INVITED CONTRIBUTION The SWAP Data and Metadata Model for Semantics-Based Peer-to-Peer Systems

Peer-to-Peer systems are a new paradigm for information sharing and some systems have successfully been deployed. It has been argued that current Peer-to-Peer systems suffer from the lack of semantics. The SWAP project (Semantic Web and Peer-to-Peer) 1 aims at overcoming this problem by combining the Peer-to-Peer paradigm with Semantic Web technologies. In this paper, we propose a data model for encoding semantic information that combines features of ontologies (concept hierarchies, relational structures) with a flexible description and rating model that allows us to handle heterogeneous and even contradictory views on the domain of interest. We discuss the role of this model in the SWAP environment and describe the model as well as its application.