Concept: RDF and OWL
Developed to specify semantic web, OWL and RDF can be used to model enterprise ontologies. Ontologies are sources for data model used by the rule as an alternate to traditional OOA and the controversial SBVR.
Relationships
Related Elements
Main Description

RDF - the Resource Description Framework - is a standard way for simple descriptions to be made. What XML is for syntax, RDF is for semantics - a clear set of rules for providing simple descriptive information. RDF Schema then provides a way for those descriptions to be combined into a single vocabulary. RDF is integrated into a variety of applications including:

* library catalogs
* world-wide directories
* syndication and aggregation of news, software, and content
* personal collections of music, photos, and events

The RDF specifications provide a powerful framework for supporting the exchange of knowledge on the Web.

What's needed next is a way to develop subject - or domain - specific vocabularies. That is the role of an ontology. An ontology defines the terms used to describe and represent an area of knowledge. Ontologies are used by people, databases, and applications that need to share subject-specific (domain) information - like medicine, tool manufacturing, real estate, automobile repair, financial management, etc. Ontologies include computer-usable definitions of basic concepts in the domain and the relationships among them. They encode knowledge in a domain and also knowledge that spans domains. In this way, they make that knowledge reusable.

OWL - the Web Ontology Language - provides a language for defining structured, Web-based ontologies which delivers richer integration and interoperability of data among descriptive communities. OWL uses both URIs for naming and the description framework for the Web provided by RDF to add the following capabilities to ontologies:

* Ability to be distributed across many systems
* Scalability to Web needs
* Compatibility with Web standards for accessibility and internationalization
* Openness and extensiblility

OWL and RDF implement an object-relational model allowing creation of a directed graph, a network of objects and relationships describing data. It is possible to infer new information from OWL and RDF data. Ex: if a container is for San Francisco then it is shipped to Oakland.

For Tim Berners-Lee who specifies the semantic web, rules constitute a key element of the semantic web, allowing integration, derivation and transformation of the data from multiple sources in a distributes, transparent and scalable manner.

Bringing semantic web into BPMS-BRMS practice offers rigorous data modeling combined with a rule engine to reason, classify and improve data quality.

This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the
Eclipse Public License V1.0, which accompanies this distribution.

EPF Copyright.