A Modeling Environment for Visual SWRL Rules Based on the SeMFIS Platform

The representation and processing of semantic information can today be accomplished using a wide range of formalisms. Rule-based approaches are not only a well-known but also easy to use technique. Most approaches rely on a textual specification of rules that can be processed by an according rule engine. For simplifying the specification and understanding of rules by domain experts, we present a visual model editor for rules based on the W3C SWRL recommendation. The goal of this approach is to provide a means for a visual interaction with rulebased systems, while at the same time preserving full expressiveness. The visual language for SWRL rules has been implemented on the SeMFIS platform. In addition, serialization and de-serialization mechanisms have been added for OWLXML and SWRLXML formats. As there are currently no official conformance tests available for SWRL, the approach has been evaluated using W3C sample set for SWRL rules.