“Representation of Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules in Web Ontology Language”

Author, institution: Jaroslav Karpovič, Kaunas University of Technology

Science area, field: Technological sciences, Informatics engineering

The Doctoral Dissertation is available at the library of Kaunas University of Technology (K. Donelaičio St. 20, Kaunas).

Scientific Supervisor:

Prof. Dr. Lina Nemuraitė (Kaunas University of Technology, Technological sciences, Informatics engineering – 07T).

Dissertation defence board of Informatics engineering science field:

Prof. Dr. Robertas Damaševčius (Kaunas University of Technology, Technological sciences, Informatics engineering – 07T) – chairman,

Prof. Dr. Habil. Genadijus Kulvietis (Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Technological sciences, Informatics engineering – 07T),

Prof. Dr. Audrius Lopata (Vilnius University, Technological sciences, Informatics engineering – 07T),

Prof. Dr. Habil. Rimantas Šeinauskas (Kaunas University of Technology, Technological sciences, Informatics engineering – 07T),

Prof. Dr. Olegas Vasilecas (Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Technological sciences, Informatics engineering – 07T).

Opponents:

Prof. Dr. Habil. Gintautas Dzemyda (Vilnius University, Technological sciences, Informatics engineering – 07T),

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Raimundas Matulevičius (University of Tartu, Technological sciences, Informatics engineering – 07T).

Annotation:

The problem analysed in this research lies in making ontologies better understandable for the non-IT staff. Ontologies still are constructed by the IT staff but not by domain experts, who often even cannot validate the compliance of domain specifications, enclosed in ontologies, due to the complexity of the ontology languages.

Transformation rules for transforming business vocabulary and business rules (specified in a human understandable structured natural language, based on Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR)) into the Web Ontology Language (OWL 2) are defined in this work. Requirements for business vocabularies, intended for ontology creation, and metaconcepts vocabulary, extending SBVR for representing ontologies, are defined.

Transformation component was implemented and experiments were conducted for justifying the reliability of research results. Experiments shown, that the approach is suitable for ontology creation using structured natural language and for checking consistency of business vocabulary and business rules by ontology reasoners. Transformations are suitable for Lithuanian and English structured languages. Adaptation solution for other similar languages is suggested. Research results and transformation component are applied in Semantic search framework (http://semantika.lt); the first online SBVR to OWL 2 converter prototype is published at http://s2o.isd.ktu.lt.