Project Proposal

CS6795: Semantic Web Techniques

By:

Group 2:

Amrinder Brar

Eugenia Kondratova

Rachita Sharma

Luqian (Sophie) Zhu

Dr. Spencer & Dr. Boley Oct 28, 2004

The goal of our project is to create an XML-based taxonomy that describes the entities, and their relationships, within a university system (based on the UNB model). Depending on the time and effort required, the taxonomy may be structured to represent a single viewpoint (from a student’s perspective) or multiple views (student, professor, staff, etc.). The taxonomy will include entities such as departments, faculties, services, classes, recreational activities, on-campus housing, facilities, etc. To interactively develop the taxonomy, the team will use the Protégé tool, developed by Stanford University, which permits the instant visualization (possibly using OntoViz) of the university structure.

In order to better describe the university structure, for effective searching, the team will incorporate a few RuleML rules into the university taxonomy (possibly relying on the TX RuleML Tool, developed by Onut Iosif-Viorel and Sandeep Singh). The taxonomy will then be converted to an RDFS version, by means of Protégé’s backend facility. Finally, we will run the RDFS ontology in OO jDrew, using types for more precise searching and reduction of combinatorial explosion. The final result should enable a program, acting on behalf of a user (student, professor, etc.), to better find and understand the structure and rules within a university system.

Throughout the project development process, our team may identify possible additions or variations to the above course of action. These additions will be subject to available time and resources. At the present time, we would like to proceed with the above plan.