Optimization in the presence of uncertainty
development of knowledge management systems
evolutionary optimization of dynamic problems
ontology-based knowledge management systems
Business Information and Communication Systems
Man-machine-systems/Usability Engineering
partially supported by GILLARDON AG financial software
Subproject Risk Management partially by Gillardon financial software GmbH
A STEP TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED PRODUCT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
OntoWeb - Ontology-based information exchange for knowledge management and electronic commerce
On-To-Knowledge - Content-driven Knowledge-Management through Evolving Ontologies
GETESS - German Text Exploitation and Search System
Candle - Collaborative and Network Distributed Learning Environment
ULI - Universitärer Lehrverbund Informatik
PEdit - Programmierumgebung für parallele Systeme
VIROR - Virtuelle Universität Oberrhein
Telekom - Projekt - Analyse von Wettbewerbsverlusten im Telekommunikationsmarkt und mögliche Gegenmassnahmen
MIKE - Modellbasiertes und Inkrementelles Knowledge Engineering
DAML - OntoAgents - Enabling Intelligent Agents on the Web, based on Darpa Agent Markup Language
OntoServer - Framework für Ontologie-Dienste
ITSAM - IT-Unterstützung für das Asset Management
KAON - KAON - The Karlsruhe Ontology and Semantic Web Tool Suite
PADLR - Personalized Access to Distributed Learning Repositories
WonderWeb - WonderWeb - Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web
NUKATH - Notebook Universität Karlsruhe (TH)
CONsense - Cooperatives Wissensmanagement in Virtuellen Organisationen
SemIPort - Semantic Methods and Tools for Information Portals
MoMaTIK - Mobiles Marketing - Technologie Informationszentrum Uni Karlsruhe
Dot.Kom - Designing adaptive infOrmation exTraction for KnOwledge Management
FIS-I - Fachinformationssystem Informatik
WiMan - Forschungsverbund Wissensmanagement Baden-Württemberg
SESAM - Selbstorganisation und Spontaneität in liberalisierten und harmonisierten Märkten
Graduiertenkolleg IME - Informationswirtschaft und Market Engineering
OntoBroker - Ontologie-basierter Zugriff auf verteilte und semi-strukturierte Informatione
OptRek - Optimierung auf rekonfigurierbaren Rechensystemen
SEKT - Semantically Enabled Knowledge Technologies
KnowledgeWeb - KnowledgeWeb -- Realizing the Semantic Web
aceMedia - Integrating knowledge, semantics and content for user-centred intelligent media services
P-Opt - Portfoliooptimierung mit komplexen Nebenbedingungen
KUBIK - Kooperationsprojekt zur Unterstützung von Bankenlösungen mit Informations- und Kommunikationstechniken
ESSI - European Semantic Systems Initiative -- SEKT, DIP, KnowledgeWeb and ASG Cluster
(KA)2 - Knowledge Annotation Initiative of the Knowledge Acquisition Community
SmartWeb - Mobiler breitbandiger Zugang zum Semantischen Web
eSkills Cert - eSkills Certification in Europe
Arbeit@VU - Arbeit@VU - Gestaltung der Arbeit in virtuellen Unternehmen
SWRC - Semantic Web for Research Communities
Bibster - Semantische Verwaltung von bibliographischen Informationen in einem Peer-to-Peer-System
eOrg - Forschungsschwerpunkt eOrganisation
HARMONISE - Studie zur Harmonisierung von IT Zertifizierungssystemen für IT Professionals in Europa
OntoWise - Wissensmanagement mit multiplen Ontologien
KIM - Karlsruher Integriertes Informations-Management
Semantic MediaWiki - Wikipedia und das Semantic Web
Semantic Web Akademie - Semantic Web Akademie
IBROW - An Intelligent Brokering Service for Knowledge-Component Reuse on the World-Wide Web
ReaSem - Practical Reasoning Support for Semantic Technologies
NeOn - Lifecycle Support for Networked Ontologies
Nepomuk - NEPOMUK - The Social Semantic Desktop
OUTSHORE - OUTSHORE - Studie und Methodikentwicklung zur Beurteilung der Erfolgsfaktoren bei der Vergabe von Softwareprojekten an Niedriglohnländer
KOReA - KAON2 Reasoning for SWRL and Large ABoxes
R2B - Robot2Business - Informationstechnische Integration teilautonomer, mobiler Maschinen und Prozesse in Geschäfts- und Dienstleistungsmodelle
DAAD PPP USA (Stanford) - Reuse of Ontologies - Advanced Ontology Rating with Protege
ViKar - Virtueller Hochschulverbund Karlsruhe
OntoWeb is an European Union IST-funded thematic network for Ontology-based information exchange for knowledge management and electronic commerce. The corresponding OntoWeb portal constitutes a Web-based research information system that is driven by some of the technologies which it reports about. In this paper, we present the core methodology underlying the OntoWeb portal,viz. SEAL (SEmantic portAL). In particular, we describe some of the core challenges that SEAL must meet. Because of the distributed nature of research information, SEAL has been developed as a methodology that integrates heterogeneous information from distributed resources. Because of the complexity of the application domain, SEAL is based on ontologies about research information that greatly contribute to the combined goals of low-effort information integration and user-friendly information presentation. Because of the high quality requirements obliged onto the OntoWeb portal, SEAL has been extended with content management functionality supporting portal editors in their process to rule out undesirable content.
First International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Information Systems (ICICIS 2002) in Cairo, Egypt, June 24-26, 2002
SEAL - A Semantic Portal with Content Management Functionality
Die prozessorientierte Abbildung kompletter Logistikketten ist ein wichtiger Anwendungsbereich der Oracle E-Business Suite. Erfahrungen aus der Realisierung von Supply Chain Management-Lösungen belegen, dass insbesondere bei der Abbildung unternehmensübergreifender Logistikketten die laufende Überwachung und kontinuierliche Optimierung der Prozesse zum kritischen Erfolgsfaktor wird. Gefordert sind eine strukturierte Dokumentation der Supply Chains sowie umfassende Analyse– und Bewertungsfunktionalitäten. (unreviewed)
DOAG News - Deutsche Oracle Anwendergruppe
Prototypische Entwicklung eines prozessbasierten Supply-Chain-Management-Systems
We address the problem of efficiently ranking the best peers w.r.t. a query with multiple, equally weighted predicates -- conjunctive queries -- in shortcut overlay networks. This problem occurs when routing queries in unstructured peer-to-peer networks, such as in peer-to-peer information retrieval applications. Requirements for this task include, e.g., full autonomy of peers as well as full control over own resources. Therefore prominent resource location and query routing schemes such as distributed hash tables can not be applied in this setting. In order to tackle these requirements we combine a new resource location and query routing approach that exploits social metaphors of topical experts and experts' experts with standard IR measures for ranking peers based on collection-wide information. The approach has been fully tested in simulation runs for skewed data distributions and network churn and has been partially implemented in the Bibster system.
On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2005: CoopIS, DOA, and ODBASE. OTM Confederated International Conferences CoopIS, DOA, and ODBASE 2005
Community based Ranking in Peer-to-Peer Networks
JOSCHKA (Job Scheduling Karlsruhe) ist ein System zum Verteilen von Rechenjobs auf verschiedene voneinander unabhängige Rechensysteme. Es handelt sich dabei um ein Client-Server-basiertes Verteilsystem, das sich durch folgende Eigenschaften auszeichnet: Es unterstützt heterogene Systeme, Kommunikation und Datenaustausch erfolgen dabei ausschließlich mit Webtechnologien. Dabei ist das System generisch, für viele unterschiedliche Aufgaben einsetzbar, für Entwickler leicht zu benutzen und erfordert keinerlei Installationsaufwand bei den Clients. Im Folgenden werden die Arbeitsweise des Systems und die zugrunde liegende Architektur beschrieben. Am Schluss folgen Praxiserfahrungen.
JOSCHKA: Job-Scheduling in heterogenen Systemen
Representing knowledge about researchers and research communities is a prime use case for distributed, locally maintained, interlinked and highly structured information in the spirit of the Semantic Web. In this paper we describe the publicly available `Semantic Web for Research Communities' (SWRC) ontology, in which research communities and relevant related concepts are modelled. We describe the design decisions that underlie the ontology and report on both experiences with and known usages of the SWRC Ontology. We believe that for making the Semantic Web reality the re-usage of ontologies and their continuous improvement by user communities is crucial. Our contribution aims to provide a description and usage guidelines to make the value of the SWRC explicit and to facilitate its re-use.
Proceedings of the 12th Portuguese Conference on Artificial Intelligence - Progress in Artificial Intelligence (EPIA 2005)
The SWRC Ontology - Semantic Web for Research Communities
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Knowledge Capture (KCAP)
Browsing for Information by Highlighting Automatically Generated Annotations
Journal of Knowledge Management -- Special Issue on Semantically Enabled Knowledge Technologies
To enable interoperability between applications in distributed information systems based on heterogeneous ontologies, it is necessary to formally define the notion of a mapping between ontologies. In this paper, we define a mapping system for OWL-DL ontologies, where mappings are expressed as correspondences between conjunctive queries over ontologies. As query answering within such a general mapping system is undecidable, we identify a decidable fragment of the mapping system, which corresponds to OWL-DL extended with DL-safe rules. We further show how the mapping system can be applied for the task of ontology integration and present a query answering algorithm.
IHIS 05: Proceedings of the first international workshop on Interoperability of heterogeneous information systems
A Mapping System for the Integration of OWL-DL Ontologies
Proceedings of the Workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web (URSW)
Ontology Learning and Reasoning - Dealing with Uncertainty and Inconsistency
Despite its explosive growth over the last decade, the Web remains essentially a tool to allow humans to access information. The next generation of the Web, dubbed the ‘Semantic Web’, will extend the Web’s capability through the increased availability machine-processable information. These machine-processable descriptions of Web information resources are called meta-data and are associated with ontologies, or conceptualisations of the domain of application. Meta-data and associated ontologies then allows more intelligent software systems to be written, automating the analysis and exploitation of Web-based information. This paper describes how knowledge management can be improved through the adoption of Semantic Web technology. To realise this, a number of different technologies need to be brought together. Their fusion provides the infrastructure which makes semantic knowledge management possible. Specifically, the paper discusses the use of knowledge discovery and human language technology to (semi-)automatically derive the required ontologies and meta-data, along with a methodology to support this process. We describe techniques for management and controlled evolution of ontologies and a set of semantic knowledge access tools for enhanced information access. Finally, a set of application scenarios for the technology are sketched.
This document contains brief descriptions of the relationship between WRL and other selected relevant technologies
W3C Member Submission, 09 September 2005
Relationship of WRL to relevant other technologies
Fachberichte Informatik, University of Koblenz-Landau
Proceedings of the KI2005 Workshop on Foundational Aspects of Ontologies, FOnt'05, Koblenz, Germany, September 2005
This papers describes the requirements for a semantic versioning system for RDF/S ontologies. The design, implementation and usage of SemVersion are described.
SemVersion - Versioning RDF and Ontologies
Die Wiederverwendung von Lernobjekten gilt als probates Mittel, den erheblichen Zeit- und Kostenaufwand zu reduzieren, der mit der Erstellung neuer multimedialer Lernangebote verbunden ist. Dabei erweist sich das Auffinden geeigneter Lernmaterialien oftmals als schwierig, da diese nur selten mit aussagekräftigen Metadaten assoziiert sind. In dem vorliegenden Beitrag wird das Konzept eines alternativen, metadatenunabhängigen Retrieval-Verfahrens vorgestellt, das die Nutzungskontexte wiederverwendeter Lernobjekte entdeckt, akkumuliert und analysiert und auf Grundlage der gewonnenen Erkenntnisse Hilfestellung bei der Recherche, Auswahl und Strukturierung von Lernressourcen anbietet. Angeknüpft wird dabei an das international etablierte Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), das mit den Activity Trees eine viel versprechende und bislang ungenutzte Möglichkeit eröffnet, die Historie eines Lernobjektes zu rekonstruieren und zu verwerten.
Workshop Proceedings. Delfi 2005 und GMW05
Activity Tree Harvesting: Entdeckung, Analyse und Verwertung der Nutzungskontexte SCORM-konformer Lernobjekte
Proceedings of Enterprise Modelling and Information Systems Architectures (EMISA) 2005, October 24-25, 2005 - Klagenfurt, Austria (in conjunction with ER'05)
Economic Reflections on Managing Web Services Using Semantics
Schema integration has become a task of increasing importance. In this paper we give a guide on how to automatically optimally set the parameters of semantic alignment algorithms respectively tools for a wide range of use cases. We basically define a utility function to rate the results of alignment algorithms. Then we backtrack from the utility function first to concrete requirements for the results and then to the parameters of alignment algorithms. The gains of our methodology are confirmed by its implementation and evaluation.
Radisson SAS Royal Garden Hotel, Trondheim, Norway
Proceedings of the Workshop on Ontologies-based techniques for DataBases and Information Systems (ODBIS) at the 31st International Conference on Very Large Databases (VLDB) 2005
Proceedings of Workshop on Semantic Web Enabled Software Engineering (SWESE)
Towards more efficient Software Engineering with formal MDA
Proceedings of Workshop on OWL Experiences and Directions
Online http://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-188/sub5.pdf
Modeling Fuzzy Rules with Description Logics
Proceedings of the Semantic Web and Policy Workshop, held in conjunction with the 4th International Semantic Web Conference
Specification of Policies for Automatic Negotiations of Web Services
Modelling the Dynamics of Ant Colony Optimization Algorithms
Reading and Learning, Adaptive Content Recognition
Improving Document Transformation Techniques with Collaborative Learned Term-Based Concepts
The deliverable D1.2.3 analyses and evaluates existing methods for ontology content evaluation according requirements from an industrial point of view.
Report on Semantic Web Framework requirements analysis
This deliverable presents a set of structured metadata for evaluated and certified ontologies.
Identification of standards on metadata for ontologies
International Conference on Ontologies, Databases and Applications of Semantics. In Workshop on Web Semantics (SWWS)
Ontology Metadata Vocabulary and Applications
ISWC 2005 - In Ontology Patterns for the Semantic Web
The Semantic Web – ISWC 2005: 4th International Semantic Web Conference, ISWC 2005
Searching Dynamic Communities with Personal Indexes
Ontology alignment is a prerequisite in order to allow for interoperation between different ontologies and many alignment strategies have been proposed to facilitate the alignment task by (semi-)automatic means. Due to the complexity of the alignment task, manually defined methods for (semi-)automatic alignment rarely constitute an optimal configuration of substrategies from which they have been built. In fact, scrutinizing current ontology alignment methods, one may recognize that most are not optimized for given ontologies. Some few include machine learning for automating the task, but their optimization by machine learning means is mostly restricted to the extensional definition of ontology concepts. With APFEL (Alignment Process Feature Estimation and Learning) we present a machine learning approach that explores the user validation of initial alignments for optimizing alignment methods. The methods are based on extensional and intensional ontology definitions. Core to APFEL is the idea of a generic alignment process, the steps of which may be represented explicitly. APFEL then generates new hypotheses for what might be useful features and similarity assessments and weights them by machine learning approaches. APFEL compares favorably in our experiments to competing approaches.
Proceedings of the 4th International Semantic Web Conference, ISWC 2005, Galway, Ireland, November 6-10, 2005.
Bootstrapping Ontology Alignment Methods with APFEL
Proc. 1st IEEE Int. Conference on e-Science and Grid Computing (e-Science 2005)
Web services-based Architecture for Reducing Behaviour and Quality Uncertainties
A population based ACO (Ant Colony Optimization) algorithm is proposed where (nearly) all pheromone information corresponds to solutions that are members of the actual population. Advantages of the population based approach are that it seems promising for solving dynamic optimization problems, its finite state space and the chances it offers for designing new metaheuristics. We compare the behavior of the new approach to the standard ACO approach for several instances of the TSP and the QAP problem. The results show that the new approach is competitive.
Applications of Evolutionary Computing - Evo Workshops 2002: EvoCOP, EvoIASP, EvoSTIM/EvoPLAN
Proc. IADIS Int. Conference e-Commerce 2005
Process-Aware Information Systems. Bridging People and Software through Process Technology
Person-to-Application Processes: Workflow Management
DeepaMehta is an open source semantic desktop application based on the topic maps standard. It’s conceptualisation and especially the innovative graph-based user interface have been guided by findings in cognitive psychology in order to provide a cognitively adequate working environment for knowledge workers of all kind. DeepaMehta aims to evolve nowadays’ separated desktop applications into an integrated workspace enabling the user to organize, describe and relate information objects like text notes, external documents and media, browse the web, search databases and create semantic networks - all this in one seamless, semantics-enabled desktop environment.
Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on The Semantic Desktop. 4th International Semantic Web Conference (Galway, Ireland)
INFORMATIK 2005 - Informatik LIVE! Band 2, Beiträge der 35. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), Bonn
Fachinformationssystem Informatik (FIS-I) und Semantische Technologien für Informationsportale (SemIPort)
Finding related publications and their correct bibliographical data is getting harder and harder due to the mass of unrequested information and the decreasing precision of many information providers. The DBLP Computer Science Bibliography is a service used by thousands of computer scientists which provides fundamental support for scientists searching for publications or other scientists in similar communities. This paper describes a user–friendly interface which plays the central role in searching, browsing, and mining of bibliographical data. After introducing the concept of multi-layered browsing and an integrated smart component for entering new data, DBL–Browser itself and various visualisations are described.
INFORMATIK 2004 - Informatik verbindet, Band 2, Beiträge der 34. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), Ulm
Visualising and Mining Digital Bibliographic Data
Ontology Engineering is currently advancing from a pure research topic to real applications. This state of the art is emphasized by the wide range of European projects with major industry involvement and, in the same time, by the ever-growing interest of small and medium size enterprizes asking for consultancy in this domain. A core requirement in all of these efforts is, however, the availability of proved and tested methods which allow an emph{efficient} engineering of high-quality ontologies, be that by reuse, new building or automatic extraction methods. Several elaborated methodologies, which aid the development of ontologies for particular application requirements, emerged in the last decades. Nevertheless, in order for ontologies to be built and deployed at a large scale, beyond the boundaries of the academic community, one needs not only technologies and tools to assist the engineering process, but also means to estimate and control its overall costs. These issues are addressed only marginally by current engineering approaches though their importance is well recognized in the community. Different approaches exist to estimate costs for engineering processes. We will present the parametric cost estimation model ONTOCOM and its alignment with the DILIGENT engineering methodology. Based on the resulting cost function some analytical evaluations of application scenarios for the DILIGENT model are provided.
How Much Does It Cost? Applying ONTOCOM to DILIGENT
Specification of a methodology for syntactic and semantic versioning (D231)
Bibster - A Semantics-Based Bibliographic Peer-to-Peer System
Population based ACO algorithms for dynamic optimization problems are studied in this paper. In the population based approach a set of solutions is transferred from one iteration of the algorithm to the next instead of transferring pheromone information as in most ACO algorithms. The set of solutions is then used to compute the pheromone information for the ants of the next iteration. The population based approach can be used to solve dynamic optimization problems when a good solution of the old instance can be modified after a change of the problem instance so that it represents a reasonable solution for the new problem instance. This is tested experimentally for a dynamic TSP and dynamic QAP problem. Moreover the behavior of different strategies for updating the population of solutions are compared.
Ant Algorithms, Proceedings of Third International Workshop ANTS 2002
Applying Population based ACO to Dynamic Optimization Problems
Begabtenförderung im MINT-Bereich Band 12
Automatisiertes Schließen mit formalen Begriffen: Mathematische Grundlagen
Automatisiertes Schließen mit formalen Begriffen: Implementierung
Proc. of the 21st Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC'06)
Trading Services in Ontology-driven Markets
Developers familiar with object oriented programming languages have to make a paradigm shift in order to produce and manage data usable on the Semantic Web (e.g. RDF). In this paper we describe the tool RDFReactor which transforms a given ontology in RDF Schema into a familiar, dynamic, object-oriented Java API -- at the push of a button. Developers then are able to interact with java instances, thus allowing them to stay in their own world. The generated proxy objects contain no state and delegate all method calls to RDF model updates and queries. RDFReactor potentially turns every Java developer into a Semantic Web application developer and enables them to use RDF correctly, efficiently and effectively without even knowing it. It is downloadable (GNU LGPL) at http://rdfreactor.ontoware.org .
Poster and Demo at International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) 2005, Galway, Ireland
RDFReactor - From Ontologies to Programmatic Data Access
In this demo we present FOAM, a novel tool for aligning and mapping ontologies. It is based on latest research efforts and shows very promising results. The tool is briefly explained and pointers to actual applications are given. The Framework for Ontology Alignment and Mapping (FOAM) is available through its webpage http://www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/WBS/meh/foam . On the page one can find links to relevant publications, a download section of binaries and source code, installation guidelines and the documentation of FOAM, and some ontologies to test the tool. Further, there is a web-interface for internet users interested in very shallow testing. For real use we recommend downloading it. Requests for the tool have come from around the world.
FOAM - A Framework for Ontology Alignment and Mapping
Most ontologies today exist in pure form without any additional information, e.g. authorship or domain specific information. The proposed Ontology Metadata Vocabulary (OMV) aims to establish a standard which enables users from academia and industry to identify, find and apply -- basically meaning to reuse -- ontologies effectively and efficiently. Our demo/poster contribution consists of the presentation of the up-and-running metadata portal ONTHOLOGY (``anthology of ontologies'') which implements the proposed OMV to support users in accessing and reusing of ontologies. OMV is available for download at http://ontoware.org/projects/omv/ , ONTHOLOGY is available at http://www.onthology.org/ .
Facilitating Ontology Reuse with ONTHOLOGY
Progress in the development of the Information Society has seen a truly revolutionary decade, with the advent of widespread networked information services. A new social revolution is imminent, involving the transition from Information Society to Knowledge Society. The EU IST project ``Semantically Enabled Knowledge Technologies (SEKT)'' (see http://www.sekt-project.com/ ) aims to position the EU IT industry at the core of this, by developing the essential semantic knowledge technologies for realizing the European Knowledge Society.
In the IST project SEKT – Semantically Enabled Knowledge Technologies – one of the case studies [BCC+05] aims at providing an intelligent Frequently Asked Questions system, Iuriservice prototype II, that will offer help to newly appointed judges in Spain. This iFAQ uses ontology based Semantic Web technologies to retrieve FAQ to reply queries posed in natural language. In order to construct the underlying ontology, we used the ontology engineering methodology DILIGENT. DILIGENT [PTSS04] methodology is intended to support domain experts in a distributed setting to engineer and evolve ontologies with the help of a fine-grained methodological approach based on Rhetorical Structure Theory [MT87]. Although, knowledge acquisition and other content issues are not discussed in this paper, harmonization efforts for knowledge modelling are required by discussing the ontology. During the discussion, participants exchange arguments which may support or object to certain ontology engineering decisions. As any legal professional knows, tracking the argumentation of decisions is essential in allowing later readers to understand them. We will present an evaluation framework to evaluate the methodology within this particular context. We will take a detailed look at the development of the ontology and especially the novel experience of using a wiki to support the collaborative ontology engineering and to capture the ongoing discussion of the ontology. First results of this evaluation will be presented.
IVR 22nd World Congress - Law and Justice in a Global Society
Evaluating DILIGENT Ontology Engineering in a Legal Case Study
In the legal domain, ontologies enjoy quite some reputation as a way to model normative knowledge about laws and jurisprudence. Several methods have been used and are well-known qua ontological methods. However, no previous attempt to construct ontologies based on professional knowledge exists, capturing judicial practical expertise. This paper shows the preliminary ontology development for the second version of the prototype Iuriservice, a web based intelligent FAQ for judicial use, containing a repository of professional judicial knowledge. The iFAQ system will focus on such knowledge and will base on OPLK —Ontology of Professional Legal Knowledge— developed by UAB. Profesional Legal Knowledge refers to the core of professional work that contains the experience of the daily treatment of cases and is unevenly distributed within individuals as a result of their professional and personal experiences. The knowledge acquisition process has been based on an ethnographic process designed by the UAB team and the Spanish School of the Judiciary within the national SEC project, to efficiently obtain useful and representative information from questionnaire-based interviews. Nearly 800 competency questions have been extracted from these interviews and the ontology is being modelled from the selection of relevant terms. Regarding ontology modelling issues, we have followed the DILIGENT argumentation methodology to control the discussion and trace the arguments used in favor or against the introduction of a concept X as part of the domain ontology. This paper presents the preliminary Ontology of Professional Judicial Knowledge (OPJK) that has been extracted manually from the selection of relevant terms from nearly 200 competency questions and affirms that the modelling of this professional judicial knowledge demands the description of this knowledge as it is perceived by the judge and the abandonment of dogmatic legal categorizations.
