A3: Reasoning


The purpose of this assignment is incorporate simple into a ontologies. You will use the Protégé ontology editor in combination with the JESS rule-based system to do this, guided by another tutorial developed by Emily Schwarz. Please work through the tutorial, and incorporate the rules as indicated in the tutorial.
The assignment consists of two parts. In the first part, you will add rules to the family ontology.
In the second part you will add some rules to the ontology you developed in the previous assignment.

Draft Status


The assignment as a whole, and in particular the tutorial, are newly developed, and still undergoing some changes. I am considering replacing the Jess and CLIPS environments used in CSC 481 with Protégé, OWL, and Jena or Jess as reasoners. We appreciate your feedback on the suitability of these tools and environments, and your suggestions for improving the tutorial.

Part 1:


Create 4 more Jess rules for the family ontology.
TWO of these rules must to assert relationships such as
  • Siblings (there are more rules we could use for this)
  • Mother, Father
  • Sister, Brother
  • Cousin
  • Marriage
  • Grandparent, or other family relationships.
If you need to extend the ontology with new relations, do so.
The other TWO rules must print the relationships you are asserting (like the print_siblings example). If one of your relationships is siblings, create a rule that prints out something different than the example (i.e. siblings and parent they are related through).

Part 2:


Create 4 Jess rules for your own ontology you developed in the last lab. ONE or TWO rules for asserting something, and TWO or THREE for printing.

Grading Guidelines


This assignment contributes 33% to the overall assignments score, distributed as follows:
  • 40% Family Rules
  • 40% Your ontology Rules
  • 20% README
The score, in particular for the second part, will be determined by the following criteria:
  • scope of the rules (breadth and depth of the concepts covered by the rule sets)
  • complexity of the domain and the ontology (e.g. simple taxonomy vs. use of multiple relationships)
  • rule set design (is the selected rule structure consistent, coherent, and does it reflect the relevant aspects of the domain)
  • accuracy (is the material presented correct, consistent, and complete)
  • organization and readability of the write-up (is the set of rules, together with the accompanying documentation well organized and easy to follow)
For a high score, your ontology should have at least the following properties:
  • have at least four user-created rules for each part, as specified above
  • all rules must be usable and useful in the ontology
  • an expanded description of the ontology in the “Annotation” field under the “Active Ontology” tab; in addition to the information from the last assignment, the description should include a brief description of the rule set. If several people contribute to one single set of rules, the size of the rule set must be scaled according to the number of people working on it.

Submission and Deadline

The deadline for the assignment is Thursday, Feb. 24, end of the day.

Please submit your ontology through Blackboard. It is fine with me if you also put it on your team Wiki, but it’s easier for us to evaluate all the submissions via Blackboard.
You need to perform the following tasks for he completion of this assignment:
  • Submit your rules in two separate text files, one for each part.
  • Submit a README explaining what each rule does.
  • If you added any relationships to family_example.owl, submit this file as well (and describe it in the README file).
  • Provide feedback about the tutorial and the assignment through the link provided at the end of the tutorial.