Semantic web & compliance
The term “Semantic Web” was coined by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. His idea was to create a “web of data” that could be interpreted by machines – a goal that is also highly relevant the area of compliance. What is known as the Resource Description Framework (RDF) is used to achieve this goal. RDF enables automated inferencing, which is also beneficial for compliance purposes.
Resource Description Framework (RDF)
The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is used to formulate logical statements about any number of things (resources). An RDF model consists of statements containing a subject, predicate and object. A statement is more or less a triple consisting of an identifier for a given entity or object, a description of an attribute (attribute name) and the attribute itself (attribute value). Subsets are important for inferencing. Lawyers will generally be familiar with the syllogism involving Socrates and the Greeks: all humans are mortal. The Greeks are a subset of humans. Therefore, because Socrates is Greek, he is also mortal. In the field of legal technology, attempts are being made to apply such automatic inferencing for the sake of compliance as well.
