Delivery Context Ontology

1 Introduction

This section is informative.

1.1 Overview

The DeliveryContext Ontology provides a formal model of the characteristics of the environment in which devices interact with the Web or other services. The Delivery Context includes the characteristics of the Device, the software used to access the service and the Network providing the connection among others.

The Ontology captures the context of use in which a user is interacting with a particular computing platform in a given physical environment in order to achieve an interactive task.

The Ontology is formally specified in the Web Ontology Language [OWL]. It defines a normative vocabulary of terms (classes, properties and instances) that models the different Properties, Aspects and Components (Aspect instances) of a Delivery Context.

1.2 Motivation

The Delivery Context is an important source of information that can be exploited to create context-aware applications, thus providing a compelling user experience. Particularly, it can be used to adapt web content & applications to make them useable on a wide range of different devices with different capabilities.

The Ontology represents a normative, common understanding about the Delivery Context. As such it can be used as a normative reference to create specific Vocabularies, while at the same time enabling the interoperability between them.

The Delivery Context Ontology itself constitutes a vocabulary of terms and can be used in conjunction with generic APIs for retrieving Context Properties, such as [DCCI].

1.3 Understanding the Delivery Context Ontology

It is recommended to be familiar with RDF, OWL and ontologies in general before reading this specification. The [RDF-Primer] and the [OWL-Guide] are two documents which might be helpful for this purpose.

The Delivery Context Ontology is aimed at providing a formal and universally accepted model of the Delivery Context. As such it is not intended to cover all the properties that can be present in a Delivery Context, which can be application or domain dependent.

The model represented by the ontology is essentially hierarchical. At the top of the hierarchy is the DeliveryContext class, which gives access to the current UserAgent, NetworkBearer, Device and pysical Environment, which are the essential elements of any Delivery Context. Each of these elements are represented by classes which have different properties that model their specific characteristics and components.

2 Reading the Recommendation

This section is normative.

2.1 Normative and Informative Parts

The normative and informative parts of this specification are identified by use of labels within various sections. Generally, everything in the specification is considered to be normative, apart from the examples.

2.2 Normative Language for Conformance Requirements

Individual conformance requirements or testable statements are identified by the use of specific key words. In particular, the key words must, must not, required, shall, shall not, should, should not, recommended, may, and optional in this specification are to be interpreted as described in [IETF RFC 2119].

2.3 CURIE Prefix Bindings

This specification makes use of [CURIEs] as an abbreviated syntax for expressing URIs. The following CURIE prefix bindings are defined:

CURIE Prefix	Value
`common`	`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/common.owl#`
`dcn`	`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/deliverycontext.owl#`
`hard`	`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/hardware.owl#`
`java`	`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/java.owl#`
`loc`	`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/location.owl#`
`net`	`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/network.owl#`
`push`	`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/push.owl#`
`soft`	`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/software.owl#`
`web`	`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/web.owl#`
`rdf`	`http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#`
`rdfs`	`http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#`
`xsd`	`http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#`
`owl`	`http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#`

2.4 Reading Term Descriptions

Each term (class, property, normative instance) is documented in an specific section within the specification. In addition there are cross references that link related terms between them.

A term description is composed by the following fields:

The term's Local Name, conveyed in the title of the corresponding section.
A full URI that univoquely identifies the term.
A human-readable term description composed by label (rdfs:label) and full text (rdfs:comment).
A set of fields that give additional details about the term in question. All term descriptions may contain:

normative-references: It contains a list of normative references that describe precisely the intended meaning of the ontology term.
informative-references: It is a list of informative references that clarifies the meaning of the ontology term.

2.4.1 Class Description Specific Fields

The fields used in a class description are described as follows:

sub-class-of: This field contains a list of all those ontology classes for which the described class is a subclass (rdfs:subClassOf axiom).
super-class-of: This field contains a list of all those ontology classes defined as a subclass (rdfs:subClassOf axiom) of the described class.
in-domain-of: This field contains a list of all those ontology properties which domain includes the class.
in-range-of: This field contains a list of all those ontology properties which range includes the class.
restrictions: This field contains the property restrictions for the class. Property restrictions are documented in accordance with the OWL Abstract Syntax.

2.4.2 Property Description Specific Fields

OWL Type: This field indicates the property type and characteristics.
domain: This field indicates the property domain. If it does not appear it means that the property domain can be any class (owl:thing).
range: This field denotes the property range. The range of a Datatype property is expressed in terms of an XML Schema datatype [XMLSCHEMA-2] or as a datarange, which enumerates the list of allowed property values. The range of an Object property is a list of classes. When the range does not appear it means that it can be anything.
sub-property-of: This field contains a list of all those ontology properties for which the described property is a subproperty (rdfs:subPropertyOf axiom).
super-property-of: This field contains a list of all those ontology properties defined as a subproperty of (rdfs:subPropertyOf axiom) the described property.

2.4.3 Instance Description Specific Fields

instance-of: This field is a list that represents the class membership of the instance.
property-values: This field is composed by a list that represents the property values (represented as RDF Typed Literals) that must have the described instance.

3. The Ontology

This section is normative

3.1 Definition of the Ontology

The ontology is formally specified in OWL [OWL]. The documentation of the different ontology terms has been automatically generated from the OWL file.

The ontology conforms to the OWL-DL expressivity. This allows it to be used within appropriately written reasoning systems.

3.2 Ontology URI

The ontology URI is http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/deliverycontext.owl.

3.3 Ontology Namespaces

The table below describes the different namespace URIs defined by the ontology. For the sake of modularity, a new namespace have been defined for those terms related to a common aspect of the Delivery Context.

