RIF Centered Rule Interchange in the Semantic Web

In the Semantic Web, rule interchange has gained considerable attention. To be a general rule interchange format, RIF (Rule Interchange Format) should first support rule interchange with three important evolving rule languages SWRL (Semantic Web Rule Language), RuleML (Rule Markup Language) and R2ML (REWERSE Rule Markup Language). In the paper, we propose a rule metamodel. Based on the metamodel, we construct RIA (Rule Interchange Architecture), which supports bidirectional rule interchange between RIF and SWRL, RuleML and R2ML, and also between these four languages' metamodels and XML syntaxes. Based on RIA, we design and implement a rule interchange system RIA 1.0.