Do Data Agents Need Semantic Metadata? A Comparative Study in Agentic Data Retrieval
In the era of autonomous agents, machine-actionable data is critical for data-driven workflows. For more than a decade, semantic metadata like schema$.$org has anchored the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) for machine-actionable data and enabled discovery tools like Google Dataset Search. However, the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) capable of navigating the unstructured web raises a fundamental question: Is semantic metadata still necessary for agentic data discovery, or can agents reliably retrieve actionable data directly from the web? We present a comparative analysis of agentic data retrieval across two distinct environments: a Baseline Agent s...
| Authors | Shiyu Chen, Tarfah Alrashed, Alon Halevy et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.IR |
| Published | 27 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 21 July 2026 |
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