Web rules to interchange policies

Candidate: Nima Kaviani
Type: Master of Science (MSc), School of Interactive Arts and Technology
Date: July 16, 2007
Senior Supervisor: Dr. Marek Hatala, Associate Professor
Thesis: Download Thesis Document

Abstract

Web rule languages with supports for different types of rules have recently emerged to make interaction between parties with different policies and business rules possible. The chance of describing the resources and users of a domain through the use of vocabularies is another feature supported by Web rule languages. Combination of these two properties makes Web rule languages an appropriate medium to make a hybrid model of representing both context and rules of a policy-aware system. This dissertation demonstrates a potential solution to the problem of exchanging information between different registries and policy-aware systems (especially Web resources) by defining an interchange framework to transform business rules and concepts from one language to another using a third intermediary language called REWERSE Rule Markup Language (R2ML). The work represents R2ML as a bridging language between different policy languages using its rich set of rules, vocabularies, and built-in constructs. We show how the concepts of the KAoS and Rei policy languages (two wellknown policy languages) can be transformed to R2ML and then back from R2ML to the other policy languages. Following the provided mappings, it is analyzed how these solutions can be combined with the already available R2ML transformers, to transform policies onto other rule languages (e.g. F-Logic).