The benefit of using ontologies, defined by the respective data standards, is shown. It is presented how ontologies can be used for the semantic enrichment of data and how this can contribute to the vision of the semantic web to become true. The problems existing today on the way to a true semantic web are pinpointed, different semantic web standards, tools and development frameworks are overlooked and an outlook towards artificial intelligence and agents for searching and mining the data in the semantic web are given, paving the way from data management to information and in the end true knowledge management systems.