Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to advance research that portrays the semantic web as the future web where computer software agents can carry out sophisticated tasks for users. Design/methodology/approach – The paper discusses the major factors that affect the performance and reliability of information services for the web, namely the distribution of information, which has resulted from the globalization of information systems, the heterogeneity of information sources and the sources’ instability caused by autonomous evolution. Findings – Man stands at the threshold of being able to create the semantic web, in terms of declaratively representing objects that are already human-readable on the web. The next step is to make it the dynamic semantic web by encoding procedures in web material as first-class objects. Practical implications – Semantic web technology will work with extensible mark-up language, which will enable electronic commerce by: defining languages that provide support in defining, mapping, and exchanging product data; functioning from the development of standard ontology that will cover various business areas; and utilizing efficient translation services that will require areas of standard ontology. Originality/value – The paper tackles one of the most pressing issues of the creation of programs that collect web content, process the information and exchange the results with other programs from diverse sources.