Researchers at the Institute of Computer Science at Freie Universität have assisted the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in the development of an international standard for the Semantic Web. The Rule Interchange Format (RIF W3C) Standard now published by the W3C is of great relevance for applications in business and industry. It provides a standardized means for exchanging rules on the Web.

Since 2005 Prof. Dr. Adrian Paschke, who heads the Corporate Semantic Web unit at the Institute of Computer Science, has together with his team contributed to the development of the new W3C standards and edited several specifications.

The new W3C RIF standard makes it possible to describe existing and new rules declaratively. Rules that were written for one application can be published, shared, and combined. They can be reused and extended for other applications and rule machines. The basic rule can help companies to find new customers, doctors to verify prescriptions, and banks to process loan applications.

The Semantic Web is an extension of the World Wide Web and is based on the proposal of its founder, Tim Berners-Lee. Its aim is to make information understandable by computers. Linking information in a Semantic Web enables machines to discover relationships not previously possible for automated agents.

The aim of the W3C is the creation of Web standards and guidelines to ensure the long-term growth of the Internet. W3C is an international community where member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together. More than 400 organizations are members. It is run jointly by the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT CSAIL) in the U.S., the European Research Consortium for Computer Science and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, and Keio University in Japan. It has additional offices worldwide, including in Berlin / Potsdam, the German-Austrian W3C office.