LOAIT - Legal Ontologies and Artificial Intelligence Techniques
Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines
Fast Ant Colony Optimization on Runtime Reconfigurable Processor Arrays
The web ontology language OWL is still a very young language. Experience with the language will build an increasing pool of ontology design patterns and best practises. In this paper we introduce macros for OWL ontologies. Macros are able to formally specify and capture design patterns for the knowledge engineering task with OWL ontologies. Thus the user is enabled to conveniently reuse them. Macros lead to an enhanced maintainability of the ontology, to a higher level of abstraction in the specification (and thus closer to the human conceptualization), to a faster and less error-prone creation of the ontology (and thus to lower costs) and to automation of several tedious tasks in the ontology life cycle. We present example macros, discuss further applications, advantages and problems of macros, and discuss the development of an implementation to enable the usage of macros.
Proceedings of the Ontology Patterns for the Semantic Web Workshop at the ISWC 2005
Explicit Knowledge Engineering Patterns with Macros
In the legal domain, ontologies enjoy quite some reputation as a way to model normative knowledge about laws and jurisprudence. While there is a multitude of ontological models to represent theoretical legal knowledge, no previous attempt to construct ontologies based on professional knowledge exists, capturing judicial expertise. We define the epistemological and ontological levels as separate issues. This paper shows the preliminary ontology development for the second version of the prototype Iuriservice, a web based intelligent FAQ for judicial use containing a repository of professional judicial knowledge, within the IST project SEKT. The iFAQ system will focus on such knowledge and will base on OPLK – Ontology of Professional Legal Knowledge – developed by Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. LPK refers to the core of professional work that contains the experience of the daily treatment of cases and is unevenly distributed within individuals as a result of their professional and personal experiences. Judges had a strong and thorough education and became experts in their domain, but they still often seek the help of senior judges or tutors to solve on-duty problems. The knowledge acquisition process has been based on an ethnographic process designed by the UAB team and the Spanish School of the Judiciary within the national SEC project, to efficiently obtain useful and representative information from questionnaire-based interviews. Nearly 800 competency questions have been extracted from these interviews and the ontology is being modelled from the selection of relevant terms. Once the terms are identified, the relevant relations between those terms need also to be identified, following a middle-out strategy. Regarding ontology modelling issues, some other changes have been introduced into Iuriservice prototype II. First, several KAON applications, such as the ontology editor Oi- Modeler, have been used in order to model and visualize the domain ontology. Second, we have used two different software applications to analyze the competency questions and extract relevant concepts: TextToOnto and ALCESTE. And finally, we have also followed the DILIGENT argumentation methodology to control and trace the discussion of each of the arguments used in favor or against the introduction of a concept X as part of the domain ontology. This paper presents the preliminary Ontology of Professional Judicial Knowledge that has been extracted manually from the selection of relevant terms from nearly 200 competency questions and affirms that the modeling of this professional judicial knowledge demands the description of this knowledge as it is perceived by the judge and the abandonment of dogmatic legal categorizations. Keywords: judiciary, ontology, legal ontology, professional ontology, judicial knowledge, middle-out strategy.
XXII World Congress of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy - Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Law: The regulation of electronic social systems. Law and the Semantic Web
Currently, the variety of expressive extensions and different semantics created for logic programs with negation is diverse and heterogeneous, and there is a lack of comprehensive comparative studies which map out the multitude of perspectives in a uniform way. Most recently, however, new methodologies have been proposed which allow one to derive uniform characterizations of different declarative semantics for logic programs with negation. In this paper, we study the relationship between two of these approaches, namely the level mapping characterizations due to [Hitzler and Wendt 2005], and the selector generated models due to [Schwarz 2004]. We will show that the latter can be captured by means of the former, thereby supporting the claim that level mappings provide a very flexible framework which is applicable to very diversely defined semantics.
Towards a unified theory of logic programming semantics: Level mapping characterizations of selector generated models
Graduiertenkolloquium Angewandte Informatik, Karlsruhe, 04.11.2005
Ontologieentwicklung und -anwendung im dezentralen Wissensmanagement.
The scientific paradigms of the Semantic Web, Web Services, Agents, Peer-to-Peer Networks and Grid Computing are currently receiving a lot of attention in the research community, and are producing solutions to important problems ranging from e-science to e-business. The United States DAML program, the European Commission and other organisations have also been investing heavily in these technologies. This Dagstuhl Seminar on Semantic Grid brought together world-leading experts from the diverse organizations and research areas. It strengthened the international collaboration with the aim to realize the vision of the Semantic Grid.
Semantic Grid - Convergence of Technologies
Report on the Semantic Grid Dagstuhl Seminar
Wikipedia is the world's largest collaboratively edited source of encyclopaedic knowledge. But in spite of its utility, its contents are barely machine-interpretable. Structural knowledge, e.g. about how concepts are interrelated, can neither be formally stated nor automatically processed. Also the wealth of numerical data is only available as plain text and thus can not be processed by its actual meaning. We provide an extension to be integrated in Wikipedia, that allows the typing of links between articles and the specification of typed data inside the articles in an easy-to-use manner. Enabling even casual users to participate in the creation of an open semantic knowledge base, Wikipedia has the chance to become a resource of semantic statements, hitherto unknown regarding size, scope, openness, and internationalisation. These semantic enhancements bring to Wikipedia benefits of today's semantic technologies: more specific ways of searching and browsing. Also, the RDF export, that gives direct access to the formalised knowledge, opens Wikipedia up to a wide range of external applications, that will be able to use it as a background knowledge base. In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and possible uses of this extension.
Proceedings of the 15th international conference on World Wide Web, WWW 2006, Edinburgh, Scotland, May 23-26, 2006
Current Wiki engines are mostly monolithic applications which intermingle parser, user interface and data management backend. In this paper we show how these three components can be realised as lightweight, REST-style web services. We explain why this separation is useful and how the wiki community benefits from such an approach. Additionally, the presented wiki allows semantic statements and queries over the model.
Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Wikis
SemWiki - A RESTful Distributed Wiki Architecture
Knowledge sharing in a virtual organization requires a knowledge life cycle including knowledge provisioning, terminology alignment, determination of resource location, query routing, and query answering. In this talk we focus on the issue of determining a relevant resource in a completely decentralized setting such as necessitated by peer-to-peer knowledge management in virtual organizations. Requirements for this task include, e.g., full autonomy of peers as well as full control over own resources and therefore preclude prominent resource location and query routing schemes such as distributed hash tables. In order to tackle given requirements we use a resource location and query routing approach that exploits social metaphors of topical experts and experts’ experts as well as semantic similarity of queries and information sources. The approach has been fully tested in simulation runs and partially implemented in the system Bibster (http://bibster.semanticweb.org).
Multiagent System Technologies: Third German Conference, MATES 2005, Koblenz, Germany, September 11-13, 2005. Proceedings
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS)
Semantically rich descriptions of web services enable automatic composition and matchmaking. End users as well as providers compose web services according to their needs. Since in general, there can be more than one possibilities (combinations of web services) to achieve a certain goal, a user has to decide which of the alternatives suits him the best. This leads to the requirement that the combinations of web services must be comparable. This can be achieved by aggregating web service attributes. Since the ranking of web service combinations depends on user's needs, capabilities and willingness for ivestment of resources, considering user preferences is important while calculating the rank of a web service composition. We show, how user preferences as well as aggregation information can be modeled in a formal way and how web service combinations can be ranked automatically based on this information.
User Preference based Automated Selection of Web Service Compositions
Logic programming has always been a major ontology modeling paradigm, and is frequently being used in large research projects and industrial applications, e.g., by means of the F-Logic reasoning engine OntoBroker or the TRIPLE query, inference, and transformation language and system. At the same time, the Web Ontology Language OWL has been recommended by the W3C for modeling ontologies for the web. Naturally, it is desirable to investigate the interoperability between both paradigms. In this paper, we do so by studying an expressive fragement of OWL DL for which reasoning can be reduced to the evaluation of Horn logic programs. Building on the KAON2 algorithms for transforming OWL DL into disjunctive Datalog, we give a detailed account of how and to what extent OWL DL can be employed in standard logic programming systems. En route, we derive a novel, simplified characterization of the supported fragment of OWL DL.
Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Rules and Rule Markup Languages for the Semantic Web, RuleML2006
How to reason with OWL in a logic programming system
IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation
Ant Colony Optimization for Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling
Progress in Artificial Intelligence: 12th Portuguese Conference on Artificial Intelligence, EPIA 2005
Building and Applying Ontologies for the Semantic Web (BAOSW 2005)
The Semantic Web brings powerful languages for creating models, based on Description Logics and Rules. These languages are used within ontology engineering tools and applied in strong and efficient reasoners. Working within the context of a Summer School, we explored these technologies by creating a small and easy to understand example, working firstly with OWL alone, and introducing SWRL rules as needed, to automatically classify a number of instances according to some intuitively simple criteria. We present the example OWL ontology, SWRL rules, and the issues and problems we encountered. Our experience highlights the capabilities and limitations of OWL and of SWRL, not in theoretical but in practical terms, and points to the need for better tool support, but is primarily a lesson in ”traps for young players” in terms of formulating classifications, that we hope will be instructive for Semantic Web students following in our footsteps, and their tutors.
Pushing the limits of OWL, Rules and Protege - A simple example
Today's web sites closely intertwine services with visual markup. Web page operators are unlikely to change this, as they depend on advertising revenues. wal enables average users to build web service wrappers for existing pages. By spawning many basic web services, this prepares the ground for the next wave of compound web services.
Extraktion von XML aus HTML-Seiten -- Das WYSIWYG-Werkzeug d2c
Managing knowledge is crucial in our economy. We derive requirements on personal knowledge management (finding, reminding, collaboration, knowledge re-use and cognitively adequate interfaces) from cognitive psychological research and analyse the limitations of current solutions. We introduce a RESTful, wiki-based, open architecture for semantic personal knowledge management that fulfills the analysed requirements to a high extent and gives the user a uniform way to work with knowledge on all layers (syntax, structure, formal semantics). We discuss architectural considerations and describe two implementations.
Personal Knowledge Management with Semantic Wikis
We present a MOF compliant metamodel and UML profile for the Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) that integrates with our previous work on a metamodel and UML profile for OWL DL. Based on this metamodel and profile, UML tools can be used for visual modelling of rule-extended ontologies.
The Semantic Web: Research and Applications
A Metamodel and UML Profile for Rule-extended OWL DL Ontologies
Both OWL-DL and function-free Horn rules are decidable fragments of first-order logic with interesting, yet orthogonal expressive power. A combination of OWL-DL and rules is desirable for the Semantic Web; however, it might easily lead to the undecidability of interesting reasoning problems. Here, we present a decidable such combination where rules are required to be DL-safe: each variable in the rule is required to occur in a non-DL-atom in the rule body. We discuss the expressive power of such a combination and present an algorithm for query answering in the related logic SHIQ extended with DL-safe rules, based on a reduction to disjunctive programs.
Journal of Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web
Mobile Information Systems II (Proceedings of the IFIP TC8 Working Conference on Mobile Information Systems 2005 (MOBIS))
A System for Mobile and Wireless Advertising
Substantial effort is currently being made by the e-Skills community and involved stakeholders to establish a common European Framework for e-Skills (or more specific ICT Skills) and competences in Europe. ICT skills/competence frameworks are an important prerequisite for ICT competence development and related quality assurance for recognition and transferability of qualifications. The framework aims to provide a common language that allows describing e-Skills by means of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) worker profiles. Though a number of frameworks exist today, mobility of ICT workers and learning across boundaries is being hampered by the observable divergence of the different approaches. It is in this light that the prior objective of the European Commission and Cedefop is to support the developments towards an overarching framework that supports transparency, mobility, and recognition for e-skills and related qualifications; and that will primarily allow learning across boundaries. The authors jointly with Cepis1 have made substantial inputs to the prevailing development process and the work within the CEN/ISSS Workshop ICT Skills.2 The paper presents insights in the related research work undertaken and run investigations.
The Internet & Information Technology in Modern Organizations
Learning across Boundaries: Developments towards a European Framework for ICT Skills
In this paper the bases as well as the procedure of the introduction of a Learning Organisation (LO) in a company or an organisation are represented. The LO is regarded as part of the introduction of a knowledge information system; LO serves as supporting measure, in order to spread and develop the existing knowledge further in the company.
Model LOB-MUT: Build up a Learning Organisation
Der Wettbewerbsdruck nimmt stetig zu und der Markt wird immer härter umkämpft (z. B. wegen Sättigung der Märkte oder größerer Ähnlichkeit, Gleichheit und/oder kleinerem Lebenszyklen von Produkten). Unternehmen sind gezwungen, ihre vorhandenen Ressourcen möglichst optimal einzusetzen und ruhende Ressourcen zu aktivieren. Des Weiteren spielt der bewusste Umgang mit dem Produktionsfaktor Wissen eine immer größere Rolle bei der Gewinnung und auch beim Ausbau von Wettbewerbsvorteilen. Nur wer seine wissensbasierten Prozesse und Ressourcen optimal nutzt und einsetzt, wird sich auf lange Sicht im Wettbewerb behaupten können, indem das benötigte und relevante Wissen sowie Daten und Informationen möglichst aktuell und griffbereit gehalten werden, um schneller und kostengünstiger als die Konkurrenz agieren zu können.
To build semantic web applications, developers must master three things at the same time: Their programming language, the semantic web languages (RDF, RDFS and OWL), and the web protocols (HTTP). This paper presents a framework, semweb4j, that turns Java developers into semantic web developers without requiring them to learn RDF, RDFS, HTTP or Servlets. We present a triple store abstraction layer (RDF2Go), an
Multiple certification programmes and systems are known in the ICT industries and other fields of application throughout Europe. Certification and quality standards in ICT education and training are extremely important for both employments in the ICT labour market and as a basis for a sustainable pro-fessional career. CEPIS studied and compared on behalf of Cedefop existing approaches to e-skills certification on European level. This paper presents se-lected preliminary survey results contributing to the current debate on the pro-motion of e-skills to economic competitiveness, better jobs and social cohesion. The study is supporting the current debate on ICT skills frameworks and quality issues on the necessary increase of the attractiveness of this labour market seg-ment. The study takes focus on the investigation of existing modes, procedures, methods and institutions responsible for e-skills certification and on their inter-ests in sharing experience or increasing co-operation. The project aims to sup-port and recommend joint actions in order to allow for a European wide policy and practice for certification, quality assurance and standardisation.
Towards European Standards for e-Skills and Qualifications
e-Skills Certification in Europe: Voluntary Approaches to Setting European Level Quality Standards
Zum 1. Mobile Business Day, der im Mai 2005 an der Universität Karlsruhe (TH) stattfand, trafen sich Praktiker und Wissenschaftler zum Gedankenaustausch. Sie loteten die gesamte Breite mobiler Anwendungen sowie ihre Einsatzmöglichkeiten und Grenzen aus, stellten die neuesten Ideen und Ergebnisse im Mobile Business vor und diskutierten Erfahrungen aus der Praxis und neue viel versprechende theoretische Ansätze. Die Veranstaltung wurde im Rahmen des Verbundprojektes
Perspektiven des Mobile Business, Mobile Business Day, Karlsruhe, 31.05.2005
CONsense: Kooperatives Wissensmanagement in virtuellen Organisationen
Successful knowledge management projects incorporate aspects from the following dimensions: processes, contents, corporate culture, information technologies (IT). IT has the role to facilitate storage, retrieval and presentation of information and is therefore often called an enabler. An inadequate use of IT can lead to the failure of a knowledge management project, cause considerable delays and detract from the motivation of the people involved.
Professional Knowledge Management: Third Biennial Conference, WM 2005, Kaiserslautern, Germany, April 10-13, 2005, Revised Selected Papers
Workshop on Intelligent IT Tools for Knowledge Management Systems: Applicability, Usability, and Benefits
This paper presents a method for semantically aligning business processes. We provide a representation of Petri nets in the standard ontology language OWL DL, to semantically enrich the business processes. On top of this, we propose a technique for semantically aligning business processes to support inter-organizational business collaboration. This semantic alignment is improved by a background ontology. Therefore, we propose a specific UML Profile, which allows to visually model this background ontology. The different parts of our proposal, which reduces communication efforts and solves interconnectivity problems, are discussed in detail.
Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2006)
Semantic Alignment of Business Processes
The procedure model WISKI (S)PUR was developed within the cooperation project EWISU between the institute AIFB (http://www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de) and the company ISB AG Karlsruhe (http://www.isb-ag.de). With it you will be able to introduce a knowledge information system (WIS) into a company successfully and also you will be able to use this WIS successfully. The procedure model serves the support of the introduction of a WIS into a company or an organization. WISKI (S)PUR offers a framework for the efficient and actual establishment of a company&#8217;s specific knowledge information system. Furthermore, a phase model was developed for the introduction of a WIS into a company, as the case may be for the accomplishment of knowledge projects; WISKI (S)PUR is reflected in it. These both models are validated and are verified by knowledge projects in the ISB AG. The introduction of a Skill Matrix was selected as the pilot scheme on the basis of the need in the ISB AG. The generation and utilization of synergies by the implentation and combination of two further completed knowledge projects with the Skill Matrix will be described briefly in this paper.
Professional Knowledge Management: Third Biennial Conference
Introduction of a Knowledge Information System in a SME, Skill Matrix as Pilot Scheme
An approach for the evolution of a knowledge management system is discussed
ECIS 2002 - The European Conference on Information Systems, Gdañsk, Poland, 2002
Evolution in ontology-based knowledge management systems
Current middleware solutions, e.g., application servers and Web services, are very complex software products that are hard to tame because of intricacies of distributed systems. Their functionalities have mostly been developed and managed with the help of administration tools and corresponding configuration files, recently in XML. Though this constitutes flexibility for developing and administrating a distributed application, the conceptual model underlying the different configurations is only implicit. To remedy such problems, Semantic Management of Middleware contributes an ontology-based approach to support the development and administration of middleware-based applications. The ontology is an explicit conceptual model with formal logic-based semantics. Its descriptions may therefore be queried, may foresight required actions, or may be checked to avoid inconsistent system configurations. This book builds a rigorous approach towards giving the declarative descriptions of components and services a well-defined meaning by specifying ontological foundations and by showing how such foundations may be realized in practical, up-and-running systems.
Artificial Economics, Agent-Based Methods in Finance, Game Theory and Their Applications
Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems
Time Series Properties from an Artificial Stock Market with a Walrasian Auctioneer
Handbook of Bioinspired Algorithms and Applications
A unified view on metaheuristics and their hybridization
Multidisciplinary Scheduling; Theory and Applications
For many real-world optimization problems, the robustness of a solution is of great importance in addition to the solution's quality. By robustness, we mean that small deviations from the original design, e.g., due to manufacturing tolerances, should be tolerated without a severe loss of quality. One way to achieve that goal is to evaluate each solution under a number of different scenarios, and use the average solution quality as fitness. However, this approach is often impractical, because the cost for evaluating each individual several times is unacceptable. In this paper, we present a new and efficient approach to estimating a solution's expected quality and variance. Basically, we propose to construct local approximate models of the fitness function, and then use these approximate models to estimate expected fitness and variance. Based on a variety of test function, we demonstrate empirically that our approach significantly outperforms the implicit averaging approach as well as the explicit averaging approaches using existing estimation techniques reported in the literature.
Efficient Search for Robust Solutions by Means of Evolutionary Algorithms and Fitness Approximation
Many real-world problems are dynamic, requiring an optimization algorithm which is able to continuously track a changing optimum over time. In this paper, we explore new variants of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) specifically designed to work well in dynamic environments. The main idea is to split the population of particles into a set of interacting swarms. These swarms interact locally by an exclusion parameter and globally through a new anti-convergence operator. In addition, each swarm maintains diversity either by using charged or quantum particles. The paper derives guidelines for setting the involved parameters and evaluates the multi-swarm algorithms on a variety of instances of the multi-modal dynamic moving peaks benchmark. Results are also compared to other PSO and evolutionary algorithm approaches from the literature, showing that the new multi-swarm optimizer significantly outperforms previous approaches.
Multi-Swarms, exclusion, and anti-convergence in dynamic environments
Co-evolving business models: A case study with the internet service provider (ISP) industry
International Journal of Production Research
Anticipation and flexibility in dynamic scheduling
An approach for the evolution of knowledge maangement system is described
EKAW 2002 Workshop on Knowledge Management through Corporate Semantic Webs, at 13th European Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management EKAW Madrid, Spain, 2002
An Approach for the Evolution of Ontology-based Knowledge Management Systems
Evolutionary optimization in uncertain environments - A survey
Waiting strategies for dynamic vehicle routing
Editorial: Special issue on dynamic optimization problems
Selection procedures are used in many applications to select the best of a finite set of alternatives, as in discrete optimization with simulation. There are a wide variety of procedures, which begs the question of which selection procedure to select. This paper (a) summarizes the main structural approaches to deriving selection procedures, (b) describes an innovative empirical testbed, and (c) summarizes results from work in progress that provides the most exhaustive assessment of selection procedures to date. The most efficient and easiest to control procedures allocate samples with a Bayesian model for uncertainty about the means, and use a new expected opportunity cost-based stopping rule.
New developments in ranking and selection: An empirical comparison of the three main approaches
Applications of evolutionary computing: EvoWorkshops'05
Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference
Towards an analysis of dynamic environments
Multiobjective optimization for dynamic environments
Particle swarm optimization and sequential sampling in noisy environments
Dagstuhl Workshop on Practical Approaches to Multi-Objective Optimization
Quantitative Methods in Finance Conference, Book of Abstracts p. 90
A Multi-objective Model Framework for the Integrated Management of Financial Risks
Finding right information in the right moment is quite a tedious task on the Web. The main difficulty is the wrong context in which information is found and, therefore, part of the problem lies in the process of providing metadata about information resources on the web. In other words, only by searching for keywords, which are assigned to the content of an information resource, a machine agent cannot differ between various contexts of using these keywords, and some non-relevant resources will be retrieved as the result of the searching process. In this paper, we propose a method for improving the annotation of information resources – by forming conditional statements about keywords used in the describing content of a resource. This kind of annotation leads to the better precision of the information retrieval process – by expressing the context of searching in a more precise manner. Moreover, such more expressive form of describing content of information resources supports a more powerful knowledge sharing process enabling the discovery of new information by considering the combination of existing information resources. In that way, the system provides some answers which are not explicitly stated in the information repository. We present a knowledge management framework which implements such type of annotation and give a small evaluation study. The framework is based on using Semantic Web tools, which are developed at our Institute.
EKAW 2002 Workshop on Knowledge Management through Corporate Semantic Webs, at 13th European Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management EKAW
On the possibility to improve searching for knowledge using a more expressive form of annotation
Cumulative Habilitation, University of Karlsruhe, May 2002 (German survey paper, 5 English contributions, German CV)
Wissensmanagement mit Ontologien und Metadaten (Knowledge Management with Ontologies and Metadata)
10th Symposium on Finance, Banking, and Insurance, Book of Abstracts p. 52
Risk-Return Analysis with an Integrated Perspective on Market, Credit and Operational Risk
IP-Telefonie - Standards, Anwendungen und Analyse
In this paper we investigate the capabilities of Genetic Algorithms applied to the domain of Knowledge Intensive Process Improvement (Knowiπ). Knowledge intensive processes (KnowiP) can be seen as sequences of activities based on know- ledge intensive acquisition and handling. Such knowledge intensive processes can be implemented in enterprises of different kind regardless of which type, production or service company. In order to measure the performance of knowledge intensive processes, performance indexes are necessary. The processes are evaluated according to these indexes. Two particular Genetic Algorithms (GAs) are applied to improve a special class of knowledge intensive processes. In a single-objective algorithm we aim at improving the duration of the process execution. Moreover, we address the presence of multiple evaluation criteria by a Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm (MOGA) to find acceptable Pareto solutions as trade-offs. For our case, we investigate the Multi-Sexual GA (MSGA) considering the criteria service time, costs of acquisition and usage of knowledge sources simultaneously.
Journal of Universal Knowledge Management
Towards Self-Organizing Knowledge Intensive Processes
Evidence for both, acceleration and deceleration of evolution through learning can be found in the literature. We suggest a selection gradient model that allows to predict whether acceleration or deceleration is predominant. The main idea is that learning alters the genotype-to-fitness landscape, which determines selection pressure. Assuming that fitness can be split up into an innate and a learned component, conditions for the occurrence of the Baldwin and the Hiding effect are derived. We introduce learning curves to analyse what we term lifetime fitness. The influence of the shape of the learning curve on the interaction between evolution and learning is analysed.
