Abstract: The constraint-enhanced RDFS(RDFS_(c)) ontology overcomes the deficiency of RDFS's ability to describe constraints.However,the introduction of constraints brings challenges to ontology validation.This paper proposes a decidable schema validation approach for RDFS_(c) ontology.This approach is based on analyzing the dependency between constraints.First,the RDFS_(c) schema is transformed into the first-order predicate logic expressions,and the checking tasks of the characteristics are transformed into the satisfiability checking of the first-order expressions.On this basis,a constraint dependence graph reflecting the mend-violation relationships between constraints is established and made necessary reductions,we then derive the decidability of the schema validation tasks by identifying the finite loops in the graph,and finally validate the schema by reasoning on the constraint dependency.The contribution of this paper is twofold.On the one hand,through the transformation to the first-order expressions and the reasoning based on the dependency of the corresponding first-order constraints,the proposed approach has strong applicability,especially the constraint dependency analysis can minimize the number of backtracking,thereby ensuring the efficiency of the validation process;on the other hand,because it is independent of any specific constraint modeling language,this approach is also a general solution for analyzing the decidability of the RDFS_(c) schema validation tasks.

Key words: RDFS, Ontology validation, Constraint dependency, Decidability