No / Shifting legacy data held in stand-alone systems to be used in Web application systems can be expensive and time consuming. RuleML can be used to represent RDBMS data by storing database metadata in an external format for some design tools. Just as XML Schema, which uses elements and attributes to express the semantics of XML data, but XML Schema does not have active elements in principle; RuleML is used as a representation for RDBMS metadata too. This paper proposes the use of RuleML format to implement more semantics for Web forms and demonstrate how this RuleML based approach can provide support for greater semantics using the example of advanced domain support even when this is not a feature supported by a specific RDBMS.

Web forms development for Web based applications is often expensive, laborious, error-prone, time consuming and requires a lot of effort. Web forms are used by many different people with different backgrounds and a lot of demands. There is a very high cost associated with the need to update the Web application systems to achieve these demands. A wide range of techniques and ideas to automate the generation of Web forms exist. These techniques and ideas however, are not capable of generating the most dynamic behaviour of form elements, and make Insufficient use of database metadata to control Web forms' generation and appearance. In this thesis different techniques are proposed that use RuleML and database metadata to build rulebases to improve the automatic and dynamic generation of Web forms. First this thesis proposes the use of a RuleML format rulebase using Reaction RuleML that can be used to support the development of automated Web interfaces. Database metadata can be extracted from system catalogue tables in typical relational database systems, and used in conjunction with the rulebase to produce appropriate Web form elements. Results show that this mechanism successfully insulates application logic from code and suggests that Abstract iii the method can be extended from generic metadata rules to more domain specific rules. Second it proposes the use of common sense rules and domain specific rules rulebases using Reaction RuleML format in conjunction with database metadata rules to extend support for the development of automated Web forms. Third it proposes the use of rules that involve code to implement more semantics for Web forms. Separation between content, logic and presentation of Web applications has become an important issue for faster development and easy maintenance. Just as CSS applied on the client side to control the overall presentation of Web applications, a set of rules can give a similar consistency to the appearance and operation of any set of forms that interact with the same database. We develop rules to order Web form elements and query forms using Reaction RuleML format in conjunction with database metadata rules. The results show the potential of RuleML formats for representing database structural and active semantics. Fourth it proposes the use of a RuleML based approach to provide more support for greater semantics for example advanced domain support even when this is not a DBMS feature. The approach is to specify most of the semantics associated with data stored in RDBMS, to overcome some RDBMSs limitations. RuleML could be used to represent database metadata as an external format.

Web forms development for Web based applications is often expensive, laborious, error-prone, time consuming and requires a lot of effort. Web forms are used by many different people with different backgrounds and a lot of demands. There is a very high cost associated with the need to update the Web application systems to achieve these demands. A wide range of techniques and ideas to automate the generation of Web forms exist. These techniques and ideas however, are not capable of generating the most dynamic behaviour of form elements, and make Insufficient use of database metadata to control Web forms¿ generation and appearance. In this thesis different techniques are proposed that use RuleML and database metadata to build rulebases to improve the automatic and dynamic generation of Web forms. First this thesis proposes the use of a RuleML format rulebase using Reaction RuleML that can be used to support the development of automated Web interfaces. Database metadata can be extracted from system catalogue tables in typical relational database systems, and used in conjunction with the rulebase to produce appropriate Web form elements. Results show that this mechanism successfully insulates application logic from code and suggests that Abstract iii the method can be extended from generic metadata rules to more domain specific rules. Second it proposes the use of common sense rules and domain specific rules rulebases using Reaction RuleML format in conjunction with database metadata rules to extend support for the development of automated Web forms. Third it proposes the use of rules that involve code to implement more semantics for Web forms. Separation between content, logic and presentation of Web applications has become an important issue for faster development and easy maintenance. Just as CSS applied on the client side to control the overall presentation of Web applications, a set of rules can give a similar consistency to the appearance and operation of any set of forms that interact with the same database. We develop rules to order Web form elements and query forms using Reaction RuleML format in conjunction with database metadata rules. The results show the potential of RuleML formats for representing database structural and active semantics. Fourth it proposes the use of a RuleML based approach to provide more support for greater semantics for example advanced domain support even when this is not a DBMS feature. The approach is to specify most of the semantics associated with data stored in RDBMS, to overcome some RDBMSs limitations. RuleML could be used to represent database metadata as an external format.

The COntext INterchange (COIN) strategy is an approach to solving the problem of interoperability of semantically heterogeneous data sources through context mediation. COIN has used its own notation and syntax for representing ontologies. More recently, the OWL Web Ontology Language is becoming established as the W3C recommended ontology language. We propose the use of the COIN strategy to solve context disparity and ontology interoperability problems in the emerging Semantic Web – both at the ontology level and at the data level. In conjunction with this, we propose a version of the COIN ontology model that uses OWL and the emerging rules interchange language, RuleML. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

SweetDeal is a rule-based approach to representation of business contracts that enables software agents to create, evaluate, negotiate, and execute contracts with substantial automation and modularity. It builds upon the situated courteous logic programs knowledge representation in RuleML, the emerging standard for Semantic Web XML rules. Here, we newly extend the SweetDeal approach by also incorporating process knowledge descriptions whose ontologies are represented in DAML+OIL (the close predecessor of W3C's OWL, the emerging standard for Semantic Web ontologies), thereby enabling more complex contracts with behavioral provisions, especially for handling exception conditions (e.g., late delivery or non-payment) that might arise during the execution of the contract. This provides a foundation for representing and automating deals about services – in particular, about Web Services, so as to help search, select, and compose them. We give a detailed application scenario of late delivery in manufacturing supply chain management (SCM). In doing so, we draw upon our new formalization of process ontology knowledge from the MIT Process Handbook, a large, previously-existing repository used by practical industrial process designers. Our system is the first to combine emerging Semantic Web standards for knowledge representation of rules (RuleML) with ontologies (DAML+OIL/OWL) with each other, and moreover for a practical e-business application domain, and further to do so with process knowledge. This also newly fleshes out the evolving concept of Semantic Web Services. A prototype (soon public) i