The Semantic Web is a web of data that will enable machines to comprehend documents and data. The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current World Wide Web. The advantage of the Semantic Web is that information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers to work in cooperation. 

The World Wide Web was designed as an information space, with the goal that it should be useful not only for human to human communication, but also that machines would be able to participate and help. This goal has not yet been fulfilled. One of the major obstacles to fulfilling this goal is the fact that most information on the Web is designed for human consumption. Even if the information was derived from a database with well-defined meanings for its columns and rows, the structure of the data is not evident to a computer system browsing the web. The Semantic Web approach develops languages for expressing information in a powerful machine processable form. 

For the Semantic Web to function, computers must have access to structured collections of information and sets of inference rules that they can use to conduct automated reasoning. The key to facilitating this is ontologies. An ontology is a document or file that formally defines the relations among terms. The most typical kind of ontology for the Web has a taxonomy and a set of inference rules.

Unicorn’s vision represents a practical commercial realization of the Semantic Web vision described by the World Wide Web Consortium.

Below are a number of articles that relate to the Semantic Web:

• "Challenges: Speed Bumps Ahead For Semantic Web," by David M. Ewalt, Information Week, October 14, 2002

• "The Next Web," by Otis Port, Business Week, March 4, 2002

• "Building the Semantic Web," by Edd Dumbill, March 7, 2001, XML.com

• "Semantic Web Road Map," by Tim Berners-Lee, W3C, September 1998

Below are a number of relevant sites to the Semantic Web:

• SemanticWorld

• The World Wide Web Consortium's Semantic Web Activity

• Semantic Web.Org