An infrastructure for formally ensuring interoperability in a heterogeneous semantic web
Jérôme Euzenat · 2001
Because different applications and different communities require different features, the semantic web might have to face the heterogeneity of the languages for expressing knowledge. Yet, it will be necessary for many applications to use knowledge coming from different sources. In such a context, ensuring the correct understanding of imported knowledge on semantic ground is very important. We present here an infrastructure based on the notions of transformations from one language to another and of properties satisfied by transformations. We show, in the particular context of semantic properties and description logics markup language, how it is possible (1) to define properties of transformations, (2) to express, in a machine processable form, the proof of the property and (3) to construct by composition a proof of properties satisfied by composed transformations. All these functions are based on extensions of current web standard languages. The proofs can be used at transformation time for checking the validity of asserted properties. Such an infrastructure ensures the safe importation of knowledge from various sources.