TR05-01 (2005) – Web Ontology Verification and Analysis in the Z Framework

D. Lucanu, Y. F. Li, J. S. Dong

The correctness of Web ontologies and data is an importantaspect in the development of reliable Semantic Web systems.Software specification and verification tools can be used tocomplement the Knowledge Representation tools in reasoning aboutSemantic Web. The key for applying software verification toolsto Semantic Web is to develop the sound transformation techniquesfrom Web ontology to software specification models so that theassociated verification tools can be applied to check the transformedspecification models. Our previous work has demonstrated a practicalapproach to translating Web ontologies to Z specification models.However, from a sound engineering point of view, the translationis lacking the theoretical work that can formally relate the respectiveunderlying logical systems in semantic web and Z.In this paper, we show that the logics underlying OWL, SWRL, and SWRL FOLcan be represented as institutions, we investigate the properties of theseinstitutions, and we show that the institutioncomorphism provides a formal semantic foundation for encoding web ontologiesspecifications in Z.

Bibtex

@TechReport{wovazf,
author = "D. Lucanu and  Y. F. Li and J. S. Dong",
title = "{W}eb {O}ntology {V}erification and {A}nalysis in the {Z} {F}ramework",
institution = "``Al.I.Cuza'' University of Ia{c s}i, 
                 Faculty of Computer Science",
year = "2005",
number = "TR 05-01",
note = "URL:http://www.infoiasi.ro/~tr/tr.pl.cgi"
}