Artificial Life X : Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems
On the Influence of Lifetime Learning on Selection Pressure
Semantic Web Technologies: Trends and Research in Ontology-based Systems
This deliverable provides a methodology to determine an the knowledge management maturity level of an organization. This depends on the level of experience of the organization w.r.t. knowledge management from an organizational, human and technology perspective. For the technological aspects of KM the deliverable provides an elaborated set of guidelines for ontology engineering and application in SEKT: DILIGENT -- DIstributed, Loosely-controlled and evolvInG Engineering of oNTologies. The deliverable consists of the following building blocks: (i) a survey of relevant existing approaches to aforementioned topics, (ii) the DILIGENT process model and argumentation framework, (iii) a cost model to estimate the ontology building efforts, (iv) a process model to learn ontologies and (v) guidelines for the evaluation of the diligent process model.
SEKT Methodology: Initial Framework and Evaluation of Guidelines
As CO2 emissions and sustainable energy production have entered the focus of attention in politics and industry, ecologically advantageous alternatives are strongly promoted. We address virtual power plants from an information technological, economic and legal perspective in order to enable decentralized sustainable generation. For the realization of virtual power plants we draw on a peer-to-peer infrastructure with market coordination and legal coverage to manage the distributed generation units and we focus on the combination of power and heat. Based on our prototype for a decentralized market platform, we examine the economic and ecological impacts of an increasing pervasiveness of distributed generation and virtual power plants as well as their potential influence on society. At the social level, we consider questions of local immission, but also of growing awareness for power issues. With regard to the ecology, we expect a reduction of overall primary energy demand resulting from reduced transmission and transformation losses and increased use of combined heat and power plants at a local level leading to a reduction of emissions. Finally, since local distributed generation makes more efficient use of primary energy and long-distance transport lines can be reduced, we expect lower costs for the complete system as well as reduced uncertainty with regard to amortization of investments. Besides a description of the methodology our presentation will include selected results.
Proceedings of the Annual International Sustainable Development Research Conference
Impacts of Distributed Generation from Virtual Power Plants
A system for knowledge management for the Semantic Web is described
SemWeb@KR2002, Workshop on Formal Ontology, Knowledge Representation and Intelligent Systems for the World Wide Web, associated to KR’2002, Toulouse, 19-20 April 2002
An approach for knowledge management on the Semantic Web
Proceedings of the Workshop on Integrating Ontologies
Relaxed Precision and Recall for Ontology Matching
FOAM - Framework for Ontology Alignment and Mapping; Results of the Ontology Alignment Initiative
Supervised Learning of an Ontology Alignment Process
Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2005)
M2M Interface: A Web Services-based Framework for Cooperated Enterprise Management
The vision of SEKT is to develop and exploit the knowledge technologies which underlie Next Generation Knowledge Management. We envision knowledge workplaces where the boundaries between document management, content management, and knowledge management are broken down, and where knowledge management is an effortless part of day to day activities. SEKT is built around the synergy of the complementary know-how of the key European centres of excellence in Ontology and Metadata Technology, Knowledge Discovery, and Human Language Technology. The execution of SEKT is based on the integration of fundamental research, component development and integration driven by real world case studies in the public and private sectors. SEKT will provide new insights on knowledge technologies. The main objective of work package 7 is to provide a methodology for the application of Semantic Knowledge Technologies into enterprises in a goal-driven and process-oriented way. The developed SEKT methodology is applied and evaluated as part of the case studies. In this report we collect the feedback from the case study partners. We present the enhancements of the methodology and include lessons learned and best practices. Based on this experiences we also designed two DILIGENT-based tools. EvA is meant for the distributed engineering of ontologies, whereas the Semantic MediaWiki is best suited for the population of ontologies. We describe the design of these tools and some application scenarios.
SEKT Methodology: Initial Lessons Learned and Tool Design
In M. Laub, T. Selle, Technical Report WIOR 615
Ein Tabusearch-Verfahren für das Resource Constrained Net Present Value Problem with Minimum and Maximum Time Lags (RCNPVPmax)
Case Study: Wirtschaftlichkeit von mobilen Endgeräten in Krankenhäusern der Maximalversorgung
Proceedings Eighth IEEE International Symposium on Object-Oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing (ISORC 2005), 18-20 May 2005, Seattle, WA, USA
Organic Computing- A New Vision for Distributed Embedded Systems
A format for describing rules for the Semantic Web is discussed
Special Track on Semantic Web at FLAIRS 2002, The 15th International FLAIRS Conference Crown Plaza Pensacola Grand Hotel, Pensacola, Florida, May 14-16, 2002
Organic Computing is becoming the new vision for the design of complex systems, satisfying human needs for trustworthy systems that behave life-like by adapting autonomously to dynamic changes of the environment, and have self-x properties as postulated for Autonomic Computing. Organic Computing is a response to the threatening view of being surrounded by interacting and self-organizing systems which may become unmanageable, showing undesired emergent behavior. Major challenges for organic system design arise from the conflicting requirements to have systems that are at the same time robust and adaptive, having sufficient degrees of freedom for showing self-x properties but being open for human intervention and operating with respect to appropriate rules and constraints to prevent the occurrence of undesired emergent behavior.
Grid Computing: Software Environments and Tools
Towards the Utilization of Grid Computing in Electronic Learning
Recent studies showed how a seamless integration of formal concept analysis (FCA), logic of domains, and answer set programming (ASP) can be achieved. Based on these results for combining hierarchical knowledge with classical rule-based formalisms, we introduce an expressive common-sense query language for formal contexts. Although this approach is conceptually based on order-theoretic paradigms, we show how it can be implemented on top of standard ASP systems. Advanced features, such as default negation and disjunctive rules, thus become practically available for processing contextual data.
Conceptual Structures: Inspiration and Application, Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS 2006, Aalborg, Denmark, July 2006
Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence
Querying formal contexts with answer set programs
We take a general perspective on alignment in order to develop common theoretical foundations for the subject. The deliverable comprises a comparative study of different mapping languages by means of distributed first-order logic, and a study on category-theoretical modelling of alignment and merging by means of pushout-combinations.
Integrated view and comparison of alignment semantics
IADIS International Conference e-Commerce 2005
Differences In Bidding Characteristics On eBay.de
Incremental Ontology Evolution: Evaluation
The world is constantly changing, and so does required and available knowledge, e.g. stored in Digital Libraries. Knowledge workers heavily rely on the availability and accessibility of knowledge contained in such libraries. The sheer mass of knowledge available today, however, requires sophisticated support for searching and, often considered as equally important, personalization. In SEKT we address these challenges by using ontologies. Ontologies by nature make implicit knowledge explicit, they describe relevant parts of the world and make them machine understandable and processable. To be effective, ontologies need to change possibly as fast as the parts of the world they describe. Change discovery aims at generating implicit requirements by inducing ontology changes from existing data. We here focus on {em usage-driven} change discovery. Usage data is a very valuable source of contextual information, based on which the ontology can be modified in order to reflect changes in the real world, In a precedent deliverable we have presented a framework for usage-driven ontology evolution along with a set of methods for change discovery. In this deliverable we evaluate this framework by applying it to actual use cases from the BT DL case study. The use cases include (1) usage-based pruning of a generic ontology to obtain a personalized ontology, and (2) extending an existing ontology with personalized extensions obtained via Ontology Learning techniques. The evaluation results show the usefulness of applying usage data for the task of ontology evolution.
D3.2.2 Usage-driven Change Discovery: Evaluation
Bottom-up integration aims at exploring the synergies which the SEKT core technologies offer for (semi-)automatic creation and maintenance of ontologies and for the application of ontology technologies in certain settings. After the initial status report in month 18, this deliverable focuses on integration activities between the KDD and OM core technologies, in particular between the TEXTGARDEN and KAON tool suites. It is part of a series of bottom-up deliverables D6.6.x, each reporting on bilateral integration activities for different pairings of the core technologies.
D6.6.3 Integration of TextGarden and KAON
A framework for managing rules on the Semantic Web is discussed
The eleventh International World Wide Web Conference WWW2002, poster track, Hawaii, 2002
A framework for knowledge management on the Semantic Web
cInfoXML: Darstellung und automatisierte Auswertung von Informationen über Geschäftspartner
The Semantic Web and its technology are increasingly becoming a central element of many activities in computer science. More and more people are interested and would like to enhance their skills thereon. This demand leads to the idea of introducing a joint master’s program on the Semantic Web, the , the “European Academy for Semantic web Education” (EASE). This program shall attract people with a bachelor’s degree from computer science, artificial intelligence, or related areas. It is split among leading European universities, all known for excellence in the field of Semantic Web. They are currently already cooperating in the network of excellence “Knowledge Web” of the European Union. Within the twoyear program prospective students will study up-to-date developments in the Semantic Web area. Courses will cover web infrastructure, Semantic Web technologies, the formal foundations of knowledge representation, information and knowledge systems, and advanced modules. Goal of the program is to build a new generation of Semantic Web experts – and upskill the European workforce with ideas that point to the future. In this deliverable we report on the work towards such a shared master program. We elaborate on the work towards a joint Semantic Web curriculum and show how currently existing courses offered by participating partners from Knowledge Web fit into the curriculum.
Joint Curriculum for a Shared Masters Program
This deliverable presents T-REX, the program in Knowledge Web (KWeb) to support “Topic-oriented Research EXchange”, and gives an overview of the exchanges performed in 2005. The short-term goal of T-REX is to encourage, support and manage the exchange of researchers across KWeb members. The long-term goal of T-REX is to strengthen the European research area by establishing strong and lasting links across research organizations, e.g. visible by shared publications of KWeb members. In this deliverable we report on the exchanges that took place in 2004 – 2005.
Report on Research Exchange and Collaboration
This deliverable is part of the “WP 2.6 Weaving the European Semantic Web Research Network”. This deliverable provides an overview about the workshops and conferences organized in 2005 under the umbrella of Knowledge Web by its partners. Support of events is organized along the well-defined set of criteria which enable different levels of support as introduced earlier in Knowledge Web Deliverable 2.6.3 which also covers an overview of events organized in 2004.
Report on Workshop and Conference Organization
Proceedings of the 4th Australasian Data Mining Conference
Predicting foreign exchange rate return directions with Support Vector Machines
Das Beste beider Welten - Bewertungsorientiertes versus Erwartungsorientiertes Währungsmanagement: Alternative oder Ergänzungsmöglichkeit?
10th Annual Workshop on Economic Heterogeneous Interacting Agents (WEHIA 2005)
Wealth Dynamics and Price Fluctuations under Taxation
Context-oriented knowledge management: an outlook
CAiSE Forum 2006 Proceedings at the 18th Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE)
Integration of Heterogeneous BPM Schemas: The Case of XPDL and BPEL
Semantic Web - Wege zur vernetzten Wissensgesellschaft
Formal Language Recognition by Stochastic Cellular Automata
Today, most computer users work with traditional hierarchical file systems for organizing large amounts of personal files. Recently, tagging has grown popular as an alternative means of organizing information resources. We argue that tagging is a powerful paradigm for efficient information access which overcomes many deficiencies of hierarchical file systems, especially in the context of the organization of large quantities of personal files. In this paper we present TagFS, a filesystem with tagging support which aims at a seamless integration of the tagging paradigm with local applications. While retaining the notions of directories and files and providing all standard filesystem operations, the semantics of these primitives are changed to modifications of the tag annotations.
Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Knowledge Management (I-KNOW 06), Graz, Austria, September 6-8, 2006
TagFS - Tag Semantics for Hierarchical File Systems
This document reports on practical applications of approximate reasoning, mainly based on ABox techniques or cooperative query processing. It also shows examples and implementations of distributed reasoning systems for ontologies, as distributed instance retrieval or a mix of ontology querying and information retrieval methods.
Report on realizing practical approximate and distributed reasoning for ontologies
3rd World Conference on Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Book of Abstracts p. 47
A Heuristic Approach towards an Integrated View on Portfolio Return, Market Risk, Credit Risk and Operational Risk
Galois connections between concept lattices can be represented as binary relations on the context level, known as dual bonds. The latter also appear as the elements of the tensor product of concept lattices, but it is known that not all dual bonds between two lattices can be represented in this way. In this work, we define regular Galois connections as those that are represented by a dual bond in a tensor product, and characterize them in terms of lattice theory. Regular Galois connections turn out to be much more common than irregular ones, and we identify many cases in which no irregular ones can be found at all. To this end, we demonstrate that irregularity of Galois connections on sublattices can be lifted to superlattices, and observe close relationships to various notions of distributivity. This is achieved by combining methods from algebraic order theory and FCA with recent results on dual bonds. Disjunctions in formal contexts play a prominent role in the proofs and add a logical flavor to our considerations. Hence it is not surprising that our studies allow us to derive corollaries on the contextual representation of deductive systems.
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Formal Concept Analysis (ICFCA2006), Dresden, Germany
The Tensor Product as a Lattice of Regular Galois Connections
Semantic Annotation for Knowledge Management: Requirements and a Survey of the State of the Art
Artificial neural networks can be trained to perform excellently in many application areas. Whilst they can learn from raw data to solve sophisticated recognition and analysis problems, the acquired knowledge remains hidden within the network architecture and is not readily accessible for analysis or further use: Trained networks are black boxes. Recent research efforts therefore investigate the possibility to extract symbolic knowledge from trained networks, in order to analyze, validate, and reuse the structural insights gained implicitly during the training process. In this paper, we will study how knowledge in form of propositional logic programs can be obtained in such a way that the programs are as simple as possible—where simple is being understood in some clearly defined and meaningful way.
Extracting Reduced Logic Programs from Artificial Neural Networks
Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Engineering of Reconfigurable Systems and Algorithms (ERSA'02), Las Vegas
On Enforced Convergence of ACO and its Implementation on the Reconfigurable Mesh Architecture Using Size Reduction Tasks
Data-driven Change Discovery -- Evaluation
Kennzahlen und Kennzahlensysteme haben in der Wirtschaft eine lange Tradition. Als Instrumente eines dedizierten Controlling-Kreislaufs werden Kennzahlensysteme meist für einen bestimmten Zweck gebildet; Daten und Kennzahlen werden so u.U. innerhalb eines Unternehmens mehrfach und überschneidend erhoben. Hilfe kann in diesem Zusammenhang die Einrichtung einer Kennzahlen- und Datenmaklerfunktion bieten. In vorliegendem Artikel soll anhand eines Beispiels aus der Unternehmenspraxis eine mögliche Vorgehensweise zur Schaffung einer solchen Instanz skizziert und die Möglichkeiten einer systematischen Nutzung der Ergebnisdaten in unterschiedlichen Analyse- und Steuerungskontexten aufgezeigt werden.
Multikonferenz Wirtschaftsinformatik 2006
Realisierung einer transdisziplinären Erhebung von Daten und Kennzahlen zur Analyse und Steuerung eines Banken-IT-Dienstleisters
Human Language Technology and Knowledge Acquisition for the Semantic Web
We propose a new technique for approximate ABox reasoning with OWL DL ontologies. Essentially, we obtain substantially improved reasoning performance by disregarding non-Horn features of OWL DL. Our approach comes as a side-product of recent research results concerning a new transformation of OWL DL ontologies into negation-free disjunctive datalog, and rests on the idea of performing standard resolution over disjunctive rules by treating them as if they were non-disjunctive ones. We analyse our reasoning approach by means of non-monotonic reasoning techniques, and present an implementation, called Screech.
Principles and Practices of Semantic Web Reasoning
Solutions to Parallel and Distributed Computing Problems
Parallel implementations of evolutionary algorithms
Evolutionäre Optimierung dynamischer Probleme
etriebswirtschaftliche Anwendungen des Softcomputing
Strategische Standortplanung mit einem interaktiven Genetischen Algorithmus
Guidance in evolutionary multi-objective optimization
Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2002), New York
Studies on the Dynamics of Ant Colony Optimization Algorithms
Diploma (master) thesis , Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe
The Influence of Learning on Rate of Evolution
A first-order account of the relation between bridges, discourse relations and world knowledge
SemVersion is a generic, extendable multi-language ontology versioning system, that can help research and industry to employ ontology based technologies in dynamic settings. This deliverable describes the requirements for and design of SemVersion.
The Semantic Web: Research and Applications: 3rd European Semantic Web Conference, ESWC 2006, June 11-14, 2006 Proceedings
Ontology Engineering Revisited: an Iterative Case Study with DILIGENT
Personalized Information Access in a Bibliographic Peer-to-Peer System
Bibster -- A Semantics-Based Bibliographic Peer-to-Peer System
Visual Ontology Modeling for Electronic Markets
Die besonderen Vorzüge von mobilen Endgeräten wie Mobiltelefonen und PDAs als Medium für Werbung werden in zahlreichen Publikationen erörtert, wobei meist ausgehend von den hohen Penetrationsraten dieser Geräte, der Möglichkeit der direkten Ansprache und ihrem Charakter als ubiquitäre Begleiter argumentiert wird. In der Praxis kommen bisher nur einfache Formen von Werbung mit mobilen Endgeräten zum Einsatz, z.B. die Übermittlung von Werbebotschaften per SMS; zudem spielt das Marktvolumen von m-Advertising im Vergleich zu herkömmlichen Werbeformen derzeit noch eine untergeordnete Rolle. Der vorliegende Beitrag gibt aufbauend auf einer Einordnung von m-Advertising und seinen spezifischen Merkmalen einen Überblick über verschiedene Ansätze zur Realisierung von Werbung mit mobilen Endgeräten.
Mobile Informationssysteme - Potentiale, Hindernisse, Einsatz. Proceedings der 1. Fachtagung Mobilität und Mobile Informationssysteme (MMS)
m-Advertising: Werbung mit mobilen Endgeräten - ein Überblick
3rd European Workshop on Scheduling and Timetabling and 3rd European Workshop on Evolutionary Methods for AI Planning (EvoSTIM/EvoPLAN-2002), Kinsale, Ireland
Ant Colony Optimization with the Relative Pheromone Evaluation Method
Framework für eine holistische Wirtschaftlichkeitsanalyse mobiler Systeme
Formal Concept Analysis, Third International Conf., ICFCA 2005-Supplementary Volume
Using a Query-Based Multicontext For Knowledge Base Browsing
We have now reached a stage in the lifecycle of semantic technologies, where a major integrative effort is needed, so as to produce the infrastructure that the community requires. A large-scale effort is needed to tackle the 'holistic' problem of an effective integration of technologies and methods. This effort would make the acquisition, design, development and maintenance of large, heterogeneous semantic applications, which are now, in principle, feasible, more cost-effective.
Proceedings of 2nd European Workshop on the Integration of Knowledge, Semantic and Digital Media Technologies (EWIMT-2005)
In der Informatik sind Ontologien formale Modelle eines Anwendungsbereiches, die die Kommunikation zwischen menschlichen und/oder maschinellen Akteuren unterstützen und damit den Austausch und das Teilen von Wissen in Unternehmen erleichtern. Ontologien zur strukturierten Darstellung von Wissen zu nutzen hat deshalb in den letzten Jahren zunehmende Verbreitung gefunden. Schon heute existieren weltweit tausende Ontologien. Um Interoperabilität zwischen darauf aufbauenden Softwareagenten oder Webservices zu ermöglichen, ist die semantische Integration der Ontologien eine zwingendnotwendige Vorraussetzung. Wie man sich leicht verdeutlichen kann, ist die rein manuelle Erstellung der Abbildungen ab einer bestimmten Größe, Komplexität und Veränderungsrate der Ontologien nicht mehr ohne weiteres möglich. Automatische oder semiautomatische Technologien müssen den Nutzer darin unterstützen. Das Integrationsproblem beschäftigt Forschung und Industrie schon seit vielen Jahren z.B. im Bereich der Datenbankintegration. Neu ist jedoch die Möglichkeit komplexe semantische Informationen, wie sie in Ontologien vorhanden sind, einzubeziehen. Zur Ontologieintegration wird in diesem Kapitel ein sechsstufiger genereller Prozess basierend auf den semantischen Strukturen eingeführt. Erweiterungen beschäftigen sich mit der Effizienz oder der optimalen Nutzereinbindung in diesen Prozess. Außerdem werden zwei Anwendungen vorgestellt, in denen dieser Prozess erfolgreich umgesetzt wurde. In einem abschließenden Fazit werden neue aktuelle Trends angesprochen. Da die Ansätze prinzipiell auf jedes Schema übertragbar sind, das eine semantische Basis enthält, geht der Einsatzbereich dieser Forschung weit über reine Ontologieanwendungen hinaus.
Workshop Modellierung fuer Wissensmanagement auf der Modellierung 2006
Automatische Wissensintegration mit Ontologien
GI-Edition - Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI)
Datenbanksysteme in Business, Technologie und Web (BTW 2005), 11. Fachtagung des GI-Fachbereichs "Datenbanken und Informationssysteme" (DBIS), Karlsruhe, 2.-4. März 2005
Der Einsatz mobiler Technologien im Customer Relationship Management bietet Unternehmen entscheidende Wettbewerbsvorteile. Der vorliegende Beitrag erläutert, worin diese Vorteile für kleine und mittelständische Unternehmen bestehen, welche Prozesse sich mobil unterstützen lassen und wie die Umsetzung von mobilem CRM erfolgen kann.
Kundenbindung vor Ort stärken: Mobiles Customer Relationship Management
Proc. of the 9th Int. Conf. on Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR2004)
Reducing SHIQ Descrption Logic to Disjunctive Datalog Programs
Proceedings of The 15th International World Wide Web Conference
Automatic Matchmaking of Web Services (Poster)
Proceedings of the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC)
Finding the Appropriate Generalization Level for Binary Relations Extracted from the Genia Corpus
Ant Algorithms, Proceedings of Third International Workshop ANTS 2002, Brussels, Belgium
Modelling ACO: Composed Permutation Problems
Ontology-based Information Extraction with SOBA
Knowledge representation and semantic annotation of multimedia documents typically have been pursued in two different directions. Previous approaches have focused either on low-level descriptors, such as dominant colour, or on the semantic content dimension and corresponding manual annotations, such as person or vehicle. Here, a knowledge infrastructure and an experimentation platform for semantic annotation to bridge the two directions are presented. Ontologies are being extended and enriched to include low-level audiovisual features and descriptors. Additionally, a tool that allows for linking low-level MPEG-7 visual descriptions to ontologies and annotations is presented. Thus, ontologies that include prototypical instances of high-level domain concepts together with a formal specification of the corresponding visual descriptors are constructed. This infrastructure is exploited by a knowledge-assisted analysis framework that may handle problems such as segmentation, tracking, feature extraction and matching in order to classify scenes, identify and label objects and thus automatically create the associated semantic metadata.
IEE Proceedings on Vision, Image and Signal Processing - Special issue on the Integration of Knowledge, Semantics and Digital Media Technology
Knowledge Representation and Semantic Annotation of Multimedia Content
GECCO '06: Proceedings of the 8th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation
Comparison of Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms in Optimizing Combinations of Reinsurance Contracts
Perspektiven des Mobile Business - Wissenschaft und Praxis im Dialog
Kontextsensitive mobile Dienste am Beispiel des Mobilmedia-Leitprojektes MoMa: Mobiles Marketing
Ontologies are defined as the formal specification of a shared conceptualisation of a domain of interest. Unlike most other ontology engineering methodologies, the DILIGENT methodology aims specifically at the collaborative and distributed building of ontologies, providing a rich argumentation framework in order to quickly proceed with building the ontology and track all relevant discussions about the conceptualisation. Based upon first experience with the DILIGENT methodology, we designed a tool to support engineers and domain experts to follow the DILIGENT processes. In this paper we present the requirements, personas and scenarios our work is based upon, derived from our experience with ontology building, and the resulting design and state of the ongoing implementation, in order to get timely feedback for the further development of an DILIGENT based collaborative ontology engineering environment.
1st International Workshop on Semantic Technologies in Collaborative Applications STICA 06
A Tool for DILIGENT Argumentation: Experiences, Requirements and Design
In an attempt to create a lean vocabulary for incremental recording and step-wise formalisation of personal knowledge, we identified a set of common knowledge structures. These Conceptual Data Structures (CDS) were found to be inherent to a variety of different knowledge artefacts ranging from vague paper notes to highly structured documents. CDS is suitable for representing knowledge in various degrees of formalisation a uniform fashion, allowing gradual migration. CDS serves two purposes: First, as a guideline for future Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) tools, providing a set of crucial structural primitives. Second, the RDF-based representation of CDS can serve as a knowledge exchange format. It is capable of representing also vague or even inconsistent knowledge structures between people and PKM tools without unnecessary loss of information.
