Patent Document ID: 7516229
Application ID: 10717206

Base Claim:
1. A method of defining a common interactions protocol between two entities, the method comprising: the method performed by a communication server arranged for: converting syntactic specifications of multiple documents to be passed between the entities, into a skeleton semantic web ontology comprising a set of classes; deriving for each entity a respective set of constraints including semantic constraints established by the entity on aspects of the classes of the skeleton ontology; calculating the union of the two sets of constraints; determining, using a constraint resolver that comprises a description logic reasoner, whether the union is satisfiable, and: where the union is satisfiable, deriving from the intersection of the two sets of constraints a restricted document specification that is compatible with the constraint sets of both entities; and where the union is not satisfiable, indicating where any incompatibility lies.

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Claim 4:
4. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the communication server is further arranged for: pre-specifying semantic constraints and associating them with deployment contexts; the deriving of the set of constraints for that entity comprising defining a particular deployment context for the common interactions protocol, and determining which of the pre-specified semantic constraints are applicable to said particular deployment context.