The Research Of Using RIF To Describe The Semantic Web Rule And Reasoning RIF

There are a great lot of data in the World Wide Web today, such as documents, pictures, videos, audios and so on. In the condition of a quick developing of the World Wide Web, we can see that the data has a very low utilization. Software in the Web cannot always find the exact information for users. It is because that the World Wide Web is a web of documents. The idea of the Semantic Web will change this situation. It will change the web of documents to the web of data. Then software will do more in the web in the future. After more than ten years developing, the stack of the Semantic Web is complete, i.e. the bottom of the stack contains URI/IRI, XML and TCP/IP, the middle of the stack contains all the standards of the Semantic Web that W3C made such as RDF, RDFS, OWL and SPARQL. Now the focus of the Semantic Web moves to the Rule Interchange Format (RIF). RIF is a format that can express almost all the rule languages, especially the rule languages in the Semantic Web. RIF has two functions in the Semantic Web as follows.1) Almost all the rule languages in the Semantic Web can be expressed by RIF. Then RIF takes rule languages that are adapted to the Semantic Web into the Semantic Web by translating these rules languages to the format of RIF. Adding rule languages to the Semantic Web not only increases the ability of the expression of the ontology, but also makes the Semantic Web into practice more quickly.2) Different kinds of rule languages can be written into the same format of RIF. Then one rule languages could be interchanged into another by using RIF. Logic layer, proof layer and trust layer in the top of the stack of the Semantic Web need rule interchange to achieve their functions. Therefore, RIF is the foundation of the top of the stack of the Semantic Web.The function of the RIF connects the middle of the stack of the Semantic Web to the top. RIF is very important to the developing of the Semantic Web and is the key to making the Semantic Web into practice.Now, RIF is almost there. After this work done, the middle of the stack of the Semantic Web is done. Then the research of the Semantic Web will move to the top of the stack. Before we do it, there are two questions in front of us. One is how to express rules and facts in the Ontology by using RIF, and the second one is how to reason RIF.About the first question, there are many rule languages in the Semantic Web, for example DLP, SWRL. In fact, if one rule language wants to take a part in interchanging itself, it must own a translation component to RIF. In the future of the Semantic Web, RIF is in charge of expressing all rule languages in the Semantic Web. Therefore, it is necessary for a rule language to develop a translation component to RIF. About the second question, RIF is just a series of standards, it does not tell us how to reason it. Therefore, we can choose any rule system we want. In the condition of lacking the special rule system to RIF, we can use the common rule system, just like Jess. And we develop a translation from RIF to the format of the common rule system then we can perform the reason.In this paper, we do the following jobs to resolve the questions mentioned above.1) Research SWRL and RIF, define a new RIF dialects named RIF-Lite which can express SWRL. Using RIF-Lite, we can standardize SWRL.2) Proof that the translation from SWRL to RIF-Lite is semantic equivalence. Give the method of translation from SWRL to RIF-Lite.3) Use Jess rule engine to reason RIF-Lite rules, develop the translation component from RIF-Lite to Jess.4) Develop SRJ system in the Protégé. Protégéis a Semantic Web Ontology editor. SRJ is a plug-in in the Protégé. SRJ can translate SWRL rules in the SWRL Ontology to RIF-Lite and can receive RIF-Lite rules too. SRJ provides a user interface. Users can edit the RIF-Lite rules by using this interface. SRJ calls Jess rule engine to reason RIF-Lite rules. SRJ infers the facts about the RIF-Lite rules from SWRL and translates these facts to Jess format. SRJ also translate RIF-Lite rules to Jess rules.In the experiment of this paper, we use a SWRL Ontology about family named family_swrl.owl provided by Stanford University as the input of SRJ system. SRJ can translate SWRL rules in this Ontology to RIF-Lite rules completely and can translate RIF-Lite rules to Jess rules completely. SRJ can provide inferred facts and rules to Jess rule engine and then gets the results. SRJ gets the same results to SWRL Tab. SRJ system provides a nice platform to the Semantic Web users, especially the one who wants to use RIF rules. In the SRJ system, users can translate their own SWRL rules to RIF-Lite rules, receive RIF-Lite rules, edit RIF-Lite rules in the user interface and reason RIF-Lite rules by using Jess. There are two ways to improve the SRJ, the first one is SRJ can only receive pure text RIF-Lite rules, not like SWRL Tab can select classes, properties from lists. Another one is that SRJ cannot translate the Build-in, we should work on these two questions in the future.RIF plays an important role in the Semantic Web. In the future of the developing of the Semantic Web, whether the Semantic Web useful or how useful it is depends on how many applications the RIF owns. This paper gives some research on developing RIF rules editor, translation from SWRL to RIF and reasoning RIF by using Jess. These are foundations of the research of RIF in the future.