Proc. of the 14th International Conference on Conceptual Structures 2006
Conceptual Data Structures (CDS) -- Towards an Ontology for Semi-Formal Articulation of Personal Knowledge
Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS'06)
Automated Bidding for Trading Grid Services
MODELL LOB-MUT: BASIS EINER LERNENDEN ORGANISATION
The entity relationship approach is a widely accepted method for conceptual database design. However, some problems arise if ER modelling is applied to the design of really large databases concerning whole enterprises. There is, e.g., no way to obtain a general view nor to perceive the global context of a detailed enterprise scheme with hundreds of entities and relationships. Different approaches use ER model clustering to overcome these problems. All approaches are based on an already existing detailed ER diagram. Based on this, the abstraction layers are built bottom-up. The approach proposed in this paper refines and extends the approaches mentioned above. It also takes into account the Nested Entity Relationship Model in order to refine relationship types. It can be used in a top-down database design process as well as in a bottom-up approach.
Entity-Relationship Approach - ER'93: 12th Int. Conference on the Entity-Relationship Approach
Extending ER model clustering by relationship clustering
This paper describes our ongoing work on developing a holistic approach for the introduction and improvement of KM in an organization. The described methodology does not focus on a specific area but considers all layers of an organization, the organizational, the process and the technology layer. The overall approach will consist of two main components: a KM Measures Repository and a KM Maturity Model. The KM Measures Repository contains best practice measures for each layer. The KM Maturity Model allows an organization to describe itself. Both components will be made “machine executableâ€ and included in a self assessment tool which uses different KM technologies.
Proc. of the 4th International Conference on Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management (PAKM 2002), December 2-3 2002, Vienna, Austria
A Methodological Basis for Bringing Knowledge Management to Real-World Environments
In [Tane 2005], we introduced the query-based multicontext theory, which allows to define a virtual space of views on ontological data. Each view is then materialised as a formal context. While this formal context can be visualised in a usual formal concept analysis framework such as Conexp or ToscanaJ, [Tane 2005] also briefly described how the approach allowed the creation of a novel navigation framework for knowledge bases. The principle of this navigation is based on supporting the user in defining pertinent views. The purpose of this article is to discuss the benefits of the browsing interface. This discussion is performed, on the one hand, by comparing the approach to other Formal Concept Analysis based frameworks. On the other hand, it exposes the preliminary evaluation of the visualisation of formal contexts by comparing the display of a lattice to two other approaches based on trees and graphs.
Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS2006
Query-Based Multicontexts for Knowledge Base Browsing: an Evaluation
In this paper, we outline an approach for constructing clusters of related terms that may be used for deriving formal conceptual structures like taxonomies. In contrast to previous approaches in this direction, we take into account the fact that words can have several meanings and consider two alternative soft clustering techniques, namely Overlapping Pole-Based Clustering (PoBOC) and Clustering by Comittees (CBC) for this purpose. These soft clustering algorithms try to detect different contexts of the clustered words, resulting in possibly more than one cluster membership. We report on initial experiments conducted on textual data from the tourist domain.
Advances in Data Analysis: Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the German Classification Society (GfKl), Berlin, Germany, March 8-10, 2006
We present the SmartWeb Demonstrator for multimodal and mobile querying of semantic resources and the open WWW. The end-user interface consists of a Pocket Data Assistant which accepts written or spoken questions as input and delivers answers based on a multitude of resources including a semantic knowledge base, semantically annotated online web services, and semiautomatically created knowledge from text-based web pages. If answers cannot be found using these structured resources, then the system returns answers based on linguistic query-answering techniques on the open WWW.
Proceedings of the ESWC2006 poster and demo session
SmartWeb: Mobile Access to the Semantic Web
The main purpose of business process modeling is the representation and analysis of alternative process designs by formal or semiformal process models. Manual modeling of business processes is a timeconsuming task. Typos and structural modeling errors make it particularly error prone to model business processes manually. Users can be assisted in modeling business processes by providing an autocompletion mechanism during the modeling process. In this paper we will describe on-going work for autocompletion of business process models. This approach is based upon an OWL DL description of Petri nets. Our autocompletion mechanism requires validation methods to check process properties of the automatically completed business process, which we will introduce as well. Consequently, we aim to improve manual process modeling by automating process modeling to a significant extent.
Proceeding of the Workshop on Semantics for Business Process Management at the 3rd European Semantic Web Conference 2006
Automatic User Support for Business Process Modeling
Trees, grids, and MSO decidability: From graphs to matroids
In this work, we will report on the use of selforganizing maps (SOMs) in a clustering and relation extraction task. Specifically, we use the approach of self-organizing maps for structured data (SOMSDs) (i) for clustering music related articles from the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia and (ii) for extracting relations between the created clusters. We hereby rely on the bag-of-words similarity between individual articles on the one hand but additionally exploit the link structure between the articles on the other.
International Workshop on Intelligent Information Access (IIIA-2006), Helsinki, Finland, July 6-8, 2006
A Self Organizing Map for Relation Extraction from Wikipedia using Structured Data Representations
In recent years ontologies -- shared conceptualizations of some domain -- are increasingly seen as the key to further automation of information processing. Although many approaches for representing and applying ontologies have already been devised, they haven't found their way into enterprise applications. In this paper we argue that ontology-based systems lack critical technical features, such as scalability, reliability, concurrency and integration with existing data sources, as well as the support for modularization and meta-concept modeling from the conceptual modeling perspective. We present a conceptual modeling approach that balances some of the trade-offs to more easily integrate into existing enterprise information infrastructure. Our approach is implemented within KAON, the Karlsruhe Ontology and Semantic Web tool suite.
Proceedings of the First International Conference on Ontologies, Databases and Application of Semantics (ODBASE-2002)
A Conceptual Modeling Approach for building semantics-driven enterprise applications
Proceedings of the WWW2002 International Workshop on the Semantic Web. Honululu, Hawaii, May 7, 2002
Ontologies are a pillar of the emerging Semantic Web. They capture background knowledge by providing relevant concepts and relations. Their role is to provide intensional knowledge in a machine processable way, and thus enable automatic aggregation and the proactive use of distributed data sources. Ontologies on the Semantic Web will come from a vast variety of different sources, spanning institutions and persons aiming for different quality criteria. Ontology evaluation is the task of assessing the quality of an ontology. It answers the question: How to measure the quality of an ontology for the web?
Proceedings of the KnowledgeWeb PhD Symposium KWEPSY 2006
Ontology Evaluation for the Web - PhD proposal
Personalization mechanisms on the web today are clumsy and obtrusive, because users need to log in to multiple websites and enter their personal information and preferences separately for each. In addition, the user profile is different for each website and cannot be combined with other information on the web. Using Semantic Web technologies, in particular FOAF, we can identify the person browsing to the website. In this paper, we propose an extension of the HTTP GET method to include a new parameter that points to the URL of the user&#8217;s FOAF file. This simple, but powerful extension enables the web server to use information contained in the person's FOAF file to personalize the web pages returned. We also present a proof-of-concept implementation by customizing our institute welcome page using a visitor's FOAF file.
Proceedings of the Semantic Web Personalization Workshop
Personalizing web surfing with semantically enriched peronal profiles
We provide an extension to be integrated in Wikipedia, that allows the typing of links between articles and the specification of typed data inside the articles in an easy-to-use manner. Enabling even casual users to participate in the creation of an open semantic knowledge base, Wikipedia has the chance to become a resource of semantic statements, hitherto unknown regarding size, scope, openness, and internationalisation. These semantic enhancements bring to Wikipedia benefits of today&#8217;s semantic technologies: more specific ways of searching and browsing. Also, the RDF export, that gives direct access to the formalised knowledge, opens Wikipedia up to a wide range of external applications, that will be able to use it as a background knowledge base.
Grundkurs Programmieren in Java - Band 1: Der Einstieg in Programmierung und Objektorientierung
Grundkurs Programmieren in Java - Band 2: Einführung in die Programmierung kommerzieller Systeme
We present our work in integrating Semantic Web services for access via mobile devices. We have developed a system, theWebServiceAccessComponent, that transforms a user request for a service on a mobile device, to a Web service request and then selects a matching service from the existing Web services of the Deutsche Telekom, which provide navigational and weather information. In this poster, we present the requirements and design of the WebServiceAccessComponent.
Integrating Semantic Web Services for Mobile Access
Ontologies as means for conceptualizing and structuring domain knowledge within a community of interest are seen as a key to realize the Semantic Web vision. However, the decentralized nature of the Web makes achieving this consensus across communities difficult, thus, hampering efficient knowledge sharing between them. In order to balance the autonomy of each community with the need for interoperability, mapping mechanisms between distributed ontologies in the Semantic Web are required. In this paper we present MAFRA, an interactive, incremental and dynamic framework for mapping distributed ontologies in the Semantic Web.
Proceedings of the ECAI Workshop on Knowledge Transformation, Lyon, France, 2002
MAFRA - An Ontology Mapping Framework in the Semantic Web
Recently, there has been an increased interest in the exploitation of background knowledge in the context of text mining tasks, especially text classification. At the same time, Kernel-based learning algorithms, especially Support Vector Machines, have become a dominant paradigm in the text mining community. This is also due to their capability to achieve more accurate learning results by incorporating a-priori knowledge by replacing standard linear kernels of bag-of-words with the so called ‘semantic’ kernels. In this paper we propose extensions and alternatives to previously proposed approaches to the design of semantic kernels by incorporating a variety of well-known measures of semantic similarity between terms. The experimental evaluation versus the standard linear kernel indicates that our approach improves performance in a variety of domains while being consistently superior in cases where little training data is available.
Proceedings of the 6th IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM 06), Hong Kong, 18-22 December 2006
Semantic Kernels for Text Classification based on Topological Measures of Feature Similarity
A number of approaches have been developed for combining wikis with semantic technologies. Many semantic wikis focus on enabling users to specify properties and relationships of individual elements. Complex schema information is typically not edited by the wiki user. Nevertheless, semantic wikis could benefit from taking existing schema information into account, and to allow users to specify additional information based on this schema. In this paper, we introduce an extension of Semantic MediaWiki that incorporates schema information from existing OWL ontologies. Based on the imported ontology, the system offers automatic classification of articles and aims at supporting the user in editing the wiki knowledge base in a logically consistent manner. We present our prototype implementation which uses the KAON2 ontology management system to integrate reasoning services into our wiki.
Proceedings of the First Workshop on Semantic Wikis -- From Wikis to Semantics
Reusing Ontological Background Knowledge in Semantic Wikis
Developers used to object oriented programming have to make a paradigm shift in order to produce and manage Semantic Web data, e. g. RDF. In this paper we describe the tool RDFReactor which transforms a given ontology in RDF Schema into a familiar, dynamic, object-oriented Java API &#8211; at the push of a button. Developers then are able to interact with java instances, thus allowing them to stay in their own world. The generated proxy objects contain no state and delegate all method calls to RDF model updates and queries. RDFReactor potentially turns every Java developer into a Semantic Web application developer and enables them to use RDF correctly, efficiently and effectively without even knowing it. It is downloadable (GNU LGPL) at http:// rdfreactor.ontoware.org.
RDFReactor -- From Ontologies to Programatic Data Access
Conceptual Structures at Work: 12th International Conference on Conceptual Structures
Using Conceptual Structures, Contributions to ICCS 2003
An FCA Method for the Extensional Exploration of Relational Data
Conceptual Structures: Broadening the Base, 9th International Conference on Conceptual Structures
Formal Concept Analysis Methods for Dynamic Conceptual Graphs
Working with Conceptual Structures - Contributions to ICCS 2000
iMapping is a visual technique for structuring information objects. It is based on research in the fields of visual mapping techniques, Information Visualisation and cognitive psychology. iMapping uses a Zooming User Interface to facilitate navigation and to help users maintain an overview in the knowledge space. An iMap is comparable to a large whiteboard where wiki-pages can be positioned like post-its but also nested into each other. Augmenting Wikis by providing spatial browsing and zooming facilities makes it easier to structure content in an intuitive way. Especially semantic wikis, which typically contain more fine-grained content, and stress the structure between information items, can benefit from a graphical approach like iMapping, that allows to display multiple such items and multiple wiki-pages in one view. This paper describes the iMapping approach in general, and briefly how it will be applied as a rich client front-end to the SemWiki engine.
Proceedings of the First Workshop on Semantic Wikis -- From Wiki To Semantics
iMapping Wiks - Towards a Graphical Environment for Semantic Knowledge Management
A Metamodel and UML Profile for Rule-extended OWL DL Ontologies - A Complete Reference
A Metamodel and UML Profile for Networked Ontologies - A Complete Reference
Formalism-Independent Specification of Ontology Mappings - A Metamodeling Approach
The 5th International Semantic Web Conference
A Model Driven Approach for Building OWL DL and OWL Full Ontologies
In the successful series of EON workshops we intend to bring together researchers and practitioners from the quickly developing research areas Ontologies and Semantic Web. Former EON workshops aimed at evaluating ontology-based tools, the this year's workshop focuses on the Evaluation of Ontologies (content, usability, etc.) themselves. Whereas some effort already was invested in reusing work from related research areas towards the end of Ontology Evaluation, often the basic premises of the web-like environment are forgotten or disregarded. Thus the main goal of this workshop is to lay the foundations for Web Ontology Evaluation. Ontologies now play an important role for many knowledge-intensive applications for which they provide a source of formally defined terms. They aim at capturing domain knowledge in a generic way and provide a commonly agreed understanding of a domain, which may be reused, shared, and operationalized across applications and groups. Numerous ontologies are already available and the number is growing rapidly. Still a well understood definition or even intuition about qualities that apply to ontologies is lacking. The large visibility of the Semantic Web already attracts industrial partners. Ontology-based tools depend more and more on the explicit knowledge captured in ontologies. A well-understood notion of Ontology Evaluation might lead to a consistent level of quality and thus acceptance by industry. For the future this might lead to certification efforts for such ontologies. The aim of this workshop is to ground Ontology Evaluation firmly on the needs of the Semantic Web, especially regarding its web-like characteristics like high interconnectivity, constant change and incompleteness. We will focus on the Semantic Web languages as standardized or proposed by the W3C: RDF(S), OWL and the rule language. We want to encourage and stimulate discussion about the current state of the art in Ontology Evaluation and its future direction. Currently, ontologies and the Semantic Web attract researchers from all around the world and from various disciplines, sometimes forgetful of the new needs and conditions arising from the Semantic Web&#8217;s requirements.
Workshop at the WWW World Wide Web Conference 2006
Evaluation of Ontologies for the Web -- Proceedings of the 4th International EON Workshop 2006
Durch den Einsatz von numerischen Modellen für ingenieurtechnische Problemstellungen, wie z. B. der FEM oder der FDM, können zunehmend komplexere Berechnungen in immer kürzerer Zeit bewältigt werden. Gleichzeitig ergibt sich jedoch bei dem Einsatz dieser Werkzeuge der Bedarf an Werten für die verschiedenen Modellparameter, von rein konstitutiven Kennwerten bis hin zu geometrischen Angaben, für deren Bestimmung zunehmend inverse Verfahren Anwendung finden. Bei der Nutzung dieser Methoden ist jedoch &#8211; insbesondere bei komplizierten Simulationen &#8211; mit sehr langen Berechnungszeiten zu rechnen. Gegenstand dieses Beitrags ist die Vorstellung einer Verfahrensklasse, die eine Abschätzung der Lösung solcher inverser Aufgaben auf der Basis von relativ wenigen Stützstellen ermöglicht. An die Verteilung der Stützstellen werden geringste Anforderungen gestellt, so daß diese wahlweise aus vorhergehenden Simulationen oder auch aus alternativen Quellen stammen können. Im Rahmen dieses Beitrags soll ausgehend von einer Einführung in den theoretischen Ansatz eine Strategie zur Beschleunigung der Lösung von inversen Problemstellungen und Optimierungsaufgaben an einem Beispiel aus dem Gebiet der Geomechanik vorgestellt werden.
Effektiver Algorithmus zur Lösung von inversen Aufgabenstellungen - Anwendung in der Geotechnik
Proceedings of the 8th Int. Conference on Electronic Commerce (ICEC'06)
A Policy Framework for Trading Configurable Goods and Services in Open Electronic Markets
With rising importance of knowledge interchange, many industrial and academic applications have adopted ontologies as their conceptual backbone. However, industrial and academic environments are very dynamic, thus inducing changes to application requirements. To fulfill these changes, often the underlying ontology must be evolved as well. As ontologies grow in size, the complexity of change management increases, thus requiring a well-structured ontology evolution process. In this paper we identify a possible six-phase evolution process and focus on providing the user with capabilities to control and customize it. We introduce the concept of an evolution strategy encapsulating policy for evolution with respect to user’s requirements.
European Conf. Knowledge Eng. and Management (EKAW 2002)
User-Driven Ontology Evolution Management
Semantic Web Technologies - Trends and Research in Ontology-based Systems
Workshop at the 22nd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2005)
Proceedings of the Workshop on Learning in Web Search (LWS 2005)
Proceedings of the OntoLex Workshop at LREC
LingInfo: Design and Applications of a Model for the Integration of Linguistic Information in Ontologies
This demo abstract describes the SmartWeb Ontology-based Annotation system (SOBA). A key feature of SOBA is that all information is extracted and stored with respect to the SmartWeb Integrated Ontology (SWIntO). In this way, other components of the systems, which use the same ontology, can access this information in a straightforward way. We will show how information extracted by SOBA is visualized within its original context, thus enhancing the browsing experience of the end user.
Generating and Visualizing a Soccer Knowledge Base
Ontology-driven Discourse Analysis for Information Extraction
To achieve better interoperability among intelligent applications, and to relieve knowledge engineers from the burden of developing ontologies from scratch, it is critical to reuse ontologies. However, there are two main reasons why the reuse of ontologies is rare: (1) current ontology repositories allow only simple keyword-based search facilities, and (2) even when a user finds an ontology, the information about the ontology quality and (re)usability is not available. In this paper, we present an Open Rating System based approach for ontology evaluation. The core Open Rating System model is extended with topic-specific trust to provide more accurate personalized ontology rankings. Our model is partially implemented in Knowledge Zone - a webbased ontology repository where users can submit their ontologies, annotate them with metadata, search for existing ontologies, find out their rankings based on user reviews, post their own reviews, and rate reviews.
Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Evaluation of Ontologies for the Web (EON2006) at the 15th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2006)
Topic-Specific Trust and Open Rating Systems: An Approach for Ontology Evaluation
12th International Conference on Computing in Economics and Finance, Book of Abstracts p. 85
Applications of Kernel Methods in Financial Risk Management
The development and operation of value-added data services for mobile terminals still requires a lot of time, manpower, highly specialized know-how about telecommunication networks and financial resources, so for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) it is difficult or even impossible to set up such services for their own use or for their customers. Since SME play an important economic and thus social role, often contribute to innovation and many of them have highly specialized know-how this is an untenable situation. The aim of the intended research-project MODIFRAME is therefore to develop and evaluate a technical framework which provides the complete infrastructure needed by SME to develop and operate mobile services.
m-Business Revisited - From Speculation to Reality. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Mobile Business (ICMB 2006)
A SME-friendly framework for the provision of mobile services
International Conference on Web Services (ICWS'06)
This study on ICT-skills certification in Europe was launched by Cedefop in early 2004 with the intention to help animating and promoting European level discussions and exchanges: (1) Within the eSkills Forum set up by the Commission in spring 2003 created to support cooperation between stakeholders and experts on ICT- and E-Business skills; (2) With the European and International Training industry and social partners engaged in ICT certification issues; (3) To prepare a next phase of the CEN/ISSS (European Committee of Normalization/Information Society Standardization System) ICT-Skills workshop in order to elaborate a European meta-ICT skills or qualifications framework. This issue has to be seen also in relation to current discussions on European level initiatives on Transparency (Europass), Credit Transfer and overarching European skills and qualification frameworks in view of realising wider policies linked to the Lisbon goals and agreed education and training objectives. The nature of the activities required specialist knowledge, skills and services in order to meet the demands of animating a continuing exchange and generating, reviewing, analyzing and reporting on thematically organized information and knowledge for underpinning the policy-making process in line with the European Union's eEurope action plan (in partnership with the industries' own efforts) as well as to identify and promote training solutions and certification in the area of ICT and E-Business skills and last but not least to further contribute to the implementation of the e-Learning Action Plan of the European Union.
Knowledge domains and their formal representations via ontologies are typically subject to change in practical applications. Additionally, engineering of ontologies often takes place in distributed settings where multiple independent users interact. Therefore, change management for ontologies becomes a crucial aspect for any kind of ontology management environment. This paper introduces a new RDF-centric versioning approach and an implementation called SemVersion. SemVersion provides structural and semantic versioning for RDF models and RDF-based ontology languages like RDFS.
Proceedings of IADIS International Conference on WWW/Internet
SemVersion: An RDF-based Ontology Versioning System
Wikis tend to be used more and more in world-wide, intranet and increasingly even in personal settings. Current wikis are data islands. They are open for everyone to contribute, but closed for machines and automation. In this paper we define a wiki interchange format (WIF) that allows data exchange between wikis and related tools. Different from other approaches, we also tackle the problem of page content and annotations. The linking from formal annotations to parts of a structured text is analysed and described.
Ontologies have been widely accepted as the primary method of representing knowledge in the Semantic Web. Knowledge Elicitation (KE) is usually one of the first steps in building ontologies. A number of ontology editors such as Protege have been developed to assist users in building ontologies efficiently. However, traditional KE techniques, such as card sorting and laddering, are not yet supported, but performed manually and outside of such tools. In this paper we present a methodology and a corresponding plug-in for Protege that allows graphical ellicitation knowledge from documents using card sorting and laddering approaches. Our aim is to seamlessly integrate the KE techniques into the ontology building process to make ontology building more efficient and less error-prone. As a side-effect the persistent storage of card sorting and laddering results allows for later traceability of ontology development. KE largely depends on user interaction with the plug-in, therefore we employed user-centred design principles to capture requirements. After implementation, the plug-in was evaluated thoroughly against the requirements. The evaluation shows that this KE plug-in meets many of the user's expectations and indeed saves them considerable time when building ontologies.
Knowledge Elicitation Plug-in for Protege: Card Sorting and Laddering
Question Answering on Top of the BT Digital Library
io-port.net - Das Informationsportal für die Informatik
Increased availability of mobile computing, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), creates the potential for constant and intelligent access to up-to-date, integrated and detailled information from the Web, regardless of one&#8217;s actual geographical position. Intelligent question-answering requires the representation of knowledge from various domains, such as the navigational and discourse context of the user, potential user questions, the information provided by Web services and so on, for example in the form of ontologies. Within the context of the SmartWeb project, we have developed a number of domain-specific ontologies that are relevant for mobile and intelligent user interfaces to open-domain question-answering and information services on the Web. To integrate the various domain-specific ontologies, we have developed a foundational ontology, the SmartSUMO ontology, on the basis of the DOLCE and SUMO ontologies. This allows us to combine all the developed ontologies into a single SmartWeb Integrated Ontology SWIntO. In this paper, we present the SmartSUMO ontology, describe the design choices we made in its construction, illustrate the use of the ontology through a number of applications, and discuss some of the lessons learned from our experiences.
DOLCE ergo SUMO: On Foundational and Domain Models in SWIntO (SmartWeb Integrated Ontology))
Peer selection for query routing is a core task in peer-to-peer networks. Unstructured peer-to-peer systems (like Gnutella) ignore this problem, leading to an abundance of network traffic. Structured peer-to-peer systems (like Chord) enforce a particular, global way of distributing data among the peers in order to solve this problem, but then encounter problems of network volatility and conflicts with the autonomy of the peer data management. In this paper, we propose a new mechanism, INGA, which is based on the observation that query routing in social networks is made possible by locally available knowledge about the expertise of neighbors and a semantics-based peer selection function. We validate INGA by simulation experiments with different data sets. We compare INGA with competing peer selection mechanisms on resulting parameters like recall, message gain or number of messages produced.
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
AAAI Fall Symposium On Semantic Web for Collaborative Knowledge Acquisition
Towards Semi-automatic Ontology Building Supported by Large-scale Knowledge Acquisition
Several challenges exist related to applying ontologies in real-world environments. The authors present an integrated enterprise-knowledge management architecture, focusing on how to support multiple ontologies and manage ontology evolution.
