Context-Aware Modeling Using Semantic Web and Z Notation

Surveys in user context modeling have shown that the semantic web is one of
the promising approach to represent and structure the contextual information captured
from user's surrounding environment in a context-aware application. A benefit of
using semantic web language is that it enables application to reason user contextual
information in order to get the knowledge of user's behavior. However, regarding its
notation format, semantic web is suitable for implementation level or to be consumed
by application run-time.
Context-aware application is a part of distributed computing system. In distributed
computing system, the language used for specification should be distinguished from
the implementation I run-time purpose. This is known as separation of modeling language.
Regarding the context-aware application, for those who are concerned with
specification of context modeling, the language that is used for specification should
also be distinguished from the implementation one.
This thesis aims at proposing the use of formal specification technique to develop
a generic context ontology model of user's behavior at the Computer and Information
Sciences Department, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS. Initially, the context ontology
was written in OWL semantic web language. The further process is mapping onto
a formal specification language, i.e. onto Z notation. As a result, specification of context
ontology and its consistency checking have been developed and verified beyond
the semantic web language environment. An inconsistency of context model has been
detected during the verification of Z model, which cannot be revealed by current OWL
DL reasoner.
The context-aware designers might benefit from the formal specification of context
ontology, where the designers could fully use formal verification technique to check
the correctness of context ontology. Thus, the modeling approach in this thesis has
shown that it could complement the context ontology development process, where the
checking and refinement are performed beyond the semantic web reasoner.