  The World Wide Web no longer consists just of HTML pages. Our work sheds
light on a number of trends on the Internet that go beyond simple Web pages.
The hidden Web provides a wealth of data in semi-structured form, accessible
through Web forms and Web services. These services, as well as numerous other
applications on the Web, commonly use XML, the eXtensible Markup Language. XML
has become the lingua franca of the Internet that allows customized markups to
be defined for specific domains. On top of XML, the Semantic Web grows as a
common structured data source. In this work, we first explain each of these
developments in detail. Using real-world examples from scientific domains of
great interest today, we then demonstrate how these new developments can assist
the managing, harvesting, and organization of data on the Web. On the way, we
also illustrate the current research avenues in these domains. We believe that
this effort would help bridge multiple database tracks, thereby attracting
researchers with a view to extend database technology.
