InterDataNet: A Web of Data foundation for the Semantic Web vision

The semantic evolution of the Web appears to be technically feasible but still not yet within our grasp. Web Science is concerned with providing hypotheses to explain this gap as well as with defining innovative paths to explore. From a technical point of view one crucial issue in the Semantic Web idea has been identified in the problem of data exposure. This issue is strictly intertwined with the concrete need of addressable open and shared ontological concepts as well as with their grounding in physical data resources. So far, outstanding researchers have started to argue that properly facing such problems would first require an intermediary step from the current Web of Documents towards a Web of Data (or Data Web), in which documents are broken down into simpler semantic data units to be addressed with sufficient granularity as to allow their effective processing, integration and, ultimately, interoperability. The Linked Data approach provides concrete technical solutions to the interlinking of semantic data as to allow data integration as well as querying across data sources. This is giant step towards the creation of an uncountable number of potentially groundbreaking semantic applications. InterDataNet (IDN) is a project within the Web of Data which can comply with the objectives of the Linked Data while intrinsically overcoming some of its limitations and thus providing a foundation for the Semantic Web. The IDN project aims to define an architectural solution to data interoperability through a layered middleware architecture that grounds the Web of Data. IDN sustains global addressability of concepts and resources as well as basic collaborative oriented services for distributed and heterogeneous semantic data management.