我试图掌握语义网的概念。我发现这很难 来理解RDF和OWL之间的确切区别。是 OWL是RDF的扩展或者这两者是完全不同的 技术吗?

简而言之，是的，您可以说OWL是RDF的扩展。

In more detail, with RDF you can describe a directed graph by defining subject-predicate-object triples. The subject and the object are the nodes, the predicate is the edge, or by other words, the predicate describes the relation between the subject and the object. For example :Tolkien :wrote :LordOfTheRings or :LordOfTheRings :author :Tolkien, etc... Linked data systems use these triples to describe knowledge graphs, and they provide ways to store them, query them. Now these are huge systems, but you can use RDF by smaller projects. Every application has a domain specific language (or by DDD terms ubiquitous language). You can describe that language in your ontology/vocabulary, so you can describe the domain model of your application with a graph, which you can visualize show it to business ppl, talk about business decisions based on the model, and build the application on top of that. You can bind the vocab of your application to the data it returns and to a vocabulary known by the search engines, like microdata (for example you can use HTML with RDFA to do this), and so search engines can find your applications easily, because the knowledge about what it does will be machine processable. This is how semantic web works. (At least this is how I imagine it.)

Now to describe object oriented applications you need types, classes, properties, instances, etc... With RDF you can describe only objects. RDFS (RDF schema) helps you to describe classes, inheritance (based on objects ofc.), but it is too broad. To define constraints (for example one kid per chinese family) you need another vocab. OWL (web ontology language) does this job. OWL is an ontology which you can use to describe web applications. It integrates the XSD simpleTypes. So RDF -> RDFS -> OWL -> MyWebApp is the order to describe your web application in a more and more specific way.

RDF、RDFS和OWL是表示日益复杂的信息或知识的方法。它们都可以用RDF/XML语法(或任何其他RDF序列化语法，例如Turtle或N3)序列化。

这些技术是相关的，应该是可互操作的，但它们有不同的起源，这可能就是为什么它们之间的关系很难掌握的原因。选择一种还是另一种取决于建模所需要的情况有多复杂。

表达能力的总结

RDF:简单的表示，主要关注实例及其类型的映射(RDF: type)。可以定义自定义属性来链接数据和创建三元组。使用SPARQL查询RDF数据。 在Turtle中序列化RDF的例子:

@prefix : <http://www.example.org/> .
:john    rdf:type           :Man .
:john    :livesIn  "New-York" .
:livesIn    rdf:type    rdf:Property .

RDFS: Some situations are not easily modelled by RDF alone, it is sometimes interesting to represent more complex relations like subclasses (the type of a type) for example. RDFS provides special means to represent such cases, with constructs like rdfs:subClassOf, rdfs:range or rdfs:domain. Ideally, a reasoner can understand the RDFS semantics and expand the number of triples based on the relations: For instance if you have the triples John a Man and Man rdfs:subClassOf Human then you should generate as well the triple John a Human. Note that this is not possible to do with RDF alone. RDFS data are queried using SPARQL. Example of RDFS serialised in Turtle:

@prefix : <http://www.example.org/> .
:john    rdf:type           :Man .
:Man    rdfs:subClassOf    :Human .
:john    :livesIn  "New-York" .
:livesIn    rdf:type    rdf:Property .
# After reasoning
:john    rdf:type    :Human .

OWL: The highest level of expressivity. Relation between classes can be formally modelled based on description logics (mathematical theory). OWL relies heavily on the reasoner, it is possible to express complex constructs such as chained properties for instance or restriction between classes. OWL serves to build ontologies or schema on the top of RDF datasets. As OWL can be serialised as RDF/XML, it is theoretically possible to query it via SPARQL, yet it is much more intuitive to query an OWL ontology with a DL query (which is usually a standard OWL class expression). Example of OWL constructs serialised in Turtle.

@prefix : <http://www.example.org/> .
:livesIn    rdf:type    owl:DatatypeProperty .
:Human    rdf:type    owl:Class .
:Man   rdf:type    owl:Class .
:Man    rdfs:subClassOf    :Human .
:John    rdf:type    :Man . 
:John    rdf:type    owl:NamedIndividual .

语义网是分层的。这是一个简短的总结，我认为你会感兴趣。

更新:请注意，RDFS是用来定义数据结构的，而不是OWL。OWL描述的语义关系是普通编程(如C结构体)所不关心的，而且更接近人工智能研究和集合论。

三元组和uri

Subject - Predicate - Object

这些描述了一个事实。通常URI用于主语和谓语。对象可以是另一个URI，也可以是一个文字，比如数字或字符串。文字可以有一个类型(也是一个URI)，也可以有一种语言。是的，这意味着三元组最多可以有5位数据!