Ontologies for Enterprise Knowledge Management
Viele werden sich erinnern: Bis vor ein paar Jahren galt eine Universität als eine Institution, deren Lehr- und Lerntätgikeiten zeitlichen und räumlichen grenzen unterworfen waren. Klassischer Frontalunterricht in gut gefüllten Seminarräumen und Hörsälen stand meist an der Tagesordnung, Jedoch, das Forschen, Lehren und Lernen wandelt sich: Mobilität und Flexibilität sind heute wichtiger denn je und haben sich in vielen Bereichen des täglichen Lebens zu Erfolgsfaktoren entwickelt. Kommunikation und Interaktion bereichern das universitäre Lehren und Lernen.
Mobiler Campus: Forschen, Lehren und Lernen - zu jeder Zeit, an jedem Ort
Proceedings of the WWW2006 Workshop on Reasoning on the Web, RoW06, Edinburgh, UK, May 2006
Inspiration and Application. Contributions to ICCS 2006, 14th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS 2006
Conceptual Structures: Inspiration and Application. 14th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS 2006, Aalborg, Denmark, July 2006, Proceedings
The technical challenges associated with the development and deployment of ontologies have been subject to a considerable number of research initiatives since the beginning of the nineties. The economical aspects of these processes are, however, still poorly exploited, impeding the dissemination of ontology-driven technologies beyond the boundaries of the academic community. This paper aims at contributing to the alleviation of this situation by proposing ONTOCOM (ONTOlogy COst Model), a model to predict the costs arising in ontology engineering processes. We introduce a methodology to generate a cost model adapted to a particular ontology development strategy, and an inventory of cost drivers which influence the amount of effort invested in activities performed during an ontology life cycle. We further present the results of the model validation procedure, which covered an expert-driven evaluation and a statistical calibration on 36 data points collected from real-world projects. The validation revealed that ontology engineering processes have a high learning rate, indicating that the building of very large ontologies is feasible from an economic point of view. Moreover, the complexity of ontology evaluation, domain analysis and conceptualization activities proved to have a major impact on the final ontology engineering process duration.
Proceedings of the 5th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2006)
ONTOCOM: A Cost Estimation Model for Ontology Engineering
Proceedings of the International Workshop on Inference in Computational Semantics (ICOS)
Ingredients of a first-order account of bridging
The theoretical results achieved in the ontology engineering field in the last fifteen years are of incontestable value for the prospected large scale take-up of semantic technologies. Their range of application in real-world projects is, however, so far comparatively limited, despite the growing number of ontologies online available. This restricted impact was confirmed in a three month empirical study, in which we examined over 36 contemporary ontology development projects from a process- and costs-oriented perspective. In this paper we give an account of the results of this study. We conclude that ontology engineering research should strive for a unified, lightweight and component-based methodological framework, principally targeted at domain experts in addition to consolidating the existing approaches.
The 5th International Conference on Ontologies, DataBases, and Applications of Semantics (ODBASE2006)
Heuristic Optimization of Reinsurance Programs and Implications for Reinsurance Buyers
An ontology alignment is the expression of relations between different ontologies. In order to view alignments independently from the language expressing ontologies and from the techniques used for finding the alignments, we use a category-theoretical model in which ontologies are the objects. We introduce a categorical structure, called V-alignment, made of a pair of morphisms with a common domain having the ontologies as codomain. This structure serves to design an algebra that describes formally what are ontology merging, alignment composition, union and intersection using categorical constructions. This enables combining alignments of various provenance. Although the desirable properties of this algebra make such abstract manipulation of V-alignments very simple, it is practically not well fitted for expressing complex alignments: expressing subsumption between entities of two different ontologies demands the definition of non-standard categories of ontologies. We consider two approaches to solve this problem. The first one extends the notion of V-alignments to a more complex structure called W-alignments: a formalization of alignments relying on "bridge axioms." The second one relies on an elaborate concrete category of ontologies that offers high expressive power. We show that these two extensions have different advantages that may be exploited in different contexts (viz., merging, composing, joining or meeting): the first one efficiently processes ontology merging thanks to the possible use of categorical institution theory, while the second one benefits from the simplicity of the algebra of V-alignments.
Formalizing ontology alignment and its operations with category theory
Proceedings of the International Conference on E-Business (ICE-B 2006)
Notification Services For Mobile And Wireless Terminals
An ontology over a period of time needs to be modified to reflect changes in the real world, changes in the user’s requirements, drawbacks in the initial design, to incorporate additional functionality or to allow for incremental improvement. Although changes are inevitable during the development and deployment of an ontology, most of the current ontology editors unfortunately do not provide enough support for efficient copying with changes. Since changes are the force that drives the evolution process, in this paper we discuss the requirements for the ontology editors in order to support ontology evolution.
OntoWeb-SIG3 Workshop at the 13th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management EKAW 2002; Siguenza (Spain), 30th September 2002
Ontology Evolution within Ontology Editors
It seems to be a widely accepted notion that Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) play an important economic and social role and often contribute to innovation. But at the present situation the development and operation of a service to be used with mobile and wireless terminals (mobile service) is not bearable for most of them due to technical reasons and the market structure. In this article we will discuss the SME-specific obstacles in m-business. We will also propose a technical framework as remedy for this situation.
Specific Challenges For Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SME) in M-Business
Proceedings of International Conference on Self-Organization and Autonomous Systems in Computing and Communications (SOAS 2006)
A roadmap towards autonomic service-oriented architectures
Proceedings of the 6th International Business Information Management Association (IBIMA) Conference
New Use Scenarios For Ecatalog Systems: A Cross-Company Approach
Technical scenarios in areas like automotive or production systems will increasingly consist of a large number of components cooperating in potentially unlimited and dynamically changing networks to satisfy the functional requirements of their execution environment. Due to the high complexity it will be impossible to explicitly design the behaviour of the components for every potentially arising situation. Therefore, it will be necessary to leave an adequate degree of freedom allowing for a self-organised behaviour. Organic Computing (OC) has developed the vision of selforganising systems adapting robustly to dynamically changing environments without running out of control. This paper focuses on the design of a generic system architecture which allows for self-organisation but at the same time enables adequate reactions to control the, sometimes completely unexpected, emerging global behaviour of these self-organised technical systems.
INFORMATIK 2006 -- Informatik für Menschen!
Towards a generic observer/controller architecture for Organic Computing
Integrating relational databases is recently acknowledged as an important vision of the Semantic Web research, however there is not many applications that are well-implemented and in large-scale real use. This paper introduces an in-use application deployed at China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (CATCM). In this application, over 70 heterogeneous relational databases are semantically interconnected by an shared ontology with over 70 classes and 800 properties, providing semantic query and web search services to the Chinese Traditional Medicine (TCM) community like one huge database. A visualized mapping tool is developed to facilitate domain experts in defining semantic mappings from heterogeneous relational schemas to the shared ontology. The query interface is dynamically generated based on class definitions, and able to rewrite SPARQL queries to a set of SQL queries. An intuitive search interface enables user to get more accurate and reliable search results based on a concepts ranking mechanism. Feedbacks and evaluation results from CATCM indicate that they are mostly satisfied with this novel Semantic Web technologies enabled application.
4th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC'06)
Towards a Semantic Web of Relational Databases: a Practical Semantic Toolkit and an In-Use Case from Traditional Chinese Medicine
Informatik 2006 -- Informatik für Menschen
An Organic Architecture for Traffic Light Controllers
IADIS International Journal on WWW/Internet
Classification of eBay Bidding Characteristics
In Proceedings of the 2006 International Symposium on Wikis.
The vision of the Semantic Web can only be realized through proliferation of well-known ontologies describing different domains. To enable interoperability in the Semantic Web, it will be necessary to break these ontologies down into smaller, well-focused units that may be reused. Currently, three problems arise in that scenario. Firstly, it is difficult to locate ontologies to be reused, thus leading to many ontologies modeling the same thing. Secondly, current tools do not provide means for reusing existing ontologies while building new ontologies. Finally, ontologies are rarely static, but are being adapted to changing requirements. Hence, an infrastructure for management of ontology changes, taking into account dependencies between ontologies is needed. In this paper we present such an infrastructure addressing the aforementioned problems.
An Infrastructure for Searching, Reusing and Evolving Distributed Ontologies
The Semantic Web - ASWC 2006 Workshop Proceedings
Preface to the Semantic e-Science Workshop
EMISA 2006: Methoden, Konzepte und Technologien für die Entwicklung von dienstbasierten Informationssystemen
Prozessorientierte Komposition von Diensten in der Doktorandenausbildung
Tagungsband des 13. Workshops Algorithmen und Werkzeuge für Petri-Netze (AWPN'06)
Ein Framework zur Modellierung und Analyse von XML-Netzen
Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on e-Business Engineering (ICEBE 2006)
A Service-oriented Information System for Collaborative Research and Doctoral Education
INFORMATIK 2006 - Informatik für Menschen (Band 1)
Architektur für ein universitätsweit integriertes Informations- und Dienstmanagement
Information Management and Market Engineering
Studies on eOrganisation and Market Engineering
Towards a Policy Framework for Open Electronic Markets
Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Formal Specification of Web Service Contracts for Automated Contracting and Monitoring
Das erfolgreiche Management und damit das Planen, Steuern und Kontrollieren von unternehmensinternen und -übergreifenden Geschäftsprozessen stellt einen zentralen Erfolgsfaktor für Unternehmen dar. Ein Defizit bisheriger Modellierungssprachen, Methoden und Werkzeuge zum kennzahlenbasierten Management von Geschäftsprozessen besteht darin, dass Geschäftsprozesse und Kennzahlen in getrennten Schemata modelliert werden. Kausale Zusammenhänge zwischen Kennzahlen und Geschäftsprozessen werden bisher durch Plausibilitätsprüfungen ermittelt und können weder validiert noch verifiziert werden. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wird eine Vorgehensweise auf Basis von so genannten Performance-Netzen vorgestellt, die hierzu einen phasenübergreifenden Ansatz zum kennzahlenbasierten Management von Geschäftsprozessen anbietet. Performance-Netze sind eine neue Variante höherer Petri-Netze und erlauben die integrierte Darstellung von Geschäftsprozessen, der relevanten Kennzahlen, der dafür definierten Zielwerte und der entsprechenden Korrekturprozesse. Anhand von Beispielen wird gezeigt, wie Performance-Netze die schrittweise Modellierung von semi-formalen, anwendungsnahen einfachen Petri-Netzen zu formalen, maschinell ausführbaren kennzahlenbasierten höheren Petri-Netzen unterstützen. Die Architektur und prototypische Realisierung eines Modellierungs-, Simulations- und Kontrollwerkzeugs für Performance-Netze wird präsentiert. Am Beispiel einer Fallstudie wird die grundsätzliche Praktikabilität des kennzahlenbasierten Managements von Geschäftsprozessen mit Performance-Netzen und deren Implementierung gezeigt und evaluiert.
Kennzahlenbasiertes Management von Geschäftsprozessen mit Petri-Netzen
Das erfolgreiche Management von über- und innerbetrieblichen logistischen Geschäftsprozessen stellt insbesondere bei der Realisierung von komplexen Logistikprojekten einen kritischen Erfolgsfaktor dar. Zur Unterstützung des Managements von Geschäftsprozessen in Supply Chains bedarf es einer strukturierten Modellierung, Analyse und Kontrolle der relevanten Geschäftsprozesse. XML-Netze, eine Variante höherer Petri-Netze, bieten dabei durch die Unterstützung der Modellierung und Manipulation struktur-ierter Prozessobjekte ein besonderes Einsatzpotenzial. Im Rahmen des Beitrags werden die Architektur, die Implementierungsaspekte und das Einsatzpotenzial des prototypisch implementierten Softwarewerkzeuges
Proceedings of the 19th Symposium on Simulationstechnique (ASIM'2006)
Simulation von Supply Chains mit Petri-Netzen
An ontology-based knowledge management system uses an ontology to represent explicit specification of a business domain and to serve as a backbone for providing and searching for knowledge sources. But, dynamically changing business environment implies changes in the conceptualisation of a business domain that are reflected on the underlying domain ontologies. Consequently, these changes have effects on the performances and validity of the KM system. In this paper we present an approach for enabling consistency of the description of knowledge sources in an ontology-based KM system in the case of changes in the domain ontology. This approach is based on our research in the ontology evolution and ontology-based annotation of documents. The proposed method is implemented in our semantic annotation framework so that efficient acquiring and maintaining of ontology-based metadata is supported.
German Workshop on Experience Management 2002
Evolution of the Metadata in the Ontology-based Knowledge Management Systems
iMapping is a technique for visually structuring information objects. It supports the full range from informal note taking over semi-structured personal information management to formal knowledge models. With iMaps, users can easily go from overview to fine-grained structures while browsing, editing or refining the knowledge base in one comprehensive view. An iMap is comparable to a large white-board where information items can be positioned like post-its but also nested into each other. Spatial browsing and zooming as well as graphical editing facilities make it easy to structure content in an intuitive way. iMapping builds on a zooming user interface approach to facilitate navigation and to help users maintain an overview in the knowledge space. While a first implementation is being developed, iMapping is still in a conceptual stage. In this paper we describe the iMapping approach and how it tries to combine and extend the advantages of other approaches.
Proceedings of the The 3rd International Semantic Web User Interaction Workshop (SWUI2006)
Poster presented at the The 3rd International Semantic Web User Interaction Workshop.
iMapping - a Graphical Approach to Semi-Structured Knowledge Modelling
see the special issue for more contributions related to the Semantic Web
Ontologies on Demand? - A Description of the State-of-the-Art, Applications, Challenges and Trends for Ontology Learning from Text
Proceedings of the ISWC 2006 Poster and Demo Session
Proceedings of the ECAI-06 Second International Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning, NeSy'06, Riva del Garda, Italy, August 2006
Techniques for reliably estimating development efforts are a fundamental requirement for a wide-scale dissemination of ontologies in real-world application settings. The parametric cost estimation model ONTOCOM is a first attempt to cope with the lack of instruments for business measurements in the field of ontology engineering. This paper is intended as a user guide to ONTOCOM. It describes how ontology engineers can customize the general-purpose model to particular process models and subsequently apply it in various development phases to calculate the estimated efforts.
Technologies for Business Information Systems
Cost estimation for ontology development: applying the ONTOCOM model
In the past, the focus of the computer industry has been to improve hardware performance and add more and more features to the software. As a result, more and more appliances surrounding us are equipped with embedded computational power and wireless communication. As such, they become ever more flexible and multifunctional, and almost indispensable in daily life. On the other hand, the resulting systems become increasingly complex and unreliable, posing new challenges to designer and user. Organic Computing (OC) has the vision to address the challenges of complex distributed systems by making them more life-like (organic), i.e. endowing them with abilities such as self-organization, self-configuration, self-repair, or adaptation. The designer's task is simplified, because it is no longer necessary to exactly specify the low-level system behavior in all possible situations that might occur, but instead leaving the system with a certain degree of freedom which allows it to react in an intelligent way to new situations. Also, use of such systems is simplified, as they can be controlled by setting few high-level goals, rather than having to manipulate many low-level parameters with unclear influence. In this paper, we give a general introduction to OC, and propose a generic observer-controller architecture as a framework for designing OC systems. Then, it is shown how to use this architecture at the example of a traffic light controller. The paper concludes with a summary and a discussion of future challenges.
Organic Computing - Addressing Complexity by Controlled Self-organization
Product Lines for Digital Information Products
Software Engineering Education in the Modern Age: Challenges and Possibilities
A Strategy for Content Reusability with Product Lines derived from Experience in Online Education
A business process may be modeled in different ways by different modelers even when utilizing the same modeling language. An appropriate method for solving ambiguity issues in process models caused by the use of synonyms, homonyms or different abstraction levels for process element names is the use of ontologybased descriptions of process models. So-called semantic business process models promise to support business process interoperability and interconnectivity. But, for (semi-) automatic process interoperability and interconnectivity two problems need to be solved. How can similar terms for process element names be automatically discovered and how can semantic business process composition be facilitated. In this paper we will present solutions for these problems based upon an OWL DL-based description of Petri nets.
The Fourth Asia-Pacific Conference on Conceptual Modelling (APCCM 2007)
Measuring Similarity between Semantic Business Process Models
Semantic Web Challenge at 4th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC'06)
Dartgrid: a Semantic Web Toolkit for Integrating Heterogeneous Relational Databases
International Semantic Web Conference 2006 Workshop Proceedings
A MOF-based Metamodel and UML Syntax for Networked Ontologies
Towards Ontologies for Formalizing Modularization and Communication in Large Software Systems
In: Proceedings Informatik 2006, Vol. 2, pp. 289-362
Proceedings of the International Workshop on Applications of Semantic Technologies, AST2006, at Informatik2006, Dresden, Germany, October 2006.
Die Entwicklung und Markteinführung mobiler und drahtloser Mehrwertdatendienste (mobile Dienste) erfordert immer noch einen hohen zeitlichen, finanziellen und personellen Aufwand, was für kleine und mittelständische Unternehmen (KMU) eine erhebliche Markteintrittsbarriere darstellt. Im vorliegenden Beitrag erörtern wir die Eigenheiten der zugrunde liegenden Technologien und die Marktsituation, die dies bedingen, und schlagen als Abhilfe ein technisches Framework zur vereinfachten Bereitstellung solcher Dienste vor.
INFORMATIK 2006 - Informatik für Menschen (Band 1). Beiträge der 36. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI)
KMU-spezifische Herausforderungen bei der Entwicklung und dem Betrieb mobiler Dienste
Proceedings of the International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS)
Towards Foundational Semantics - Ontological Semantics Revisited -
OWL DL puts several constraints on the possibilities to talk about the elements of an ontology. In particular, it is not possible to make statements about the axioms of an ontology or to make higher-order statements about the classes and properties of an ontology. This lack of expressiveness may cause problems throughout the whole lifecycle of an ontology, and especially in its practical usage. In this paper we discuss different approaches to overcome these problems. We propose a metamodel for OWL DL that allows to express statements about ontology elements, including axioms. We further describe three possible groundings of the metamodel in OWL DL and present a number of tools which we developed to support the user in working with these models. Finally, we describe some use cases for the practical application of our approach.
Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Ontologies and Meta-Modeling
A Metamodel for Annotations of Ontology Elements in OWL DL
Horn-SHIQ has been identified as a fragment of the description logic SHIQ for which inferencing is in PTime with respect to the size of the ABox. This enables reasoning with larger ABoxes in situations where the TBox is static, and represents one approach towards tractable description logic reasoning. In this paper, we show that reasoning in Horn-SHIQ, in spite of its low data-complexity, is ExpTime-hard with respect to the overall size of the knowledge base. While this result is not unexpected, the proof is not a mere modification of existing reductions since it has to account for the restrictions of Hornness. We establish the result for Horn-FLE, showing that Hornness does not simplify TBox reasoning even for very restricted description logics. Moreover, we derive a context-free grammar that defines Horn-SHIQ in a simpler and more intuitive way than existing characterisations.
Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on OWL: Experiences and Directions
On the complexity of Horn description logics
The Semantic Web is intended to enable machine processability of web content and seems to be a solution for many drawbacks of the current Web. It is based on metadata that describe the formal semantics of Web contents. We present a novel, integrated and automated approach for migrating data-intensive Web applications into the Semantic Web.
Proc. of the 17th symposium on Proceedings of the 2002 ACM symposium on applied computing, SAC 2002, Madrid ,Spain
Migrating data-intensive Web Sites into the Semantic Web
Topics in education are changing with an ever faster pace. Especially in the field of life-long learning the aspects that need to be taught by information providers must keep up to date with emerging topics. The courseware watchdog is a comprehensive module which allows users to focus on existing subfields of a discipline, but thereby be aware of important drifts and tendencies in the field.
Proceedings of E-Learn 2002: World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education, October 15-19 2002, Montreal, Canada
Accessing Distributed Learning Repositories through a Courseware Watchdog
Domains and metric spaces are two central tools for the study of denotational semantics in computer science, but are otherwise very different in many fundamental aspects. A construction that tries to establish links between both paradigms is the space of formal balls, a continuous poset which can be defined for every metric space and that reflects many of its properties. On the other hand, in order to obtain a broader framework for applications and possible connections to domain theory, generalized ultrametric spaces (gums) have been introduced. In this paper, we employ the space of formal balls as a tool for studying these more general metrics by using concepts and results from domain theory. It turns out that many properties of the metric can be characterized via its formal-ball space. Furthermore, we can state new results on the topology of gums as well as two new fixed point theorems, which may be compared to the Prieß-Crampe and Ribenboim theorem, and the Banach fixed point theorem, respectively. Deeper insights into the nature of formal-ball spaces are gained by applying methods from category theory. Our results suggest that, while being a useful tool for the study of gums, the space of formal balls does not provide the hoped-for general connection to domain theory.
Generalized Ultrametric Spaces in Quantitative Domain Theory
LWA 2006: Lernen - Wissensentdeckung - Adaptivität, Berlin, 9. - 11. Oktober 2006, Hildesheim, Germany
Knowledge Discovery, Data Mining, and Machine Learning (KDML 2006) Track
Designing Semantic Kernels as Implicit Superconcept Expansions
In software engineering, the notion of unit testing was successfully introduced and applied. Unit tests are easy manageable tests for small parts of a program - single units. They proved especially useful to capture unwanted changes and side effects during the maintenance of a program, and they grow with the evolution of the program. Ontologies behave quite differently than program units. As there is no information hiding in ontology engineering, and thus no black box components, at first the idea of unit testing for ontologies seems not applicable. In this paper we motivate the need for unit testing, describe the adaptation to the unit testing approach, and give use cases and examples.
Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Ontology content and evaluation in Enterprise
Precise modeling of business process models has paved the way to realize off-the-self information systems that include allocations of resources, communication services, or hardware devices to users. Changes in business strategies or new business opportunities may result in modifications of implemented functionalities of information systems and their underlying business process models. The result of these modifications are business process model variants that have to be distinguished when business processes are redesigned. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for determing semantic similarities between business process model variants to faciliate process redesign. Our approach is based upon an OWL DL-based description of Petri nets. So-called semantic business process models make it possible to describe Petri net based process model variants in a data format, which supports ontological reasoning.
The 22nd Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing
How To Detect Semantic Business Process Model Variants?
EMISA 2006 - Methoden, Konzepte und Technologien für die Entwicklung von dienstbasierten Informationssystemen
Unterstützung von Kollaboration im Rahmen der Softwareentwicklung auf Basis Service-orientierter Architekturen
Proceedings of the Demo Session at the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC)
SOBA: SmartWeb Ontology-based Annotation
Proc. of SAAKM 2002 -Semantic Authoring, Annotation & Knowledge Markup, ECAI 2002 Workshop July 22-26, 2002 , Lyon, France
S-CREAM -- Semi-automatic CREAtion of Metadata
Ontology Learning from Text: Methods, Evaluation and Applications
Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications
Ontology Learning from Text: An Overview
The goal of this document is to present the requirements for Knowledge Ac-quisition from text in the context of the X-Media project. Acquisition in X-Media will be performed via Automatic Document Annotation based on Information Extraction from text. The requirements analysis here presented focuses on key limitations of the existing IE technology with respect to the project&#8217;s goals, namely limited capability of coping with large-scale (both considering the size of corpora and that of the ontology and of the KB), lack of portability of acqui-sition models, limited or no user interaction methodology and limited use of background knowledge.
Requirement Analysis of Knowledge Acquisition from Texts, Deliverable ID 5.1
This deliverable discusses issues concerned with the management of uncertainty re-lated to the content of multimedia objects. It provides working definitions of relevant terminologies, discusses general and specific requirements for the management of un-certainty and gives a summary of existing approaches that have been proposed to deal with uncertainty.
Requirement Analysis of Uncertainty in the Management of Multimedia Objects in X-Media
In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Semantic Media Adaptation and Personalization. Athen, Greece
Rules for an Ontology-based Approach to Adaptation
In der Forschung um das Semantic Web werden Technologien entwickelt, die auf breites Interesse in vielen Anwendungsgebieten stoßen. So z.B. im Wissensmanagement und im Ubiquitous Computing.
Computer Zeitung 37 (40), 2nd of October 2006, p. 21.
Wissensmanagement profitiert von Semantiktechnologien
Advances in Web Mining and Web Usage Analysis, Revised Selected Papers of the 6th International Workshop on Knowledge Discovery on the Web, WebKDD 2004, Seattle, WA, USA, August 22-25, 2004
Boosting for Text Classification with Semantic Features
This tutorial takes a detailed view to several human language technical aspects and actual approaches that use HLT for automating Semantic Web specific knowledge acquisition tasks such as ontology learning and population. The tutorial will cover some key open-source HLT tools, thus enabling the participants to put easily their newly learned skills into practice. This will be followed by a number of example Semantic Web applications.
