Semantic Web and Ontologies to Preserve Gastronomic Knowledge

Ontologies are the main components of the Semantic Web. Since its origin and evolution over time, ontologies have been used in various domains of knowledge. As a concrete application of this technology, an experimental system is described, still evolving in phases, where concepts of cooking recipes are intertwined with ontologies, Semantic Web and good Software Engineering practices. This article is based on a completed thesis work. The knowledge domain of Cuisine and Gastronomy was chosen, making an ontological design for recipes in view of the need to preserve the knowledge of the Master Chef and support the teaching-learning process in a haute cuisine school. The original design was done by Wright State University. Taking this design as a reference, the proposed design for the project was created, taking advantage of the reuse of knowledge that ontologies allow. Adjusted the layout for cooking recipes that allow alternate ingredients in a recipe. A combined Cascade/Unified Process Methodology was used for Software Engineering, as well as the Ontology Development 101 methodology. The OWL 2 XML, Serialization (OWL/XML) and RDF/XML standards/syntax were used, in addition to objectoriented programming with the Java language and different frameworks. Finally, the results obtained with the functional prototype are provided and future actions to be carried out are outlined.