Abstract. Semantic search promises to produce precise answers to user queries by taking advantage of the availability of explicit semantics of information in the context of the semantic web. Existing tools have been primarily designed to enhance the performance of traditional search technologies but with little support for naive users, i.e., ordinary end users who are not necessarily familiar with domain specific semantic data, ontologies, or SQL-like query languages. This paper presents SemSearch, a search engine, which pays special attention to this issue by hiding the complexity of semantic search from end users and making it easy to use and effective. In contrast with existing semantic-based keyword search engines which typically compromise their capability of handling complex user queries in order to overcome the problem of knowledge overhead, SemSearch not only overcomes the problem of knowledge overhead but also supports complex queries. Further, SemSearch provides comprehensive means to produce precise answers that on the one hand satisfy user queries and on the other hand are self-explanatory and understandable by end users. A prototype of the search engine has been implemented and applied in the semantic web portal of our lab. An initial evaluation shows promising results.
SemSearch REF has a little-structured keyword query interface to hide the complexity of semantic search.
SemSearch: A Search Engine for the Semantic Web
Proc. 5th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management Managing Knowledge in a World of Networks, Lect. Notes in Comp. Sci., Springer, Podebrady, Czech Republic
Computer Science