Motivated by basic ideas from formal concept analysis, we propose two ways to directly encode closure operators on finite sets in a 3-layered feed forward neural network.
Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning
Encoding Closure Operators into Neural Networks
Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence
Split-Combination approaches to merging possibilistic knowledge bases
International Journal of Information Science
International Journal of Fundamenta Informaticae
Adaptive Merging of Prioritized Knowledge Bases
Biologically Inspired Cooperative Computing
We investigate cumulated clauses on a set of attributes consisting of concept descriptions of the description logic FLE. This kind of conceptual statements is argued to be close to intuitive human reasoning. We provide a deduction calculus for cumulated clauses on FLE that is obviously sound and give an elaborated proof for its completeness.
Inspiration and Application - Contributions to ICCS 2006
A Deduction Calculus for Cumulated Clauses on FLE Concept Descriptions
Proceedings of the Workshop on Ontologies in Text Technologies OTT 2006
Learning Patterns from the Web - Evaluating the Evaluation Functions - Extended Abstract
Automatic User Assistance For Business Process Decomposition
The Web, the largest unstructured database of the world, has greatly improved access to documents. However, documents on the Web are largely disorganized. Due to the distributed nature of the World Wide Web it is difficult to use it as a tool for information and knowledge management. Therefore, users doing the difficult task of exploring the Web have to be supported by intelligent means. This paper proposes an approach for document discovery building on a comprehensive framework for ontology-focused crawling of Web documents. Our framework includes means for using a complex ontology and associated instance elements. It defines several relevance computation strategies and provides an empirical evaluation which has shown promising results.
Proc. of the Symposium on Applied Computing 2003 (SAC 2003), March 9-12, Melbourne, Florida, USA
Ontology-Focused Crawling of Web Documents
The paper reports on the activities and results of a survey of certification schemes of ICT professionals across Europe towards harmonisation. The survey was undertaken by a consortium of nine organisations in Europe. The survey covers 36 professional informatics societies in 32 European countries, representing more than 400.000 ICT professionals in Europe. The European countries directly involved and represented in the consortium are the leading national professional informatics societies in Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy and United Kingdom. The paper describes the survey approach developed, survey methodology applied and overviews and discusses preliminary results of the survey activity.
Survey of Certification Scheme of ICT Professionals across Europe towards Harmonisation - The Harmonise Project
Utilizing Financial Models in Market Design: Search for a Benchmark Model
Using Network Analysis for Fraud Detection in Electronic Markets
Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the German Classification Society (GfKI 2006)
Foreign Exchange Trading with Support Vector Machines
Monitoring of Regional Labour Markets in European States. Concepts, Experiences and Perspectives
Labour Market Monitoring in the Region Rhine-Main in Germany. An Information and Communication Approach.
Proceedings of the Second Workshop OWL - Experiences and Directions, OWLED2006
Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Formal Concept Analysis
How Robust is the Equal Split Norm? Responsive Strategies, Selection Mechanisms and the Need for Economic Interpretation of Simulation Parameters
1st International Conference on Economic Sciences with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents (WEHIA 2006), University of Bologna, Italy
Market clearing prices in an artificial stock market
Proceedings der Konferenz WM2003. Luzern, CH, April 2-4. Lecture Notes in Informatics
WM2003 - Professionelles Wissensmanagement - Erfahrungen und Visionen
Portfolio Selection in an Artificial Stock Market
In this paper, we investigate state-of-the-art technologies in the area of modular ontologies and corresponding logical formalisms. We compare the strengths and weaknesses of different formalisms for modular ontologies in their ability to support networked, dynamic and distributed ontologies, as well as the reasoning capability over these ontologies. The comparison result shows limitations of existing formalisms to fully address the need of modular ontologies in the given setting, and possible future extensions to overcome those limitations.
International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2007 (IJCAI'07) Workshop SWeCKa
A Survey of Formalisms for Modular Ontologies
In this paper we describe an infrastructure for query answering over distributed ontologies on the Semantic Web. This infrastructure addresses (i) the coordination of multiple nodes using metadata about the provided resources managed in a decentralized registry and (ii) the mediation between heterogeneous ontologies via an expressive mapping formalism along with corresponding reasoning algorithms for query answering. Our approach is based on a virtual integration that exhibits a semantics as if all ontologies were integrated locally. Practically, the distributed ontologies still reside on the remote peers, and only the parts relevant for answering the query need to be retrieved to the local node. Experimental evaluations with the implementation in KAONp2p show that the approach is very promising, as the performance of query answering is essentially dominated by the size of the data, and only slightly affected by the degree of distribution and heterogeneity.
Proceedings of The 22nd Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC)
A Decentralized Infrastructure for Query Answering over Distributed Ontologies
Semantic Wikis allow users to semantically annotate their Wiki content. The particular annotations can differ in expressive power, simplicity, and meaning. We present an elaborate conceptual model for semantic annotations, introduce a unique and rich Wiki syntax for these annotations, and discuss how to best formally represent the augmented Wiki content. We improve existing navigation techniques to automatically construct faceted browsing for semistructured data. By utilising the Wiki annotations we provide greatly enhanced information retrieval. Further we report on our ongoing development of these techniques in our prototype SemperWiki.
Annotation and Navigation in Semantic Wikis
Wikis are becoming popular knowledge management tools. Analysing knowledge management requirements, we observe that wikis do not fully support structured search and knowledge reuse. We show how Semantic wikis address the requirements and present a general architecture. We introduce our SemperWiki prototype which offers advanced information access and knowledge reuse.
Database and Expert Systems Applications
Semantic Wikis for Personal Knowledge Management
Envolving en-route caching strategies for the internet
In search for efficient heuristics for minimum width graph layering with consideration of dummy nodes
The multi-depot vehicle routing problem (MDVRP) is a very challenging part of supply chain optimization. We propose here a simple yet powerful heuristic for the MDVRP with an integrated look-ahead. Compared to other state-of-the-art approaches, our heuristic is significantly faster, but yields competitive results and even found several new best solutions on a set of standard benchmark problems.
A fast look-ahead heuristic for the multi-depot vehicle routing problem
Proc. Research Notes of the 10th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, April 12-17, Budapest, Hungary
Word classification based on combined measures of distributional and semantic similarity
About selecting the personal best in multi-objective particle swarm optimization
Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Converence
Particle swarm with speciation and adaption in a dynamic environment
Applications of Evolutionary Computation
The role of representations in dynamic knapsack problems
Intergrating techniques for statistical ranking into evolutionary algorithms
4. Deutsche ORACLE Business-Software Anwenderkonferenz
Prozessorientiertes Management und Visualisierung von Supply Chains
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
The State of e-Business in the German Electronic Consumer Goods Industry
Proceedings of the International Multiconference on Computer Science and Information Technology
Towards an Open e-Business Collaboration Community
We present a user-centered model for porting natural language interfaces (NLIs) between domains efficiently. The model assumes that domain experts without any background knowledge about computational linguistics will perform the customization of the NLI to a specific domain. In fact, it merely requires familiarity with the underlying knowledge base as well as with a few basic subcategorization types. Our model is iterative in the sense that the adaption of the NLI is performed in several cycles on the basis of the questions which the NLI failed to answer, thus iteratively increasing the coverage of the system. We provide experimental evidence in form of a user study as well as a case study involving a real-world application corroborating that our model is indeed a feasible way of customizing the interface to a certain domain.
Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces
Porting Natural Language Interfaces between Domains -- An Experimental User Study with the ORAKEL Syste
Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Computational Semantics
UDRT-based Semantics Construction for LTAG -- and what it tells us about the role of adjunction in LTAG --
Developing ontologies in OWL: An observational study
2007 IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computational Intelligence
On the Influence of Phenotype Plasticity on Genotype Diversity
Incidence calculus on Lukasiewicz's three-valued logic
Proceedings of 21th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'06)
Merging stratified knowledge bases under constraints
Proceedings of 10th European Conference on Logics in Artificial Intelligence (JELIA'06)
Knowledge base revision in Description Logics
Proceedings of 11th International workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning (NMR06)
A revision-based approach to handling inconsistency in description logics
In dieser Arbeit wird ein ontologiebasiertes Wissensmanagementsystem vorge-stellt. Die Verwendung von Ontologien ermöglicht einen intuitiven Zugriff auf Informationen und die Integration von Informationen aus verschiedenen Daten-quellen. Dabei wird hier ein Schwerpunkt auf die Ontologieentwicklung für einen Unternehmensanalysten gelegt und ein Portal vorgestellt welches die verschiede-nen Arbeitskontexte des Anlysten berücksichtig und daraus abgeleitete spezifische Informationen zur Verfügung stellt. Es werden verschiedene Techniken presen-tiert, wie die Inhalte aus vorhandenen Dokumenten und Datenbanken in das Wis-sensmanagementsystem integriet werden können.
Wirtschaftsinformatik 2003, Medien - Märkte - Mobilität, Band II
TIME2Research - Ein Wissenportal für den Unternehmensanalysten
Proceedings of First International Conference on Knowledge Science, Engineering and Management
LCS: A linguistic combination system for ontology mathing
Quota-Based Merging Operators for Stratified Knowledge Bases
Proceedings of International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence ( IJCAI'05)
Measuring conflict and agreement between prioritized knowledge bases
Proceedings of International Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI'05)
A revision-baed approach to resolving conflicting information
Proceedings of eighth European Conference on Symbolic and Quantitative Approaches to Reasoning with Uncertainty (ECSQARU05)
Combining multiple knowledge bases by negotiation: A possibilistic approach
Multiple Semi-revision in Possibilistic Logic
Proceedings of 9th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 2004)
A split-combination method for merging inconsistent knowledge bases in the framework of possibilistic logic
Proceedings of 10th International workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning (NMR04)
Combining individually inconsistent prioritized knowledge bases
Proc. of 9th International Conference on Rough Sets, Fuzzy Sets, Data Mining, and Granular Computing (RSFDGrc'03)
Probabilistic inference on three- valued logic
This paper discusses issues that surround the provision of application support using OWL ontologies. It presents the OWL API, a high-level programmatic interface for accessing and manipulating OWL ontologies. We discuss the underlying design issues and illustrate possible solutions to technical issues occurring in systems that intend to support the OWL standard. Although the context of our solutions is that of a particular implementation, the issues discussed are largely independent of this and should be of interest to a wider community.
Proc. of the First International Semantic Web Conference 2003 (ISWC 2003), October 21-23, 2003, Sanibel Island, Florida
Cooking the Semantic Web with the OWL API
Relational Exploration - Combining Description Logics and Formal Concept Analysis for Knowledge Specification
Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics
Knowledge Representation and Learning Mechanism Based on Networks of Spiking Neurons
Proceedings of Third International Conference Fuzzy Systems and Knowledge Discovery (FSKD 2006)
Improvement of Decision Accuracy Using Discretization of Continuous Attributes
While the stable model semantics, in the form of Answer Set Programming, has become a successful semantics for disjunctive logic programs, a corresponding satisfactory extension of the well-founded semantics to disjunctive programs remains to be found. The many current proposals for such an extension are so diverse, that even a systematic comparison between them is a challenging task. This is mainly caused by the completely different mechanisms applied in the approaches. In order to aid the quest for suitable disjunctive well-founded semantics, we present a systematic approach to a comparison based on level mappings, a recently introduced framework for characterizing logic programming semantics, which was quite successfully used for comparing the major semantics for normal logic programs. We extend this framework to disjunctive logic programs and present alternative characterizations for the strong well-founded semantics (SWFS), the generalized disjunctive wellfounded semantics (GDWFS), and the disjunctive well-founded semantics (D-WFS). This will allow us to gain comparative insights into their different handling of negation.
A Comparison of Disjunctive Well-founded Semantics
The Semantic Web aims at easy integration and usage of content by building on a semi-structured data model where data semantics are explicitly specified through ontologies. The use of ontologies in real-world applications such as community portals has shown that a new level of data independence is required for ontology-based applications for example to allow the customization of information towards the needs of other agents. This requires control over the republishing of data and requires transformation of data across source databases. We address this issue and introduce external ontologies which are constituted of source data from several databases and views spanning across databases.
Proc. of the 20th British National Conference on Databases (BNCOD), Coventry, UK, July 2003
Proc. TC 12 Stream on Intelligent Information Processing, IFIP 17th World Computer Congress, Montreal, August 2002
We present a novel approach of extracting a domain ontology from large-scale thesauri. Concepts are identified to be relevant for a domain based on their frequent occurrence in domain texts. The approach allows to bootstrap the ontology engineering process from given legacy thesauri and identifies an initial domain ontology that may easily be refined by experts in a later stage. We present a thorough evaluation of the results obtained in building a biosecurity ontology for the UN FAO AOS project.
Proc. of I-KNOW '03 - 3rd International Conference on Knowledge Management, July 2-4, Graz, Austria
Pruning-based identification of a domain in ontologies
The success of the Semantic Web crucially depends on the easy creation, integration and use of semantic data. For this purpose, we consider an integration scenario that defies core assumptions of current metadata construction methods. We describe a framework of metadata creation when web pages are generated from a database and the database owner is cooperatively participating in the Semantic Web. This leads us to the definition of ontology mapping rules by manual semantic annotation and the usage of the mapping rules and of web services for semantic queries. In order to create metadata, the framework combines the presention layer with the data description layer --- in contrast to ``conventional'' annotation, which remains at the presentation layer. Therefore, we refer to the framework by deep annotation We consider deep annotation as particularly valid because, (i), web pages generated from databases outnumber static web pages, (ii), annotation of web pages may be a very intuitive way to create semantic data from a database and, (iii), data from databases should not be materialized as RDF files, they should remain where they can be handled most efficiently --- in their databases.
Proc. of the WWW-2003, Budapest, Hungary, May 2003
Description logic is expected to play a key role in ontology modeling for the Semantic Web. However, logic programming paradigm has been researched extensively in the past and has a large user community, so interoperability between these two formalisms is a desirable and an important issue. In this paper we extend our existing work on translation of description logics ontologies to logic programs. In particular we handle additional expressive primitives, such as existentials, equality, functional properties and nominals. We show how to apply our approach for answering queries over DL ontologies. Finally, we empirically analyse the benefits of our approach in practise by comparing the performance of query answering using state-of-the-art description logics systems and using our translation in conjunction with available logic programming systems.
Proc. of WWW 2003, Budapest, Hungary, May 2003
Description Logic Programs: Combining Logic Programs with Description Logics
KI Heft, Special Issue on the Semantic Web
Semantic Web - State of the art and future directions
The paper describes the discourse analysis component of the GenIE system. It presents a DRT-based approach which given a suitable ontology is able to infer discourse relations between events mentioned in the text.
Proc. of the 8th International Conference on Natural Language for Information Systems (NLDB'03), Vetschau (Cottbus),Germany
Ontology-based Discourse Analysis in GenIE
The paper shows how conventional annotation schemes can be formalized as ontologies and discusses the annotation of anaphoric relations in texts as a potential application example.
Proc. of the ACL Workshop on Linguistic Annotation, Sapporo, Japan
RDF-based P2P networks have a number of advantages compared to simpler P2P networks such as Napster, Gnutella or to approaches based on distributed indices on binary keys such as CAN and CHORD. RDF-based P2P networks allow complex and extendable descriptions of resources instead of fixed and limited ones, and they provide complex query facilities against these metadata instead of simple keyword-based searches. In this paper we will discuss RDF-based P2P networks like Edutella as a specific example of a new type of P2P networks - schema-based P2P networks - and describe the use of super-peer based topologies for these networks. Super-peer based networks can provide better scalability than broadcast based networks, and provide support for inhomogeneous schema-based networks, with different metadata schemas and ontologies (crucial for the Semantic Web). Based on (dynamic) metadata routing indices, stated in RDF, the super-peer network supports sophisticated routing and distribution strategies, as well as preparing the ground for advanced mediation and clustering functionalities.
Proc. 12th International World Wide Web Conference. Budapest, 20.-24.5.2003
Super-peer-based routing and clustering strategies for RDF-based peer-to-peer networks
Kundenmanagement im Mittelstand – Systematischer Erfolg durch zufriedene Kunden
Motivation: Was ist CRM und was kann CRM leisten?
The Semantic Web is intended to enable machine understandable web content and seems to be a solution for many drawbacks of the current Web. It is based on metadata that formally describe the semantics of Web contents. In this paper we present an integrated and semi-automatic approach for generating shared-understandable metadata for data-intensive Web applications. This approach is based on mapping a given relational schema into an already existing ontology structure using a reverse engineering process. As a case study we present this style of a schema- and data-migration for our Institute web portal. The presented approach can be applied to a broad range of today's data-intensive Web sites.
Intelligent Information Processing, IFIP 17th World Computer Congress - TC12 Stream on Intelligent Information Processing, August 25-30, 2002, Montréal, Québec, Canada
A reverse engineering approach for migrating data-intensive web sites to the Semantic Web
CRM-Systeme mit EAI – Konzeption, Implementierung und Evaluation.
Erfahrungen bei der Implementierung eines eCRM-Systems bei einem Internetspieleanbieter
Proceedings of FGML Workshop. Special Interest Group of German Information Society (FGML - Fachgruppe Maschinelles Lernen der GI e.V.)
ILP-basierte Klassifikation von Web-Dokumenten
OntoManager - a system for usage-based ontology management
We present a scalable and reliable framework for Semantic Portals which is an extension of our existing SEAL approach. We illustrate the instantiation of our framework by the real-world example of a heterogeneous and distributed infrastructure of Semantic Portals, viz. the portal of our institute AIFB, the OntoWeb.org portals and the KM-Vision.org portal. The approach relies on the application of current semantic technologies whereby we still keep practical usability. Generally, we show that our approach can be used to build up Semantic Portals from scratch or to build up on existing portal infrastructures as a layered Semantic Portal on top. We present several modi for integration of multiple portals and show how we address practical issues like scalability and robustness of Semantic Portals.
Proceedings of the International Conference on Ontologies, Databases and Applications of SEmantics (ODBASE 2003), 3-7 November 2003, Catania, Sicily (Italy)
Scalable and Reliable Semantic Portals (SEAL) in Practice
The Paper addresses the problem of bridging reference resolution. A DRT- based approach combining Semantic Web ontologies as well as model builder is proposed.
Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on Inference in Computational Semantics (ICoS-4), Nancy, France
The paper presents a novel approach based on FCA to derive a conceptual hierarchy or taxonomy from text.
Proceedings of the ECML/PKDD Workshop on Adaptive Text Extraction and Mining, Cavtat-Dubrovnik, Croatia
Automatic Acquisition of Taxonomies from Text: FCA meets NLP
The paper extend a previous approach to learning concept hierarchies by FCA by smoothing techniques.
Proceedings of the GI Workshop "Lehren - Lernen - Wissen - Adaptivität" (LLWA), Fachgruppe Maschinelles Lernen, Wissenentdeckung, Data Mining, Karlsruhe, Germany
Deriving Concept Hierarchies from Text by Smooth Formal Concept Analysis
Grundkurs Programmieren in Java, Bd. 2: Programmierung kommerzieller Systeme
In this paper we extend Musken's Logical Description Grammar (LDG) approach such that ambiguity may in addition to the mutual syntactic and semantic constraints LDG provides be restricted by (i) lexical semantic information and (ii) an underlying ontology associated with the lexical items. In this paper we apply our approach to the underspecification and resolution of lexical ambiguities.
Proceedings of the Lorraine/Saarland Workshop on Prospects and Recent Advances in the Syntax-Semantics Interface, October 20-21, 2003, Nancy, France
Ontology-based semantic construction underspecification and disambiguation
Proceedings des Symposiums "Entwicklung Web-Service-basierter Anwendungen" im Rahmen der "Informatik 2003 - Innovative Informatikanwendungen", GI-Jahrestagung, Frankfurt
Modell eines Workflow-Systems zur Erhöhung der Sicherheit von Web Services
Metadata for the World Wide Web is important, but metadata for Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks is absolutely crucial. In this paper we discuss the open source project Edutella which builds upon metadata standards defined for the WWW and aims to provide an RDF-based metadata infrastructure for P2P applications, building on the recently announced JXTA Framework. We describe the goals and main services this infrastructure will provide and the architecture to connect Edutella Peers based on exchange of RDF metadata. As the query service is one of the core services of Edutella, upon which other services are built, we specify in detail the Edutella Common Data Model (ECDM) as basis for the Edutella query exchange language and format implementing distributed queries over the Edutella network. Finally, we shortly discuss registration and mediation services, and introduce the prototype and application scenario for our current Edutella aware peers.
Semantic Web Workshop, WWW02 Conference, Hawai, USA
EDUTELLA: Searching and Annotating Resources within an RDF-based P2P Network
Topics in education are changing with an ever faster pace. E-Learning resources tend to be more and more decentralised. Users need increasingly to be able to use the resources of the web. For this, they should have tools for finding and organizing information in a decentral way. In this, paper, we show how an ontology-based tool suite allows to make the most of the resources available on the web.
Fachtagung Mobiles Lernen und Forschen, 6.11.2003, Universität Kassel
The Courseware Watchdog: an Ontology-based tool for finding and organizing learning material
Workshop at the 2nd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2003), 20-23 October 2003, Sundial Resort, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA
2nd International Workshop on Evaluation of Ontology based Tools (EON2003)
Workshop at the 18th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-03), 9-15 August 2003, Acapulco Convention Center, Acapulco, Mex
1st International Workshop on Ontologies and Distributed Systems (ODS2003)
Professional knowledge management is a critical success factor in today's enterprises. The efficacy of a knowledge management (KM) project depends heavily on a successful coordination of issues such as corporate culture, organizational processes, human resource management and information technology. It is currently not well understood how best to balance and align these issues. In order to facilitate an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas which might lead to new, holistic approaches, the biennial conference series "Professional Knowledge Management - Experiences and Visions" was set up and held for the first time in March 2001 in Baden-Baden, Germany. The second conference took place April 2003 in Luzern, Switzerland. Some of the most interesting papers from the recent conference have been revised and extended by their authors to appear in this special issue of J.UCS.
Professional Knowledge Management - Experiences and Visions
Workshop at the 2nd National Conference 'Professionelles Wissensmanagement - Erfahrungen und Visionen' (WM2003), Luzern, Switzerland, April 2nd-4th
1st National Workshop Ontologie-basiertes Wissensmanagement (WOW2003)
An ontology-based knowledge sharing system OntoShare and its evaluation as part of a case study is described. RDF(S) is are used to specify and populate an ontology, based on information shared between users in virtual communities. We begin by discussing the advantages that use of Semantic Web technology afford in the area of knowledge management tools. The way in which OntoShare supports WWW-based communities of practice is described. Usage of OntoShare semi-automatically builds an RDF-annotated information resource for the community (and potentially for others also). Observing that in practice the meanings of and relationships between concepts evolve over time, OntoShare supports a degree of ontology evolution based on usage of the system ? that is, based on the kinds of information users are sharing and the concepts (ontological classes) to which they assign this information. A case study involving OntoShare was carried out. The evaluation exercise for this case study and its results are described. We conclude by describing avenues of ongoing and future research.
Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Knowledge Capture (K-CAP2003), 23-26 October 2003, Florida, USA
OntoShare - A Knowledge Management Environment for Virtual Communities of Practice.
Information integration is still one of today's hottest IT topics. Neither merging the information from different data sources nor preparing it for the end user's access has been completely solved. The goal of this paper is to present a holistic approach to integration by using ontologies and logic. There are several reasons for an ontology-based approach: Ontologies are able to cover all occurring data structures, for ontologies can be seen as nowadays most advanced knowledge representation model. They are able to cover complexity, for the combination with deductive logic extends the mapping and business logic capabilities. As the model is separated from the data storage, we get a higher degree of abstraction, whereby the semantics of the whole system is increased. Ontologies are extendible and highly reusable and deliver the user a better access to his relevant content. In this paper we describe how current capabilities of knowledge representation, mapping of structures and description of the business logic are extended. In an elaborated case study of a specific R&D process in the automobile industry we demonstrate that the complex integration process can be realized much easier, faster, more understandable and less expensive than before, without changing the existing IT legacy environment.
