On the representation of roles

摘要

The related work to reveal the primary characteristics of roles underlying the existing approaches is analyzed. Then, it is demonstrated that the representation of roles is rather complex and error-prone in these approaches. Especially, the constraints among roles in the same context cannot be expressed by the current web ontology language (OWL). To solve these problems, a novel model of role is presented and a corresponding ontology language is provided for representing this model. The key idea underlying the solution is that a role should be regarded as an element of a certain context and a context as a structured thing which is comprised of some internal elements. The structure of context possesses inherent modularity and local semantics, whereby the representation of roles and context is significantly simplified.