Designing & Building Business Ontologies

Location/Dates TBD

This course is far more than learning the syntax of the Semantic Web or how to use tools to implement semantic-based systems (although it certainly does cover both of those). This course is about learning how to think and design in semantics and how to utilize/develop triplestores, graph databases, queries, and ontologies.

Feel free to send us an email with any questions you may have at dbbo@semanticarts.com.

Designing and Building Business Ontologies will help give you the edge you need to transform your information systems.

A “Business Ontology” defines a common set of unambiguous concepts, that are central to your business. Getting everyone on the same page improves search and facilitates harmonization of data repositories. Complexity is greatly reduced, allowing for more flexible evolution of enterprise systems.

Does this sound like you?

  • My information systems are bogged down and I’m not sure which way to turn
  • I get that semantic technology can help, but don’t know how to proceed
  • What’s the big deal about triples and linked data?
  • What’s the difference between an ontology and a data model?
  • How can I use OWL, if I am used to object-oriented modeling?
  • I’m digging the ideas about logic &inference, but don’t know how it works
  • I know the basics of OWL, but I want more advanced material
  • I want to build industry-strength ontologies
  • I like to have FUN while I learn

If so, this course is for you!

We have been continually evolving this course over the ten years we have been teaching it. We are always adding new technologies and new techniques to the course. Over the course of time we’ve learned how students learn this new material and have continued to adopt the course materials.

In this latest incarnation we return to the four-day format (we had expanded the course to six days to cover all the additional material, but we have subsequently figured out how to compress most of the new material back into a 4 day format that seems to work better for most attendees).

Day 1

Semantic Technology: What is it?

The first day is lecture based and covers all the key concepts without getting bogged down in the details. This is appropriate for those who may not be using the technology on a day to day basis but who want to understand how it works and its potential. As such we are allowing each registered student to invite one colleague to the first day as a guest.

Day 2

Working with Triples: Hands on with Graph Databases, triple stores, and queries

This is hands on, where we learn by doing, what is a graph database, what is a URI, what is a triple, how do we represent knowledge in a triple store? We will cover RDF, SPARQL and the Linked Open Data Cloud.

Day 3

Semantic Meta Data: Classes, Restrictions and the Open World

We cover a lot of ground on this day, focusing on how classes are similar but different than they are in traditional technology. We cover how inference really works and what formal representation is all about. You will have an introduction to Description Logics, the underpinning of OWL. We cover the 20% of the OWL and RDFS spec that you will use on a day to day basis and point out the traps in the other 80% should you subsequently go there.

Day 4

Ontology Design and Semantic Architecture

On the last day we put it all together and cover pragmatic considerations of implementing this technology including such topics as: ontology modularization, use of upper ontologies, methodology for enterprise ontology development, semantic rules (what are they, when to use them), how to incorporate taxonomies into an ontology design, how to use RDFShapes for constraint management. We work through an example of extracting data from a relational database using R2RML. Finally, we will show how semantic technology will play a key part in the upcoming Data Centric Revolution.

Pricing

The fee for the four-day course is $2495. Course book, coffee and snacks will be provided, as well as a pizza outing on the evening of the third day.

Register by the Super Early Bird Discount deadline and receive $600 off registration. After that, receive the Early Bird Discount of $300. Dates TBD.

Group discount: for every 3 registrations from the same firm, a fourth one will be allowed at no charge.

We also conduct this course in-house, and have done so for a dozen public and private organizations, please contact us if you would like to discuss doing an in-house training. Download a pricing sheet for in-house training.