An Expressive Constraint Language for Semantic Web Applications

Gray, Prof Peter and Hui, Dr Kit and Preece, Dr Alun (2001) An Expressive Constraint Language for Semantic Web Applications. In Preece, Dr Alun and O'Leary, Prof Daniel, Eds. Proceedings IJCAI-01 Workshop on E-Business and the Intelligent Web, pages pp. 46-53, Seattle, USA.

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We present a framework for semantic web applications based on constraint interchange and processing. At the core of the framework is a well-established semantic data model (P/FDM) with an associated expressive constraint language (Colan). To allow data instances to be transported across a network, we map our data model to the RDF Schema specification. To allow constraints to be transported, we define a Constraint Interchange Format (CIF) in the form of an RDF Schema for Colan, allowing each constraint to be defined as a resource in its own right. We show that, because Colan is essentially a syntactically-sugared form of first-order logic, and P/FDM is based on the widely-used extended ER model, our CIF is actually very widely applicable and reusable. Finally, we outline a set of services for constraint fusion and solving, which are particularly applicable to business-to-business e-commerce applications. All of these services can be accessed using the CIF.

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