Abstract Reusing JessTab rules in Protégé.pdf

Knowledge-Based Systems 19 (2006) 291–297 /locate/knosys ´ ´ Reusing JessTab rules in Protege D. Corsar *, D. Sleeman Department of Computing Science, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3UE, Scotland, UK Received 28 October 2005; accepted 28 November 2005 Available online 6 February 2006 Abstract ´ ´ Protege provides a complete ontology and knowledge base management tool. Along with JESS, JessTab provides one method of rule- ´ ´ based reasoning over a Protege ontology and knowledge base. However, once JessTab rules have been created for a knowledge base, they are explicitly tied to it as they name particular classes and slots, which greatly hinders their reuse with further knowledge bases. We have developed a two-phase process and a supporting tool to support the reuse of JessTab rule sets. The first phase involves changing the class and slot references in the rule set into an abstract reference; the second phase involves automatically mapping between the abstract rules and further knowledge bases. Once mappings have been defined and applied for all the classes and slots in the abstract rules, the new rule set can then be run against the new knowledge base. We have satisfactorily tested our tool with several ontologies and associated rule sets; moreover, some of these tests have identified possible future improvements to the tool. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.