In the past year, government integrators have been increasingly using an extension of the World Wide Web format called extensible markup language, or XML, to help move data more easily between online systems. In coming years, they may employ a further extension of the Web, called the Semantic Web, to enable computers and other electronic devices to make more intelligent decisions about what actions they should take.

“The Semantic Web builds on XML,” said Jim Skinner, a chief scientist for Computer Sciences Corp., El Segundo, Calif., who authored a company report on emerging technologies. “It will be set up so that intelligent [software] agents will be able retrieve information and bring it back to you.”

Researchers at University of Maryland-Baltimore County have used a Semantic Web framework to create a smart room that allows a person to operate various electronic devices, such as a lamp or computer, with a handheld computer.

While remote controls are nothing new, what is novel here is the attempt to write a common language for remotely controlling all electronic devices — creating, in essence, a World Wide Web for machines.

The project received research funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation.

What makes the Semantic Web different from current device networking protocols, such as the Bluetooth standard and Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Jini, is that it offers developers a framework to write logic rules for devices to make intelligent decisions, said Timothy Finin, a principal investigator of the University of Maryland project.

Anupam Joshi, a professor and another principal investigator on the project, gives an example of someone in a room who needs to print a document from a PDA. The document needs to be printed in color at 600 dots per inch. A protocol such as Jini would only look for a printer matching that specification. If none are in that range, the document wouldn’t be printed.

The Semantic Web framework would allow the PDA to evaluate the possible printers and offer the best solution. “It would ask the user, ‘Would you prefer a black and white print at 1,200 DPI or a 300 DPI color print?’ ” Joshi said.

For consumers this may mean that a ringing phone may signal to a DVD player to pause a movie being watched while the viewer answers the phone, he said. A government agency may use this protocol to automatically ensure that all its property, from lamps to automobiles, adhere to energy conservation and security policies. It could also allow complex knowledge management systems to share and analyze data with little human intervention.

The creator of the Semantic Web is Tim Berners-Lee, the originator of the protocols used for the World Wide Web. “The Web is good for delivering information to humans. [Berners-Lee] wants to extend that to include information exchanged between machines,” said Thanh Diep, a senior technologist for General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics Corp., Falls Church, Va.

The University of Maryland project is part of a year 2000 Defense Department Semantic Web initiative called the DARPA Agent Markup Language, which seeks to develop a semantic language that would allow a higher level of interoperability, not only between devices, as the University of Maryland project demonstrates, but even between Web sites and databases.

“The market is virtually unlimited for DAML,” said Adam Pease, director of knowledge systems for the intelligence software research company Teknowledge Corp., Palo Alto, Calif. “Everywhere we have Web sites written for people, DAML can be included to make those sites understandable to machines. There is a lot of work that has to happen in terms of creating DAML content.”

The company has participated in the DAML project and subsequently parlayed that experience into development work for other agencies. In February, the company won a $750,000 contract from the Air Force to develop software that can locate contradictions and inconsistencies in datasets based on metadata specifications.

Other companies also express guarded optimism for the market the Semantic Web, or an offshoot of the technology, may produce.

“The Semantic Web is important to us. Because of the nature of the work we do, we’re trying to get different computer systems talking to each other. And right now, we have to add a lot of our own work in there to make it happen,” said Mike Boese, deputy chief technology officer of General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems.

“It’s still in the realm of research, but if the kinks are worked out, the Semantic Web would go a long way in communicating across federal agencies,” said Bill Medley, manager of the Web solutions for GTSI Corp., Chantilly, Va. “It would offer an order of magnitude leap in the ability to parse information and understand what that information means in context.”