to 5% extra credit may be assigned for class participation (a student attends the entire class, participates actively by asking/answering questions, works on problems in class and/or attends office hours).
• Handouts and assignments will be made available on the Web only. You are responsible for visiting the course Web pages regularly and reading assignments related information that is provided or linked from these Web pages. Before sending your questions by e-mail to the instructor, check these Web pages whether similar questions have been already answered.
• Email communication: please send me email from local Ryerson's email addresses only. Please be aware that email sent from Yahoo, Hotmail and other popular domains can be filtered out as spam and might not reach me. Email messages will be normally answered within 24 hours; however, messages sent on weekend (starting from Friday evening) will be usually answered on Monday.

ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT
Committing academic misconduct, such as plagiarism and cheating, will trigger academic penalties including failing grades, suspension and possibly expulsion from the University. As a Ryerson student, you are responsible for familiarizing yourself with the Student Code of Academic Conduct.

Remarking Policy

1. Grades are earned for the demonstration of knowledge.
2. Read carefully the marking guide for the assignment or test you'd like to be remarked.
3. Fill in this remarking form (available online).
4. Give the form and the assignment/test to TA who marked the assignment/test or to the instructor (at lecture time or scheduled office hour), who will forward it to a TA.
5. You may not submit a remarking request later than ONE WEEK from the date on which the assignments were returned. It's your responsibility to pick up your work as soon as possible.
6. Mark can decrease if TA finds something that was incorrectly awarded too high a mark.

Tentative Course Calendar (subject to change: all changes will be announced in class)

Course Work	Due Date	Grade Value (%)
Assignment  1	January 26	5%
Assignment 2 (in two parts)	February 9 and 16	5%
Assignment 3	March 2	5%
Midterm test	March 2	25
Assignment 4	March 23	5%
Assignment 5	March 30	5%
In-class presentation	Winter term	5%
Class participation (and/or quizzes)	Winter term	5%
Second Exam	April 6	40%
		100%