例如，三连音可以描述查尔斯是哈里的父亲这一事实。

<http://example.com/person/harry> <http://familyontology.net/1.0#hasFather> <http://example.com/person/charles> .

三元组是数据库规范化在逻辑上的极端。它们的优点是可以将来自多个源的三元组加载到一个数据库中，而无需重新配置。

RDF和RDFS

下一层是RDF——资源描述框架。RDF为三元组定义了一些额外的结构。RDF定义的最重要的东西是一个称为“RDF:type”的谓词。这是用来表示事物是某种类型的。每个人都使用rdf:type，这使得它非常有用。

RDFS (RDF Schema) defines some classes which represent the concept of subjects, objects, predicates etc. This means you can start making statements about classes of thing, and types of relationship. At the most simple level you can state things like http://familyontology.net/1.0#hasFather is a relationship between a person and a person. It also allows you to describe in human readable text the meaning of a relationship or a class. This is a schema. It tells you legal uses of various classes and relationships. It is also used to indicate that a class or property is a sub-type of a more general type. For example "HumanParent" is a subclass of "Person". "Loves" is a sub-class of "Knows".

RDF连载

RDF可以以多种文件格式导出。最常见的是RDF+XML，但这有一些弱点。

N3是一种更容易阅读的非xml格式，并且有一些更严格的子集(Turtle和N-Triples)。

重要的是要知道RDF是一种处理三元组的方法，而不是文件格式。

XSD

XSD是一个命名空间，主要用于描述属性类型，如日期、整数等。它通常出现在RDF数据中，用于标识文字的特定类型。它也用于XML模式，这是一种略有不同的情况。

OWL

OWL adds semantics to the schema. It allows you to specify far more about the properties and classes. It is also expressed in triples. For example, it can indicate that "If A isMarriedTo B" then this implies "B isMarriedTo A". Or that if " C isAncestorOf D " and " D isAncestorOf E " then " C isAncestorOf E ". Another useful thing owl adds is the ability to say two things are the same, this is very helpful for joining up data expressed in different schemas. You can say that relationship "sired" in one schema is owl:sameAs "fathered" in some other schema. You can also use it to say two things are the same, such as the "Elvis Presley" on wikipedia is the same one on the BBC. This is very exciting as it means you can start joining up data from multiple sites (this is "Linked Data").

您还可以使用OWL来推断隐含的事实，例如“C isancestry of E”。

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a powerful formal knowledge representation language and a fundamental standard of the Semantic Web. It has its own vocabulary that defines core concepts and relations (e.g., rdf:type corresponds to the isA relationship), and a data model that enables machine-interpretable statements in the form of subject-predicate-object (resource-property-value) triples, called RDF triples, such as picture-depicts-book. The extension of the RDF vocabulary with concepts required to create controlled vocabularies and basic ontologies is called RDF Schema or RDF Vocabulary Description Language (RDFS). RDFS makes it possible to write statements about classes and resources, and express taxonomical structures, such as via superclass-subclass relationships.

Complex knowledge domains require more capabilities than what is available in RDFS, which led to the introduction of OWL. OWL supports relationships between classes (union, intersection, disjointness, equivalence), property cardinality constraints (minimum, maximum, exact number, e.g., every person has exactly one father), rich typing of properties, characteristics of properties and special properties (transitive, symmetric, functional, inverse functional, e.g., A ex:hasAncestor B and B ex:hasAncestor C implies that A ex:hasAncestor C), specifying that a given property is a unique key for instances of a particular class, and domain and range restrictions for properties.

在WC3文档对象模型中，文档是一个抽象的东西:包含文本、注释、属性和其他嵌套元素的元素。

在语义网中，我们处理的是一组“三元组”。每个三重是:

一个主题，三元组的内容，id，数据库主键，一个URI;而且 谓词，“动词”，“属性”，“数据库列”-另一个URI;而且 对象，原子值或一些URI。

OWL之于语义web就像schema之于W3C文档对象模型。它记录了各种uri的含义，并指定如何以一种可以由机器检查的正式方式使用它们。语义web对于应用于它的OWL可能有效也可能无效，就像文档对于模式可能有效也可能无效一样。

RDF之于语义网就像XML之于DOM——它是一组三元组的序列化。

当然，RDF通常被序列化为XML文档……但重要的是要理解RDF与“RDF的XML序列化”不是一回事。

类似地，OWL可以使用OWL/XML序列化，或者(不好意思)可以表示为RDF，而RDF本身通常序列化为XML。

一图胜千言!下面这张图应该可以加强克里斯托弗·古特里奇的观点 在这个回答中说语义网是一个“分层架构”。

来源:https://www.obitko.com/tutorials/ontologies-semantic-web/semantic-web-architecture.html