Brief Description for WWW-2006 Conference Tutorial to be held 26 May 2006 in Edinburgh, Scotland "Semantic Web Rules with Ontologies, and their E-Services Applications" (3.5 hours) * Presenters: o Benjamin Grosof http://ebusiness.mit.edu/bgrosof o Mike Dean http://www.daml.org/people/mdean Goals: Rules are a main emerging area of the Semantic Web. There has been significant progress in recent years in several aspects of Semantic Web rules. This includes exciting developments in the underlying knowledge representation formalisms as well as advances in integration of rules with ontologies; translations between heterogeneous commercial rule engines; development of open-source tools for inferencing and interoperability; standards proposals (including RuleML and SWRL); proposals for rule-based semantic Web services; and pilot applications in the emerging area of e-services. This tutorial will provide an introduction to these developments and will explore techniques, applications, and challenges. We will also touch upon the issues of business value, adoption, investment, and strategy considerations. Why of Interest; Justification: After ontologies and RDF query/access, rules is the most important frontier area today for the Semantic Web core technology and standards. There are a number of exciting research issues, most semantic web researchers (and developers) are not yet up to speed in this area, yet this half-day tutorial to help them get there is quite doable. This tutorial is related to WWW2006 because: * It includes examples of real world deployments of semantic web technologies, e.g., in tools, e-contracting and business policies. It also discusses issues of business value, return on investments, and relates that to requirements analysis and the current commercial scene in rules and semantic web overall. * It identifies and explains synergies: (1) between two major areas of the semantic web -- rules and ontologies; and (2) between multiple existing disciplines of computer science: knowledge representation, agents, software engineering, and database-y information integration. * It identifies and discusses the potential role that semantic web technology can play in the new and emerging areas of: Services; and also context-mediated information retrieval/integration. It is timely due to the recent formation of the W3C Rule Interchange Format Working Group. Background Knowledge Required: Helpful but not required is: - basics of logical knowledge representation (relational DBMS, logic programs, and/or first order logic) - basics of XML, RDF, and OWL (Much of the WWW audience actually has this background.)