Construction of RDF(S) from UML class diagrams

Abstract

RDF (Resource Description Framework) and RDF Schema (collectively called RDF(S)) are the normative language to describe the Web resource information. How to construct RDF(S) from the existing data sources is becoming an important research issue. In particular, UML (Unified Modeling Language) is being widely applied to data modeling in many application domains, and how to construct RDF(S) from the existing UML models becomes an important issue to be solved in the context of Semantic Web. By comparing and analyzing the characteristics of UML and RDF(S), this paper proposes an approach for constructing RDF(S) from UML and implements a prototype construction tool. First, we give the formal definitions of UML and RDF(S). After that, a construction approach from UML to RDF(S) is proposed, a construction example is provided, and the analyses and discussions about the approach are done. Further, based on the proposed approach, a prototype construction tool is implemented, and the experiment shows that the approach and the tool are feasible.