Semantic Web Advanced Development - Europe

SWAD-Europe

The SWAD-Europe project aims to support W3C's Semantic Web initiative in Europe, providing targeted research, demonstrations and outreach to ensure Semantic Web technologies move into the mainstream of networked computing.

I have been involved in this project through some work for Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, exploring use of Semantic Web technologies to model and manipulate trust in open systems, looking initially at authorization and access control issues.

Contents

• Notes about trust and the Semantic Web
• Authorization and trust scenarios
  • Home network access control demonstration
  • Experiments with Cwm rules
• SWAD-E Project notes
• Calendaring workshop - 9 October 2002
• Links to related information

My related pages

• RDF notes.
• iTrust working group.

Notes about trust and the Semantic Web

• Framework for Security and Trust Standards: a survey document describing trust-related data format standards, outlineing their relevance to Semantic Web trust activities:
  • 2002-11-08: initial draft completed and ready for wider review by SWAD-E participants.
  • 2002-12-02: revised draft with diagrams, finalized section on XACML and new section on Web Services Security.
  • 2002-12-18: revision.
  • XML source of current working copy.
  • XML2RFC utility for generating HTML from this XML is here: http://xml.resource.org/.
• Scenarios for authorization and trust modelling using RDF (HTML, Mindmap). These are some ideas for ongoing work to show how RDF can be applied to authorization and trust modelling.

Authorization and trust scenarios

• Trust scenarios notes (HTML, Mindmap).
• Trust scenarios document (HTML, XML source).
  • 2002-12-18 revision.
  • 2002-12-22 revision.
• Home network configuration scenario (see the access control demonstration notes below for more details):
  • Overview document (HTML, XML source).
    • 2002-12-15 revision (flawed vocabulary description).
    • 2002-12-17 revision.
    • 2002-12-18 revision.
    • 2002-12-22 revision.
  • A presentation about this work prepared for a metadata workshop at the SAINT 2003 symposium (http://www.saint2003.org/).
  • See also: some experiments with Cwm rules.

Home network access control demonstration

Demonstration using RDF tools to create network configuration files (DHCP, DNS, Cisco router script) related to access control. This is some experimental work to explore some ideas coming from the trust notes cited above.

• A document that describes this of demonstration.
• Hyperlinked diagram summary of demonstration components.
• A presentation about this work prepared for a metadata workshop at the SAINT 2003 symposium (http://www.saint2003.org/).
• Source files are in this directory. (Notation3 input files: original user data, semantic rules, output file generation template)
• There is a batch file to create the network config files on my Win2K system: changes will be needed for other systems.
• Generated configuration files, including RDF/XML, are in subdirectory Config.
• The output file generation uses my N3 report generation software (ZIP file), which is mostly described by my note on RDF for little languages.
• The rules processing uses cwm software - a recent version from W3C's public CVS is required. I am using version 1.111 of Cwm.
• See also: some experiments with Cwm rules.

NOTE: this is an exploration and demonstration of an idea, not a refined software tool: there are a number of known problems with the generated configuration files.

Experimenting with Cwm rules

Having found initially that it wasn't obvious how to manipulate access permissions with Cwm rules, I have tried some experiments with Cwm rules. So far, the ideas I've tried have not worked: I don't know if it's a bug or a limitation with Cwm (but the fact that Cwm falls over when asked to process its own output isn't encouraging).

• Source file PlayRules.n3.
• There is a batch file to run the test on my Win2K system: changes will be needed for other systems.
• Output files (initial output, 2nd run, 3rd run, 4th run). So far, only the initial output from the first run is interesting. The 2nd and subsequent runs process the Cwm output from the previous run.
• Generated files are in subdirectory Config.
• The rules processing uses cwm software - a recent version from W3C's public CVS is required. I am using version 1.111 of Cwm.

On the second run, I get the following error from Cwm:

File "F:\W3C\swap1111\llyn.py", line 482, in the
assert len(hits) == 1, "There should only be one match for %s %s %s." %(subj, pred, obj)
AssertionError: There should only be one match for _g1 first None.

SWAD-E Project notes

• Mindmap pages of notes (MMP file) - currently from the project meeting of 23 Sep 2002 at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, but I expect to add more over time. These are personal scribblings, and I don't claim that these are accurate or even representative.

Calendaring workshop - 9 October 2002

• Mindmap pages of notes (MMP file) - from the calendaring workshop meeting of 9 October 2002 at Birstol, organized by Libby Miller and ILRT. These are personal scribblings, and I don't claim that these are accurate or even representative.
• Some of the calendaring work is now being used in my network configuration demonstration. [12-Dec-2002]
• Workshop report by Libby Miller.

Links to related information

• SWAD-Europe home page: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/.
• Developer Workshop Report 2 - Semantic Web calendaring.
• iTrust working group home page: http://www.itrust.uoc.gr/.
• Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (CCLRC) page on iTrust: http://www.bitd.clrc.ac.uk/Activity/ACTIVITY=iTRUST.
• FOAF, Friend-of-a-friend ("Semantic Web vapourware for the masses"). http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/.
• These trust-related links and references provided by Michael Wilson:
  • Web Services, showing relation of trust to security and other standards: http://www.w3c.rl.ac.uk/pasttalks/slidemaker/W3C_web_services/slide6-0.html
  • XML Access Control Language, Provisional Authorization for XML Documents: http://www.trl.ibm.com/projects/xml/xacl/xacl-spec.html
  • S. Jajodia, P. Samarati, and V. S. Subrahmanian, "A Logical Language for Expressing Authorizations,'' Proc. 1997 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, pp., 31-42, May 1997.
  • S. Jajodia, P. Samarati, and V. S. Subrahmanian, and E. Bertino, "A Unified Framework for Enforcing Multiple Access Control Policies," Proc. ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, pp., 474-485, May 1997.