Department of Computing

COMP348 Document Processing and the Semantic Web

Resources and Support Materials

Textbooks

There is no set textbook for the unit. There will be lecture notes, and readings (for example, of on-line papers) will be assigned in class.

The following books provide additional information on topics covered during the course, and are in the library (call numbers are in parentheses):

• Jackson and Moulinier, Natural Language Processing for Online Applications, John Benjamins, ISBN: (Call no. QA76.9.N38 J33 2002)
• Jurafsky & Martin. Speech and Language Processing, Upper Saddle River, NJ ; Prentice Hall, 2000. xxvi, 934p. ISBN: 0-13-095069-6. (Call no. P98.J87/2000)
• Manning & Schütze. Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing, Cambridge, MA ; MIT Press, 1999. xxxvii, 680p. ISBN: 0-262-13360-1. (Call no. P98.5.S83.M36/1999)

You will receive some assigned reading for the unit. This is obligatory: you will not understand the lectures if you do not keep up with the reading, and you will not be able to do the practical exercises if you do not do the reading.

You will also need to access materials on programming in Python. If you want to get a book look at the list of Python books at python.org. Other online resources are mentioned below.

Online Resources

Below is a list of online resources for the unit. The contents will change as the course progresses. Watch this space!

Past Exams

• 2005
• 2004

Python: Syntax

• The python.org tutorial
• Dive Into Python is a free book for experienced programmers.
• Python Sorting Mini-Howto is a good tutorial on how to sort lists in various ways.
• Python Regular Expression Howto will tell you all you need to know about REs

Python: Conventions and Static Typing

• PEP 8, a coding standard available at python.org
• PyChecker, a static analysis tool
• an opinion on static typing vs dynamic typing + automated testing
• another opinion

Python Software

• Python 2.5
• Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) and installation instructions

Semantic Web and RDF

• A series of articles by Paul Ford on xml.com beginning with "Screenscraping the Senate" provides a useful introduction to some of the technologies involved in building the SW as well as a concrete example.
• The OWL Guide from the W3C isn't too hard to read and provides a fairly complete overview of the Web Ontology Language OWL.
• Practical RDF, a book by Shelley Powers is available via Safari Books Online from within MQ campus. (Search for it through the library if the above link doesn't work).

Semantic Web Software

• Protege-OWL: full installation
• Pellet 1.3