Proceedings of the 2nd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2003), 20-23 October 2003, Sundial Resort, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA
Ontology-based Information Integration in the Automotive Industry
An ontology-based knowledge sharing system OntoShare and its evaluation as part of a case study is described. RDF(S) is are used to specify and populate an ontology, based on information shared between users in virtual communities. We begin by discussing the advantages that use of Semantic Web technology afford in the area of knowledge management tools. The way in which OntoShare supports WWW-based communities of practice is described. Usage of OntoShare semi-automatically builds an RDF-annotated information resource for the community (and potentially for others also). Observing that in practice the meanings of and relationships between concepts evolve over time, OntoShare supports a degree of ontology evolution based on usage of the system ? that is, based on the kinds of information users are sharing and the concepts (ontological classes) to which they assign this information. A case study involving OntoShare was carried out. The evaluation exercise and results for this case study are described. We conclude by describing avenues of ongoing and future research.
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Knowledge Management (I-Know'03), July 2-4 2003, Graz, Austria
OntoShare - Evaluation of an Ontology-based Knowledge Sharing System
In this chapter we present the On-To-Knowledge Methodology (OTKM) for introducing and maintaining ontology based knowledge management applications into enterprises with a focus on Knowledge Processes and Knowledge Meta Processes. While the former process circles around the usage of ontologies, the latter process guides their initial set up. We illustrate our methodology by an example from a case study on skills management.
Many RDF repositories have already been implemented with various access languages and mechanisms. The aim of the EDUTELLA framework is to allow communication between different RDF repository implementations. Part of EDUTELLA is a Query Exchange Language (QEL) which can be used as lingua franca to retrieve information from RDF repositories. This work shows why we also need standardization of distributed modification capabilities. We describe use case scenarios for annotation and replication services and use them as guideline for our approach towards a Modification Exchange Language (MEL) for distributed RDF repositories.
Proc. of the First International Semantic Web Conference 2002 (ISWC 2002), June 9-12 2002, Sardinia, Ital
Towards a Modification Exchange Language for Distributed RDF Repositories
In this chapter we describe an ontology-based content management and retrieval system, a kind of Document-based Corporate Memory. This system has been realized in the setting of a virtual organization, a new kind of business partnership at the forefront of ontology-based Knowledge Management due to the special needs for organizing corporate knowledge using flexible, but well-understood and machine processable structures. The goal of our development was to improve on the traditional ways of managing both information items (documents, in our case) and domain knowledge used to organize information, while minimizing the additional effort required from content managers and knowledge workers. This meant the application of automated methods for creating ontologies, even if such methods produce a quality that falls short of the results attainable by manual methods. Our approach also required us to put an emphasis on intelligent interfaces that help the user to effectively discover and query the domain while hiding the complexity of ontologies and ontology-based queries.
Ontology-based Content Management in a Virtual Organization
The Ontology and Modelling of Real Estate Transactions
A Tool-supported Methodology for Ontology-based Knowledge Management
Text Mining is about discovering novel, interesting and useful patterns from textual data. In this paper we discuss several means that introduce background knowledge into unsupervised text mining in order to improve the novelty, the interestingness or the usefulness of the detected patterns. Germane to the different proposals is that they strive for higher abstractions that carry more explanatory power and more possibilities for exploring the input texts than is achievable by unknowledgeable means.
On Knowledgeable Unsupervised Text Mining
Semantic Web Mining aims at combining the two fast-developing research areas Semantic Web and Web Mining.The idea is to improve,on the one hand,the results of Web Mining by exploiting the new semantic structures in the Web;and to make use of Web Mining,on the other hand,for building up the Semantic Web.This paper gives an overview of where the two areas meet today,and sketches ways of how a closer integration could be pro ?table.
The Semantic Web - ISWC 2002, First International Semantic Web Conference
Text clustering typically involves clustering in a high dimensional space, which appears difficult with regard to virtually all practical settings. In addition, given a particular clustering result it is typically very hard to come up with a good explanation of why the text clusters have been constructed the way they are. In this paper, we propose a new approach for applying background knowledge during preprocessing in order to improve clustering results and allow for selection between results. We preprocess our input data applying an ontology-based heuristics for feature selection and feature aggregation. Thus, we construct a number of alternative text representations. Based on these representations, we compute multiple clustering results using K-Means. The results may be distinguished and explained by the corresponding selection of concepts in the ontology. Our results compare favourably with a sophisticated baseline preprocessing strategy.
Text Clustering Based on Good Aggregations
Ontologies as means for conceptualizing and structuring domain knowledge within a community of interest are seen as a key to realize the Semantic Web vision. However, the decentralized nature of the Web makes achieving this consensus across communities difficult, thus, hampering efficient knowledge sharing between them. In order to balance the autonomy of each community with the need for interoperability, mapping mechanisms between distributed ontologies in the Semantic Web are required. In this paper we present MAFRA, an interactive, incremental and dynamic framework for mapping distributed ontologies.
Proc. of 13th European Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW)
MAFRA - A Mapping Framework for Distributed Ontologies
ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT)
Supporting Application Development in the Semantic Web
On The Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2003: OTM 2003Workshops
An ontology for semantic middleware: extending DAML-S beyond web-services
An extensible ontology software environment
Proceedings of the Seventh International Database Engineering and Applications Symposium (IDEAS'03), July 16 - 18, 2003, Hong Kong, SAR
Implementing Views for Light-Weight Web Ontologies
Alternate Track Proceedings of the Twelfth International World Wide Web Conference, WWW2003, Budapest, Hungary, 20-24 May 2003
KAON SERVER - A Semantic Web Management System
Common clustering techniques have the disadvantage that they do not provide intensional descriptions of the clusters obtained. Conceptual Clustering techniques, on the other hand, provide such descriptions, but are known to be rather slow. In this paper, we discuss a way of combining both techniques. We first cluster the documents by avariant of k {Means, using a thesaurus as background knowledge. This clustering reduces the large number of documents to a relatively small number of clusters, which can then be clustered conceptually in the second step.
Proc. Fachgruppentreffen Maschinelles Lernen (FGML 2002), 7.-9.10.2002, Hannover
Proceedings of the 2003 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC), March 9-12, 2003, Melbourne, FL, USA
An Ontology of Services and Service Descriptions
Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management, 4th International Conference, PAKM 2002, Vienna, Austria, December 2-3, 2002, Proceedings
OntoWeb - A Semantic Web Community Portal
The Semantic Web will bring structure to the content of Web pages, being an extension of the currentWeb, in which information is given a well-defined meaning. Especially within e-commerce applications, SemanticWeb technologies in the form of ontologies and metadata are becoming increasingly prevalent and important. This paper introduce KAON - the Karlsruhe Ontology and Semantic WebTool Suite.KAONis developed jointly within several EU-funded projects and specifically designed to provide the ontology and metadata infrastructure needed for building, using and accessing semantics-driven applications on the Web and on your desktop.
E-Commerce and Web Technologies, Third International Conference, EC-Web 2002, Aix-en-Provence, France, September 2-6, 2002, Proceedings
KAON - Towards a large scale Semantic Web
Proceedings of the ECAI-02 Workshop on Ontologies and Semantic Interoperability Lyon, July 22, 2002
How do we measure ontology based search tools? How can we know if they perform better than the traditional methods for finding information on the Internet? We believe that one of the best way to answer this is to carry out a case study including a carefully designed field experiment where the tools are tested. In this paper we discuss the design considerations and set-up of filed experiments with Semantic Web tools, and we also give some result from our own field studies that was carried out within the EU IST-1999-10132 On-To-Knowledge project.
Proceedings of the Common Industry Program at the ODBASE 2002
Exploring potential Benefits of the Semantic Web for Virtual Organizations
Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Databases, Documents, and Information Fusion (DBFUSION 02), July 4-5, 2002, Karlsruhe, Germany
Semantic Community Web Portals - Personalization
Implementation of a view mechanism for ontology-based metadata
On-To-Knowledge: Semantic Web Enabled Knowledge Management
Second International Semantic Web Conference
Advances in Web Intelligence, First International Atlantic Web Intelligence Conference, AWIC 2003, Madrid, Spain, May 5-6, 2003, Proceedings
Virtuelle Kurse durch Wiederverwendung didaktischer Lehrmodule
Proceedings of the Common Industry Program at the federated event co-locating the three international conferences: DOA'02: Distributed Objects and Applications; ODBASE'02: Ontologies, Databases and Applied Semantics; CoopIS'02: Cooperative Information Syst
First Results of a Semantic Web Technologies Evaluation
On Scheduling Cycle Shops: Classification, Complexity and Approximation
Theoretical Analysis of Simple Evolution Strategies in Quickly Changing Environments
Coevolutionary Ant Algorithms for Playing Games
Faster Convergence by Means of Fitness Estimation
Introducing Flexibility into a Workflow based Cooperative System using Agents
Computing Iceberg Concept Lattices with TITANIC
Resource Planning for Business Processes
Guiding Multi Objective Evolutionary Algorithms Towards Interesting Regions
The On-To-Knowledge project (EU-IST-1999-10132) develops and explores sophisticated methods and tools for Knowledge Management and thereby provides infrastructure for the Semantic Web. Its partners include technology providers who build an ontology based tool environment to support the acquisition, maintenance and access of information, technology users who evaluate and use the tool environment in industrial case studies and a methodology provider who guides and assists during the implementation of the tool environment in the case studies. In this article we will describe briefly the partners and their contributions to the project.
On-To-Knowledge: Ontology based Knowledge Management Tools and their Application
Combined Super-/Substring and Super-/Subsequence Problems
Managing User Focused Access to Distributed Knowledge
OntoEdit: Collaborative Ontology Development for the Semantic Web
Modelling the Dynamics of Ant Colony Optimization
# GETESS (German Text Exploitation and Search System) ist der Name eines Projektes mehrerer Partner aus Forschung, Lehre und Industrie, das unterschiedlichste Fachgebiete der Informatik zusammenfuehrt wie Datenbanken, Künstliche Intelligenz und Linguistik. Ziel der Projektes war die Entwicklung eines prototypischen Informationssystems, das Text- (HTML-) Dokumente mit neuen Technologien einsammelt, abspeichert und mittels natürlichsprachlichen Dialogsystems für die Informationsrecherche verfügbar macht. Partner des Projektes neben der Universität Karlsruhe, Institut AIFB, Forschungsgruppe Wissensmanagement waren die GECKO mbH Rostock, der Lehrstuhl Datenbanken und Informationssysteme der Universität Rostock und das DFKI in Saarbrücken.
Ant Colony Optimization Techniques for the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem
Comparing Ontologies - Similarity Measures and a Comparison Study
AI for the Web - Ontology-based Community Web Portals
Width Restricted Layering of Acyclic Digraphs with Consideration of Dummy Nodes
Ontologies now play an important role for many knowledge-intensive applications for which they provide a source of precisely defined terms. The terms are used for concise communication across people and applications. OntoEdit is an ontology editor that has been developed keeping five main objectives in mind: 1. Ease of use. 2. Methodology-guided development of ontologies. 3. Ontology development with help of inferencing. 4. Development of ontology axioms. 5. Extensibility through plug-in structure. This paper is about the first four of these items.
Proceedings of the International Conference on Ontologies, Databases and Applications of SEmantics ODBASE 2002, October 28 - November 1, 2002, University of California, Irvine, USA
OntoEdit: Guiding Ontology Development by Methodology and Inferencing
RDF(S) constitutes a newly emerging standard for metadata that is about to turn the World Wide Web into a machine-understandable knowledge base. It is an XML application that allows for the denotation of facts and schemata in a web-compatible format, building on an elaborate object-model for describing concepts and relations. Thus, it might turn up as a natural choice for a widely-useable ontology description language. However, its lack of capabilities for describing the semantics of concepts and relations beyond those provided by inheritance mechanisms makes it a rather weak language for even the most austere knowledge-based system. This paper presents an approach for modeling ontologies in RDF(S) that also considers axioms as objects that are describable in RDF(S). Thus, we provide flexible, extensible, and adequate means for accessing and exchanging axioms in RDF(S). Our approach follows the spirit of the World Wide Web, as we do not assume a global axiom specification language that is too intractable for one purpose and too weak for the next, but rather a methodology that allows (communities of) users to specify what axioms are interesting in their domain.
An Extensible Approach for Modeling Ontologies in RDF(S)
Non-taxonomic relations between concepts appear as a major building block in common ontology definitions. In fact, their definition consumes much of the time needed for engineering an ontology. We here describe a new approach to discover non-taxonomic conceptual relations from text building on shallow text processing techniques. We use a generalized association rule algorithm that does not only detect relations between concepts, but also determines the \emph{appropriate level of abstraction} at which to define relations. This is crucial for an appropriate ontology definition in order that it be succinct and conceptually adequate and, hence, easy to understand, maintain, and extend. We also perform an empirical evaluation of our approach with regard to a manually engineered ontology. For this purpose, we present a new paradigm suited to evaluate the degree to which relations that are learned match relations in a manually engineered ontology.
Discovering Conceptual Relations from Text
This papers presents a new approach for modeling large-scale ontologies. We extend well-established methods for modeling concepts and relations by transportable methods for modeling ontological axioms. The gist of our approach lies in the way we treat the majority of axioms. They are categorized into different types and specified as complex objects that refer to concepts and relations. Considering language and system particularities, this first layer of representation is then translated into the target representation language. This two-layer approach benefits engineering, because the intended meaning of axioms is captured by the categorization of axioms. Classified object representations allow for versatile access to and manipulations of axioms via graphical user interfaces.
Axioms are Objects, too - Ontology Engineering beyond the Modeling of Concepts and Relations
Text Clustering Based on Background Knowledge
Quantitative Engineering of Business Processes with VIPbusiness
Methoden des Reverse-Engineering von Softwarealtsystemen: Eine Übersicht
Die Zerlegung von Altsystemen in Schichten und Untereinheiten
A State Space Analysis of Propose-and-Revise
Erstellen von objektorientierten Beschreibungen für Softwarealtsysteme
This article gives an impression how existing RDFS based Semantic Web knowledge web services can already now be integrated in the creation process of semantic nets in MS Visio with SemTalk. We are presenting two examples: looking up object names in WordNet and using Ontobroker as an inference engine on ECCMA ontologies. This article shows how different 2-dimensional visualization techniques such as DAMLVisio or simple Visio shapes can be applied to semantic web models in order to address a broad range of users with very different expectations on the notation.
6th International Conference on Information Visualisation (IV02), 10 - 12 July 2002, London, England
On Visualizing the Semantic Web in MS Office
On2broker: Lessons Learned from Applying AI to the Web
ONTOBROKER: Ontology based Access to Distributed and Semi-Structured Information
Validation of Information Systems by Analyzing Partially Ordered Petri Net Processes
Matrix Multiplication on Processor Arrays with Optical Buses
Improved Heuristics and a Genetic Algorithm for Finding Short Supersequences
SGML Nets: Integrating Document and Workflow Modeling
An Island Model based Ant System with Lookahead for the Shortest Supersequence Problem
Verification of Workflow Task Structures: A Petri-net-based approach
E-Learning fuer die Hochschule - Erfolgreiche Ansätze fuer ein flexibleres Studium
Java-Start: ein "pflegeleichter" Webkurs
Ontologies now play an important role for enabling the semantic web. They provide a source of precisely defined terms e.g. for knowledge-intensive applications. The terms are used for concise communication across people and applications. Typically the development of ontologies involves collaborative efforts of multiple persons. OntoEdit is an ontology editor that integrates numerous aspects of ontology engineering. This paper focuses on collaborative development of ontologies with OntoEdit which is guided by a comprehensive methodology.
Proceedings of the First International Semantic Web Conference 2002 (ISWC 2002), June 9-12 2002, Sardinia, Italia
OntoEdit: Collaborative Ontology Engineering for the Semantic Web
International ILIAS Conference – Proceedings 2002/2003
Java Web Course - An Application Of ILIAS
Towards E-Learning Grids: Using Grid Computing in Electronic Learning
E-learning has been a topic of increasing interest in recent years, due mainly to the fact that increased scheduling flexibility as well as tool support can now be offered at a widely affordable level. As a result, many e-learning platforms and systems have been developed and commercialized; these are based on client-server, peer-to-peer, or, more recently, Web service architectures, with a major drawback being their limitations in scalability, availability, and distribution of computing power as well as storage capabilities. This paper tries to remedy this situation by proposing the use of grid computing in the context of e-learning. In particular, it is shown what advantages a utilization of grid computing may have to offer and which applications could benefit from it. Moreover, an architecture for an e-learning grid is outlined, and the notion of a grid learning object is introduced.
IEEE Workshop on Knowledge Grid and Grid Intelligence (in conjunction with 2003 IEEE/WIC International Conference on Web Intelligence / Intelligent Agent Technology)
Proc. of the ICDM 03, The 2003 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining
Ontologies Improve Text Document Clustering
Proc. of the SIGIR 2003 Semantic Web Workshop
WordNet improves text document clustering
Proc. of the 7th European Conference in Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, ECDL 2003
Automatic multi-label subject indexing in a multilingual environment
Proc. of 3rd IFIP conference on e-Commerce, e-Business and e-Government (I3E)
The Semantic Web - Methods, Application and Tools
Knowledge Management (KM) has become an important success factor for enterprises in virtually all areas during the last decade. IT-supported KM solutions are built around some kind of organizational memory that is structured according to an ontology. We present a methodology for application-driven development of ontologies that is instantiated by a case study, viz. the introduction of an ontology-based skills management system at Swiss Life and the lessons learned from the utilisation of the methodology.
Modellierung 2002, Modellierung in der Praxis - Modellierung für die Praxis, Tutzing, Deutschland, 25.-27. März 2002
Introducing Ontology-based Skills Management at a large Insurance Company
Informatik03 - Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Informatik
Semantic Methods and Tools for Information Portals
AAAI Spring Symposium - Semantic Web Services
Credential based Access Control for Semantic Web Services
Dieser Beitrag beschreibt an der Universität Karlsruhe entwickelte Werkzeuge, die es ermöglichen, softwaregestützt in Lehrveranstaltungen zu interagieren und zu kooperieren. Unterstützt werden Szenarien zum elektronischen Feedback, Handmeldung und Multiple-Choice-Umfragen mit sofortiger Auswertung. Realisiert wurde das Interaktionssystem mit Hilfe der .NET Technologie unter dem Einsatz von Webservices.
Beiträge der Fachtagung an der Universität Kassel am 6. November 2003
Kooperationstools der Notebook Universität Karlsruhe (TH)
For many applications it is desirable to query knowledge stored in a database or knowledge base through a natural language interface.In this paper we present a Montague-style compositional semantics approach in order to map natural language wh-questions into F(rame)-logic Queries. The semantic representation is constructed on the basis of Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar (LTAG) derivation trees.
Proceedings of 2nd CoLogNET-ElsNET Symposium
Translating Wh-Questions into F-Logic Queries
KAON: The Karlsruhe Ontology and Semantic Web Meta Project
Ontologies now play an important role for many knowledge-intensive applications for which they provide a source of precisely defined terms. The terms are used for concise communication across people and applications. Tools such as ontology editors facilitate the creation and maintenance of ontologies. OntoEdit is an ontology editor that has been developed keeping five main objectives in mind: 1. Ease of use. 2. Methodology-guided development of ontologies. 3. Ontology development with help of inferencing. 4. Development of ontology axioms. 5. Extensibility through plug-in structure.
OntoEdit: Multifaceted Inferencing for Ontology Engineering
The On-To-Knowledge (OTK) project applies ontologies to electronically available information to improve the quality of knowledge management in large and distributed organizations. This enables sophisticated automatic support for acquiring, representing, and accessing information. Within OTK a methodology and tools for intelligent access to large volumes of semistructured and textual information sources in intra-, extra-, and internet-based environments are developed and applied in several case studies. The methodology provides guidelines for introducing knowledge management concepts and tools into enterprises, helping knowledge providers and seekers to present knowledge efficiently and effectively. The methodology includes the identification of goals that should be achieved by knowledge management tools and is based on an analysis of usage scenarios and different roles knowledge workers and other stakeholders play in organizations. We focus especially on application driven ontology development.
[13] S. Handschuh, ~. CREAM ? CREAting Metadata for the Semantic Web. Computer Networks. 42: 579-598, Elsevier 2003.
CREAM - Creating Metadata for the Semantic Web
Proving Correctness of Distributed Algorithms - A Petri Net Approach
Semi-Entscheidungsverfahren für Fakten und Ziele von Petrinetzen
Software Reuse is a topic which is discussed in various computer science disciplines. Our work deals with the construction and reuse of knowledge base components from a knowledge engineering point of view. In order to reuse domain knowledge and problem solving knowledge experience has shown that powerful and integrated methods and tools are absolutely necessary. Therefore we describe KARO (Knowledge Acquisition Environment with Reusable Ontologies) providing different means for retrieving and adapting concept definitions of a commonsense ontology as part of a domain model construction process. In our framework commonsense ontologies are defined as highly domain-independent knowledge bases containing conceptual definitions which formalise theories about, e.g., time, objects, space. We introduce the formal, linguistic and graphical methods, the architecture and other properties of KARO. By reusing these ontologies in a well-defined way conceptual domain models can be developed easier and made more robust. In addition, we show how KARO and MIKE (Model-based and Incremental Knowledge Engineering Environment) are integrated in order to support the two main notions of reuse being investigated within knowledge engineering: the reuse of problem solving methods and the reuse of ontologies. Special emphasis is put on handling the interaction between problem solving methods and ontologies.
Integrating the Reuse of Commonsense Ontologies and Problem Solving Methods
Assumptions of Problem-Solving Methods and their Role in Knowledge Engineering
Specifying Knowledge-Based Systems with Reusable Components
Assumption Hunting as Developing Method for Problem-Solving Methods
Verifying Knowledge-Based Systems with KIV
An empirical evaluation of the ILP system JoJo-FOL is presented. JoJo-FOL uses an iterative method to discover rules for a single concept within the normal inductive logic programming framework. The search process starts with a very restricted hypothesis space to efficiently derive most general and correct clauses first. This strong language bias is weakened by iteratively increasing the number of variables allowed to occur in a clause such that JoJo-FOL is able to induce additional correct but more specific clauses. JoJo-FOL conducts its search through the hypothesis space in a bidirectional manner controlled by two criteria of success derived from the completeness and consistency requirements. In an empirical evaluation JoJo-FOL was tested on two ILP benchmark data sets. The results presented show that the iterative rule discovery method combined with the bidirectional search strategy leads to more general rules and a higher accuracy compared to well-known ILP systems on the tested domains.
Empirical evaluation of an iterative rule discovery system using a bidirectional search strategy
Developing ontologies is a core activity of the On-To-Knowledge project. The methodology developed within the project guides the case studies for exploiting different ways for construction and usage of ontologies. However, because of the size of ontologies, their complexity, their formal underpinnings and the necessity to come towards a shared understanding within a group of people, ontologies are still far from being a commodity. In recent years, research aimed at paving the way for the construction of ontologies by ontology development environments. Thereby, we have seen different directions taken to support the engineering of ontologies. However, only few of these seminal approaches have worked towards combining all of these urgent desiderata. This observation seems to reflect our own project experience, viz. that it is far from trivial to offer a sound integration of these aspects. Therefore, OntoEdit is an ontology engineering environment that is rather unique in its kind as it combines methodology-based ontology development with capabilities for collaboration and a tight integration into a tool framework, i.e. the On-To-Knowledge framework.
OntoEdit: Collaborative Engineering of Ontologies
Journal of Universal Computer Science (J.UCS)
A Local and Dynamic Algorithm for Reconfiguring a Faulty Processor Array Into a Maximal Fault-Free Subarray
Einsatz von Petrinetzen bei der Modellierung komplexer industrieller Systeme - eine Anwendungsübersicht -
Ontobroker: How to make the WWW intelligent
EventFlowL - eine ereignisbasierte Workflow-Modellierungssprache
A methodology for introducing an ontology-based KM solution into enterprises is described which extends and improves the CommonKADS methodology by introducing — among others — specific guidelines for developing and maintaining the respective ontology. Special emphasis is put on a stepwise construction and evaluation of the ontology. The methodology is supported by a tool, "OntoKick", that supports ontology engineers in early stages, i.e. the kickoff phase of ontology development.
Ontology and Modeling of Real Estate Transactions in European Juristictions
Evolutionary Algorithms for Dynamic Optimization Problems - A Survey -
The Tower-of-Adapters Method for Developing and Reusing Problem-Solving Methods
Using Ontologies For Defining Tasks, Problem-Solving Methods and Their Mappings
An Enterprise Reference Scheme for Integrating Model Based Knowledge Engineering and Enterprise Modelling
A Case Study: Assumptions and Limitations of a Problem-Solving Method
An Ontology-based Broker: Making Problem-Solving Method Reuse Work
Special issue on information integration
Proceedings of the 2nd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2003), October, 2003, Sanibel Island, FL, USA
Ontology-based Query and Answering in Chemistry: OntoNova @ Project Halo
Principles of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 7th European Conference, PKDD 2003, Dubrovnik, Croatia, September 22-26, 2003
Explaining Text Clustering Results using Semantic Structures
We present FRED, an ontology-based agent and its application in an E-Coaching scenario at a large company. We illustrate the architecture and underlying technology of our agent platform, e.g. ontologies, and present our methodology for ontology development as well as a brief cost-benefit analysis, thus showing also commercial aspects.