Namespace URI	Purpose
`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/common.owl#`	Used for General Purpose Entities
`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/deliverycontext.owl#`	Entities
`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/hardware.owl#`	Hardware Related Terms
`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/java.owl#`	Used for Java-related terms
`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/location.owl#`	Used for location-related terms
`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/network.owl#`	Used for network-related terms
`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/push.owl#`	Used for push-related terms
`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/software.owl#`	Used for software-related terms
`http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/context/web.owl#`	Used for web-related terms

3.4 Ontologies

Namespaces are described below:

3.6 Property Hierarchy Summary

3.8 Derived Properties

C References

C.1 Normative References

CSS21: Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1 (CSS 2.1) Specification, T. , B. Bos, H. , I. Hickson, Editors, W3C Candidate Recommendation (work in progress), 19 July 2007, (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/CR-CSS21-20070719.)
DDR-Simple-API: Device Description Repository Simple API, R. Hanrahan, J. , I. , J. Rabin, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 5 December 2008, (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-DDR-Simple-API-20081205/.)
IANA CHARACTER SETS: IANA: CHARACTER SETS 2007 (See http://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets.)
IANA MIME Media Types: IANA: MIME Media Types (See http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/.)
IANA Transfer Encodings: IANA: Transfer Encodings 2006 (See http://www.iana.org/assignments/transfer-encodings/.)
IANA URI Schemes: IANA: Uniform Resource Identifer (URI) Schemes 2006 (See http://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes.html.)
IETF RFC 2045: RFC 2045: Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies Internet Engineering Task Force, 1996. (See http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2045.txt.)
IETF RFC 2046: RFC 2046: Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, (MIME) Part One: Media Types Internet Engineering Task Force, 1996. (See http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2046.txt.)
IETF RFC 2119: RFC 2119: Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels Internet Engineering Task Force, 1997. (See http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt.)
IETF RFC 2616: RFC 2616: Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1 Internet Engineering Task Force, 1999. (See http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt.)
IETF RFC 3986: RFC 3986: Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax Internet Engineering Task Force, 2005. (See http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3986.txt.)
IETF RFC 4646: RFC 4646: Tags for Identifying Languages Internet Engineering Task Force, 2006. (See http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4646.txt.)
ISO 3166-1: Country names (official short names in English) in alphabetical order as given in ISO 3166-1 (See http://www.iso.org/iso/list-en1-semic-2.txt.)
ISO 639: ISO 639 Code Tables (See http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp.)
ISO 6709:1983: 6709:1983 Standard representation of latitude, longitude and altitude for geographic point locations (See http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=13152.)
ITU-T MC or GAC: ITU-T List of Mobile Country or Geographical Area Codes, 1 January 2004, (See http://www.itu.int/itudoc/itu-t/ob-lists/icc/e212_685.pdf.)
OMA-Push-App-ID: OMNA PUSH Application ID (See http://www.openmobilealliance.org/Tech/omna/omna-push-app-id.aspx.)

C.2 Informative References

CT-LANDSCAPE: Content Transformation Landscape 1.0, J. Rabin, A. , Editors, W3C Working Draft (work in progress), 25 October 2007, (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-ct-landscape-20071025/.)
CURIEs: CURIE Syntax 1.0, Mark Birbeck, Shane McCarron, 2009. W3C Candidate Recommendation, 16 January 2009 (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/CR-curie-20090116/.)
DCCI: Delivery Context: Client Interfaces (DCCI) 1.0, R. A. Hosn, S. Sathish, K. Waters, M. Froumentin, K. , D. , M. Womer, R. Lewis, Editors, W3C Candidate Recommendation (work in progress), 21 December 2007m (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/CR-DPF-20071221/.)
DI-GLOSS: Glossary of Terms for Device Independence, R. Lewis, Editor, W3C Working Draft (work in progress), 18 January 2005, (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-di-gloss-20050118/.)
Java ME: Java ME: the Most Ubiquitous Application Platform for Mobile Devices (See http://java.sun.com/javame/index.jsp.)
MMI-REQS: Multimodal Interaction Requirements, S. , V. Saraswat, Editors, W3C Working Group Note, 8 January 2003, (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/NOTE-mmi-reqs-20030108/.)
OMA-Dictionary: Dictionary for OMA Specifications, 14 June 2007, (See http://www.openmobilealliance.biz/document/OMA-ORG-Dictionary-V2_6-20070614-A.pdf.)
OWL: OWL Web Ontology Language Reference, G. Schreiber, M. Dean, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004, (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-ref-20040210/.)
OWL-Guide: OWL Web Ontology Language Guide, D. L. McGuinness, M. K. Smith, C. Welty, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004, (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-guide-20040210/.)
OWL-Semantics: OWL Web Ontology Language Semantics and Abstract Syntax, P. Hayes, I. Horrocks, P. F. Patel-Schneider, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004, (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-semantics-20040210/.)
OWL-Test: OWL Web Ontology Language Test Cases, J. J. Carroll, J. De Roo, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004, (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-test-20040210/.)
RDF-Concepts: Resource Description Framework (RDF): Concepts and Abstract Syntax, G. Klyne, J. J. Carroll, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004, (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-concepts-20040210/.)
RDF-Primer: RDF Primer, F. Manola, E. Miller, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004, (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-primer-20040210/.)
RDF-Schema: RDF Vocabulary Description Language 1.0: RDF Schema , D. Brickley, R. V. Guha, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004, (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-schema-20040210/.)
Timezone: Working with Time Zones, Addison Phillips et. al, 2005. W3C Working Group Note (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-timezone-20051013/.)
XMLSCHEMA-2: XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes Second Edition, P. V. Biron, A. Malhotra, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 28 October 2004, (See http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xmlschema-2-20041028/.)