Using XML to build consistency rules for distributed specifications

The work presented is part of a large programme of research aimed at supporting consistency management of distributed documents on the World Wide Web. We describe an approach for specifying consistency rules for distributed partial specifications with overlapping contents. The approach is based on expressing consistency rules using XML and XPointer. We present a classification for different types of consistency rules, related to various types of inconsistencies and show how to express these consistency rules using our approach. We also briefly describe a rule editor to support the specification of the consistency rules