Introduction to Semantic Web Development

Author: C. Sean Burns
Date: 2025-01-10
Email: sean.burns@uky.edu
Website: cseanburns.net
GitHub: @cseanburns

Introduction

This book will serve as an introduction to semantic web development. A more advanced semantic web development course would introduce students to RDFS, SKOS, OWL, SPARQL or more. But this book expects undergraduate students who are new to web development. Therefore this work focuses on entry level topics: HTML5 and its semantic elements, CSS3, and JSON-LD with schema.org.

This book is a work in progress. The goal is to complete an initial draft between January and May 2025.

How to Use this Book

Markup

There are two markup styles that I want to bring to your attention:

Code Blocks

Text that looks like code blocks indicate some kind of command, series of commands, or web code. Do not simply copy and paste the code into your terminal or text editor. You should practice and type all code yourself.

Asides

I occasionally insert asides into the text. These asides generally contain notes or extra comments about the main content. Asides look like this:

This is an aside. Asides will contain extra information, notes, or comments.

Theme

At the top of the page is an icon of a paint brush. The default theme is darker text on a light background, but you can change the theme per your preferences.

Next to the paintbrush is an icon of a magnifying glass. Use this to search this work.

Printing

I intend this book to be a live document, and therefore it'll be regularly updated. But feel free to print it, if you want. You can use the print function to save the entire book as a PDF file. See the printer icon at the top right of the screen to get started.

About This Book

This book works as a live document since I use it for my spring semester Semantic Web Development course. I will update the content as I teach it in order to address changes in the technology and to edit for clarity.

This book is not a comprehensive introduction to semantic web development. It is designed for an entry level course on these topics. It is focused on a select and small range of those topics that have the specific pedagogical aims described above.

I use mdBook to build markdown source files into this final output.