Book excerpt: The Web is growing at an astounding pace surpassing the 8 billion page mark. However, most pages are still designed for human consumption and cannot be processed by machines. This book provides a well-paced introduction to the Semantic Web. It covers a wide range of topics, from new trends (ontologies, rules) to existing technologies (Web Services and software agents) to more formal aspects (logic and inference). It includes: real-world (and complete) examples of the application of Semantic Web concepts; how the technology presented and discussed throughout the book can be extended to other application areas.