A Layered Approach to Information Modeling and Interoperability on the Web

Abstract

On the Semantic Web, the target audience is the machinesr ather than humans. To satisfy the demands of this audience, information needs to be available in machine-processable form rather than as unstructured text. A variety of information models like RDF or UML are available to fulfil this purpose, varying greatly in their capabilities. The advent of XML leveraged a promising consensus on the encoding syntax for machine-processable information. However, interoperating between different information models on a syntactic level proved to be a laborious task. In this paper, we suggest a layered approach to interoperability of information models that borrows from layered software structuring techniques used in today's internetworking. We identify the object layer that fills the gap between the syntax and semantic layers and examine it in detail. We suggest the key features of the object layer like identity and binary relationships, basic typing, reification, ordering, and n-ary relationships. Finally, we examine design issues and implementation alternatives involved in building the object layer.