Second International Workshop on Ontologies in Agent Systems (OAS 2002) , held at the 1st International Conference on Autonomous Agents & Multiagent Systems, 15 or 16 July 2002, Bologna, Italy.
FRED: Ontology-based Agents for enabling E-Coaching Support in a large Company
Unveiling the hidden bride: Deep Annotation for Mapping and Migrating Legacy Data to the Semantic Web
Proc. of the 2nd Learning Language in logic (LLL) Workshop, Lissabon, September 2000
Extracting a Domain-Specific Ontology from a corporate Intranet
Proc. of Workshop Ontologies and Text, co-located with the 12th International Workshop on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW'2000), Juan-Les-Pins, France
A Method for semi-automatic ontology acquisition from a corporate intranet
Workshop on Integrating Data Mining and Knowledge Management co-located with the 1st International Conference on Data Mining
The Text-To-Onto Ontology Extraction and Maintenance System
Optimizing Query Answering in Description Logics using DisjunctiveDeductive Databases
Incremental Maintenance of Materialized Ontologies
Proc. of first Int. Workshop on Practical and Scalable Semantic Systems
Proceedings of the 9th International Conference for Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism, ENTER 2002, Innsbruck, Austria, 23 - 25th January 2002
Applying Semantic Web Technologies for Tourism Information Systems
Incremental Maintenance of Dynamic Datalog Programs
Requirements for a Web Ontology language
Web Ontology Language (OWL) Guide Version 1.0
Pruning-based Identification of Domain Ontologies
Multidisciplinary International Conference on Scheduling Theory and Applications (MISTA'03)
Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO'03)
Ant-based crossover for permutation problems
New ideas for applying ant colony optimization to the probabilistic TSP
Proceedings of the 15th International FLAIRS Conference. Pensacola, Florida, May 16-18, 2002
Semantic Web Service Architecture - Evolving Web Service Standards toward the Semantic Web
Online: http://www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/cgi-bin/psview?document=2003%2Fwiwi%2F1
GECCO Workshop on Evolutionary Algorithms for Dynamic Optimization Problems
Evolutionary approaches to dynamic optimization problems - introduction and recent trends
Multimedia engineering is the concept of building up a multimedia product, including principles, methods and techniques for all stages of development. This concept is strongly shaped by an interdisciplinary working method. Today’s professionals of different disciplines have to proof their skills in a global environment with various tasks. They must cooperate in areas of conflict, such as technical, educational, psychological and economical questions. Therefore multimedia companies are looking for high-profile candidates with sound knowledge of their subject area, as well as teamwork and other key qualifications. It is the task and challenge of universities to qualify their students in an optimal manner for their further professional careers by endowing them with special field knowledge and interdisciplinary skills. Therefore the Institute AIFB of the University of Karlsruhe has developed a seminar concept, which takes into account the qualifications demanded by the multimedia industry. In the following article, the authors would like to explain this concept.
Proc. of the World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications (edmedia 2003)
Teaching Multimedia-Engineering: a conceptual framework for project based learning
Credit risk: measurement, evaluation and management
Finding constrained downside risk-return efficient credit portfolio structures using hybrid multi-objective evolutionary computation
Complexity 2003: Complex Behaviour in Economics Conference, Aix-en-Provence, France
The building blocks of complexity: a unified criterion and selected applications in risk management
Proc. Workshop EWMF 2003 of the 14th Europ. Conference on Machine Learning (ECML 2003) / 7th Europ. Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (PKDD 2003)
Journal of Applied Artificial Intelligence (AAI)
Conceptual Knowledge Discovery - a human-centered approach
Document Retrieval for Email Search and Discovery using Formal Concept Analysis
Proceedings of the 19th Conference on Computational Linguistics, COLING-2002, August 24 - September 1, 2002 , Taipei, Taiwan, 2002
Taxonomy Learning - Factoring the structure of a taxonomy into a semantic classification decision
International Journal on Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS)
Off to New Shores - Conceptual Knowledge Discovery and Processing
Conceptual Structures for Knowledge Creation and Communication
Creation and Merging of Ontology Top-Levels
New Trends in Knowledge Processing - Data Mining, Semantic Web and Computational Science. Proc. 6th Sanken International Symposium
Proceedings der Workshopwoche der GI-Fachgruppen/Arbeitskreise FGML, FGWM, ABIS, AKKD
Lehren - Lernen - Wissen - Adaptivität (LLWA 2003)
Workshop "Datenbanken und E-Learning", GI-Fachtagung "BTW 2003 - Datenbanksysteme für Business, Technologie und Web", Leipzig
Blended Learning in der Datenbank-Ausbildung
Proceedings "Wirtschaftsinformatik 2003 – Medien, Märkte, Mobilität", Dresden
E-Learning-Komponenten in zielgruppenorientierten Lehr- und Lernszenarien
Proceedings Informatik 2003 - Innovative Informatikanwendungen, GI-Jahrestagung, Frankfurt
Konzeption und Betrieb eines Kompetenz- und Dienstleistungsnetzes für die Informatik
Proceedings of Evaluation of Ontology-based Tools (EON2003) at 2nd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2003)
Towards a benchmark for Semantic Web reasoners - an analysis of the DAML ontology library
Proceedings of JXTA Workshop - Potenziale, Konzepte, Anwendungen
SWAP - A Semantics-Based Peer-to-Peer System
Proceedings of MATES-2003. First German Conference on Multiagent Technologies
The SWAP data and metadata model for semantics-based peer-to-peer systems
Proc. Of the European Conference on Knowledge Acquisition and Management - EKAW-2002. Madrid, Spain, October 1-4, 2002
Web-Based Education - Learning from Experience
WeBCEIS - A scenario for integrating the web-based education into the classical education
One of the vital problems in the searching for information is the ranking of the retrieved results, because users make typically very short queries (2-3 terms) and tend to consider only the first ten results. In traditional IR approaches the relevance of the results is determined only by analysing the underlying information repository (content and hyperlink structure), which leads to the weak relevance model. On the other hand, in the Semantic Web the querying process is supported by an ontology such that other important sources for determining the relevance of results can be considered: the structure of the underlying domain and the characteristics of the searching process. In this paper we present a novel approach for determining relevance in ontology-based searching for information, which exploits the “full potentialâ€ of the semantics of such a semantically-based link structure. We present several analyses about how a Semantic Web querying mechanism can benefit of using our ranking approach.
An Approach for the Ranking of Query Results in the Semantic Web
In this paper, we present an approach for the disambiguation of ontology-based queries. The approach is based on measuring the ambiguity of a query with respect to the user’s initial information need. We define several types of ambiguities concerning the structure of the underlying ontology and the content of the information repository. For each of these ambiguities we define a set of refinements/explanations, which helps in more efficient searching for information in an ontology-based information repository. We demonstrate the benefits of using our approach in an evaluation study.
On Analysing Query Ambiguity for Query Refinement: The Librarian Agent Approach
Information-need Driven Query Refinement
In this paper we present an approach to model ontology evolution as reconfiguration-design problem solving. The problem is reduced to a graph search where the nodes are evolving ontologies and the edges represent the changes that transform the source node into the target node. The search is guided by the constraints provided partially by a user and partially by a set of rules defining ontology consistency. In this way we allow a user to specify an arbitrary request declaratively and ensure its resolving. The approach is implemented in the KAON framework and the evaluation study shows its benefits.
Ontology Evolution as Reconfiguration-Design Problem Solving
In this paper we present the conceptual architecture of ONTOLOGER, a system for usage-driven management of querying for information in ontology-based information portals. The system is based on the analysis of users’ activities that are acquired in the so-called semantic log file, which contains information about the content of a visited page as well. These analyses are used for managing (i) the underlying ontology, (ii) querying mechanism and (iii) the content of the information repository, in order to ensure that (a) the structure of the vocabulary reflects the needs of users, (b) the highly-relevant results can be found by users although they make short queries and read only top-ranked results and (c) the information repository contains (only) resources users are interested in. The focus of the paper is on improving querying (retrieval) mechanism based on the usage data. We present a case study, which shows how a portal can benefit from implementing presented management system.
ONTOLOGER - a System for Usage-driven Management of Ontology-based Information Portals
In this paper, we propose an approach for guiding ontology managers through the modification of an ontology with respect to users' needs. It is based on the analysis of end-users' interactions with the ontology-based applications, which are tracked into the usage-log. Several measures taking into account the ontology hierarchy are defined. Their application on the usage log results in the set of the recommendations for the ontology improvement. The approach has been implemented in the system called OntoManager. The evaluation study shows the benefits of supporting ontology management by our approach.
OntoManager - a system for the usage-based ontology management
In this paper we present an approach for the query refinement called Librarian Agent Query Refinement Process, which simulates the role a human librarian plays in the searching for information resources in a library. The process consists of two phases: Problem Discovery, in which the potential problems (ambiguities) of the initial query are discovered and estimated and Query Refinement, which analyses these ambiguities in order to provide suitable modification of that query that increases the precision and recall of the searching process. The Agent performs comprehensive analyses of a query, based on the structure of the used vocabulary in an information portal and the content of its information repository. Moreover, the information about the previous users’ behaviour and the activities of the current user are used for making the query refinement process more efficient (i.e. usage-driven and personalized). From the user’s point of view, the main advantage of such an approach is that it enables a user to satisfy his information need in a more intuitive and efficient way.
On the Role of Query Refinement in Searching for Information: The Librarian Agent Query Refinement Process
Dienstleistungsnetzwerk im Handwerk: Mobiles Wissen mit Hilfe von Endgeräten beim Kunden vor Ort
Mobile Economy - Transaktionen, Prozesse, Anwendungen und Dienste
Rechtliche Grundlagen des Mobilen Marketings
Proceedings of the MKWI 2004 Track on Techniques and Applications for Mobile Commerce
Privacy and Security of Personal Data: requirements and techniques for mobile communication terminals and applications
Super-Peer-Based Routing Strategies for RDF-Based Peer-to-Peer Networks
CREAM - Creating relational metadata with a component-based, ontology-driven annotation framework
Creating metadata by annotating documents is one of the major techniques for putting machine understandable data on the Web. Though there exist many tools for annotating web pages, few of them fully support the creation of semanti-cally interlinked metadata, such as necessary for a truely Semantic Web. In this paper, we present an ontology-based annotation environment, On-toAnnotate, which offers comprehensive support for the creation of semantically interlinked meta-data by human annotators.
Proc. of The First International Workshop on MultiMedia Annotation, Tokyo, Japan
An Annotation Framework for the Semantic Web
Creating Metadata for the Semantic Web: An Annotation Framework and the Human Factor
KI '2003 - Advances in Artificial Intelligence. Proc. of the Annual German Conference on AI
Leveraging metadata creation for the Semantic Web with CREAM
Annotation of the Shallow and the Deep Web
Ontology-Focused Crawling of Documents and Relational Metadata
Proceedings of the WWW'03 Workshop on Semantics in Peer-to-Peer and Grid Computing
A Metadata Model for Semantics-Based Peer-to-Peer Systems
K-CAP 2003 – Proceedings of the Second International ACM Conference on Knowledge Capture. October 23-25, 2003, Sanibel Island, FL, USA
FONTE - Factorizing ONTology Engineering complexity
Text Mining. Theoretical Aspects and Applications
Ontology Learning Part One – On Discoverying Taxonomic Relations from the Web
Towards the Semantic Web – Ontology-based Knowledge Management
A Future Perspective: Exploiting Peer-to-Peer and the Semantic Web for Knowledge Management
Proc. of IJCAI'03 Workshop on Ontologies and Distributed Systems
Engineering a complex ontology with time
2nd Workshop on Knowledge Markup and Semantic Annotation
Requirements for Information Extraction for Knowledge Management (Position Paper)
Proceedings zum Treffen der Fachgruppe Wissensmanagement (FGWM) der Gesellschaft für Informatik
SWAP - A Semantics-Based Peer-to-Peer System Demonstration
IEEE Intelligent Systems, Trends & Controversies
A Conceptual Modeling Approach for Semantics-Driven Enterprise Applications
Neurons, Viscose Fluids, Freshwater Polyp Hydra – and other Self-organizing Information Systems
The Semantic Web: New ways to integrate and present information. (Extended Abstract of Invited Talk)
The Thirteenth International World Wide Web Conference Proceedings
Foundations for Service Ontologies: Aligning OWL-S to DOLCE
Papers from 2004 AAAI Spring Symposium - Semantic Web Services
Foundations for OWL-S: Aligning OWL-S to DOLCE
Ontologien in der und für die Softwaretechnik
SmartAPI - Associating Ontologies and APIs for Rapid Application Development
ULI - A New Perspective For Distance Learning In Technical Oriented Areas Using New Media In The Traditional German University Education System
21st ICDE World Conference on Open Learning & Distance Education
ULI - A Germany Wide Cooperation of Universities in Computer Science Studies Using Multimedia and New Concepts (Experiences, Problems and Outlook)
Neue Wege im Informatik-Studium mit ULI?
Peer Selection in Peer-to-Peer Networks with Semantic Topologies
Meeting of the German Fachgruppe "Knowledge Management" - the former Fachgruppen on Case-Based Reasoning and Knowledge Engineering - of the Fachbereich 1 "Artificial Intelligence" of the German Society for Informatics. Gaining maximum momentum from previous experiences requires intelligent, comprehensive knowledge management methodologies and technologies like Case-based Reasoning or Knowledge Engineering. The workshop aimed to foster exchange between practitioners and researchers in intelligent systems for experience management (EM).
1st German Workshop on Experience Management: Sharing Experiences about the Sharing of Experience, Berlin, March 7-8, 2002, Proceedings
In this paper we presented a framework for the query refinement which is driven by the user’s information needs. Based on the analyses of the real IR case studies we gathered the requirements and modeled the query refinement process as the process of changing query ambiguity according to a user ‘s need. We define several semantic and structural ambiguities, implied by the used vocabulary and information repository, respectively. As our evaluation study shows, the usability of the approach overcomes the traditional information retrieval problems and enables the realisation of an e-shop-assistant in the e-commerce applications.
A Comprehensive Approach for the Query Refinement in Information Portals
One of the main problems in the (web) information retrieval is the ambiguity of the users’ queries, since the users tend to post very short queries. This seems to be valid for the ontology-based information retrieval in which the domain ontology is used as the backbone of the searching process. In this paper we present a novel approach for determining the possible refinements of an ontology-based query. The approach is based on measuring the ambiguity of a query with respect to the original user information need. We defined several types of the ambiguities concerning the structure of the underlying ontology and the content of the information repository. For each of these ambiguities we defined the set of refinements/explanations, which help in more efficient searching for information in an ontology-based information repository.
On the Query Refinement in the Ontology-based Searching for Information
J.UCS Special Issue WM 2003, Volume 9 / Issue 7, July 2003
On the role of a Librarian Agent in Ontology-based Knowledge Management Systems
In this paper, we present an agent-based approach for the improvement of searching in an ontology-based knowledge management system. The system implements a library scenario in which users query the repository for knowledge resources. Consequently, the so-called Librarian Agent plays the role of the human librarian in the traditional library – it uses all possible information, about the domain vocabulary, the behaviour of previous users and the capacity of the knowledge repository, in order to help users find the resources they are interested in. We partially implemented the approach in the Web Portal of our Institute and some initial evaluation results are shown.
One of the main strengths of an ontology-based system is the intensional description of the knowledge (information) about a domain, which is used in an inferencing process as a means of implying new domain knowledge. This inferencing process is very efficiently used for the explanation how an answer to a user’s query was derived, increasing the trust of a user in the answers of the query. Moreover, such a derivation tree can be treated as an evidence of the relevance of an answer for the user’s query. In this paper we present an approach which combines the derivation tree with the factual information in order to support the ranking of the results of an ontology-based query. Moreover, we discuss the possibilities to use such a ranking for clustering query’s results. The approach has been implemented in the Ontobroker system, a main memory deductive database system.
An Explanation-based Ranking Approach for Ontology-based Querying
Die INFORMATIK 2003 findet vom 29. September bis 2. Oktober 2003 an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main statt. Als 33. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Informatik präsentiert sie traditionell das breite Spektrum aktueller Entwicklungen in der Informatik und versammelt Wissenschaftler wie Praktiker, die sich einen fundierten Überblick über die wichtigsten aktuellen Trends in der Informatik ver-schaffen möchten. Unter dem Gesamtthema "Innovative Informatikanwendungen" haben wir ein vielfälti-ges Programm aus Keynotes, Workshops und Symposien zusammengestellt, das einen breiten Überblick über das Spektrum der Informatik-Aktivitäten hierzulande gibt. Deutlich ist dabei zu erkennen, wie viele Anwendungsbereiche auf Informatikleistungen angewiesen sind, wie sehr beispielsweise der Raum Frankfurt als Finanz- und Dienstleistungszentrum, Verkehrsknotenpunkt sowie Standort von Telekommunikations-, IT-, Medien-, Automobil- und Chemieunternehmen von Informatik "durchdrungen" ist, und wie viel vom "Funktionieren der Informatik" abhängt. Um das Plenarprogramm mit Keynotes zur Eröffnung und zum "Tag der Informatik" wurden zahlreiche Workshops gruppiert, in denen in kleinerem Kreis spezielle Themen präsentiert und diskutiert werden. Aus einer größeren Zahl von eingereichten Vorschlägen für Workshops wurden besonders aktuelle Themen mit hoher zu erwartender Qualität vom Workshop-Programmkomitee selektiert. Für jeden der ausgewählten Workshops hat ein eigenes dezentrales Programmkomitee Einwerbung, Begutachtung und Auswahl der Beiträge übernommen. In den vorliegenden beiden Tagungsbänden sind die angenommenen Beiträge dokumentiert. Darüber hinaus enthalten die Tagungsbände Beiträge zu Symposien verschiedener DFG-Schwerpunktprogramme und DFG-Sonderforschungsbereiche aus der Informatik sowie weiterer Forschungsprojekte zu innovativen Informatikanwendungen. Nicht zu vergessen ist die Teiltagung "Mit Sicherheit Informatik", die ein besonders brisantes Thema aufgreift und mit der sich der neue GI-Fachbereich "Sicherheit – Schutz und Zuverlässigkeit" erstmals in dieser Form präsentiert. Die hierfür ausgewählten Beiträge finden sich in einem eigenen Tagungsband. Wir hoffen, dass das breite und anspruchsvolle Angebot der INFORMATIK 2003 (zu dem noch viele – nicht zuletzt auch die wichtigen sozialen – Aktivitäten gehören) allen Teilnehmenden eine interessante Woche bieten wird. Dazu beigetragen haben wie immer sehr viele, denen wir allen sehr herzlich danken möchten. Stellvertretend seien genannt: • die zahlreichen Organisatorinnen und Organisatoren der Teilveranstaltungen sowie die Mitglieder in den jeweiligen Programmkomitees; die großzügigen Hauptsponsoren Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Deutsche Bank und T-Mobile; die konstruktiv unterstützende Verwaltung der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität; die stets hilfreiche GI-Geschäftsstelle, namentlich Cornelia Winter und Gabrie-le Wischnewski sowie Jörg Porada, Monika Schulte, Elena Wussow und Ge-schäftsführer Jörg Maas; • die unermüdlich operierende Vorhut des Tagungsteams, bestehend aus der Lei-terin des Tagungsbüros Sabine Landvogt sowie Markus Grüne, Kirsten Kefer-stein, Agnes Koschmider, Marco von Mevius und Abdelghani Zafa. Uns bleibt nur noch zu wünschen, dass der Besuch der Tagung und die Lektüre der Tagungsbände Antworten auf drängende Fragen, Grundlage für kritische Diskussionen, Hinweise auf interessante Aufgabenstellungen und Anregungen für neue Lösungsansätze bieten. Zürich, Frankfurt am Main, Saarbrücken im August 2003 Klaus Dittrich, Wolfgang König, Andreas Oberweis, Kai Rannenberg, Wolfgang Wahlster
Beiträge der 33. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), 29.9.-2.10.2003 in Frankfurt am Main
INFORMATIK 2003 - Innovative Informatikanwendungen
Die INFORMATIK 2003 findet vom 29. September bis 2. Oktober 2003 an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main statt. Als 33. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Informatik präsentiert sie traditionell das breite Spektrum aktueller Entwicklungen in der Informatik und versammelt Wissenschaftler wie Praktiker, die sich einen fundierten Überblick über die wichtigsten aktuellen Trends in der Informatik ver-schaffen möchten. Unter dem Gesamtthema "Innovative Informatikanwendungen" haben wir ein vielfälti-ges Programm aus Keynotes, Workshops und Symposien zusammengestellt, das einen breiten Überblick über das Spektrum der Informatik-Aktivitäten hierzulande gibt. Deutlich ist dabei zu erkennen, wie viele Anwendungsbereiche auf Informatikleistungen angewiesen sind, wie sehr beispielsweise der Raum Frankfurt als Finanz- und Dienstleistungszentrum, Verkehrsknotenpunkt sowie Standort von Telekommunikations-, IT-, Medien-, Automobil- und Chemieunternehmen von Informatik "durchdrungen" ist, und wie viel vom "Funktionieren der Informatik" abhängt. Um das Plenarprogramm mit Keynotes zur Eröffnung und zum "Tag der Informatik" wurden zahlreiche Workshops gruppiert, in denen in kleinerem Kreis spezielle Themen präsentiert und diskutiert werden. Aus einer größeren Zahl von eingereichten Vorschlägen für Workshops wurden besonders aktuelle Themen mit hoher zu erwartender Qualität vom Workshop-Programmkomitee selektiert. Für jeden der ausgewählten Workshops hat ein eigenes dezentrales Programmkomitee Einwerbung, Begutachtung und Auswahl der Beiträge übernommen. In den vorliegenden beiden Tagungsbänden sind die angenommenen Beiträge dokumentiert. Darüber hinaus enthalten die Tagungsbände Beiträge zu Symposien verschiedener DFG-Schwerpunktprogramme und DFG-Sonderforschungsbereiche aus der Informatik sowie weiterer Forschungsprojekte zu innovativen Informatikanwendungen. Nicht zu vergessen ist die Teiltagung "Mit Sicherheit Informatik", die ein besonders brisantes Thema aufgreift und mit der sich der neue GI-Fachbereich "Sicherheit – Schutz und Zuverlässigkeit" erstmals in dieser Form präsentiert. Die hierfür ausgewählten Beiträge finden sich in einem eigenen Tagungsband. Wir hoffen, dass das breite und anspruchsvolle Angebot der INFORMATIK 2003 (zu dem noch viele – nicht zuletzt auch die wichtigen sozialen – Aktivitäten gehören) allen Teilnehmenden eine interessante Woche bieten wird. Dazu beigetragen haben wie immer sehr viele, denen wir allen sehr herzlich danken möchten. Stellvertretend seien genannt: • die zahlreichen Organisatorinnen und Organisatoren der Teilveranstaltungen sowie die Mitglieder in den jeweiligen Programmkomitees; die großzügigen Hauptsponsoren Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Deutsche Bank und T-Mobile; • die konstruktiv unterstützende Verwaltung der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität; • die stets hilfreiche GI-Geschäftsstelle, namentlich Cornelia Winter und Gabrie-le Wischnewski sowie Jörg Porada, Monika Schulte, Elena Wussow und Ge-schäftsführer Jörg Maas; • die unermüdlich operierende Vorhut des Tagungsteams, bestehend aus der Lei-terin des Tagungsbüros Sabine Landvogt sowie Markus Grüne, Kirsten Kefer-stein, Agnes Koschmider, Marco von Mevius und Abdelghani Zafa. Uns bleibt nur noch zu wünschen, dass der Besuch der Tagung und die Lektüre der Tagungsbände Antworten auf drängende Fragen, Grundlage für kritische Diskussionen, Hinweise auf interessante Aufgabenstellungen und Anregungen für neue Lösungsansätze bieten. Zürich, Frankfurt am Main, Saarbrücken im August 2003 Klaus Dittrich, Wolfgang König, Andreas Oberweis, Kai Rannenberg, Wolfgang Wahlster
GI-Edition - Lecture Notes of Informatics (LNI)
Ein Problem bestehender Lernobjekt-Managementsysteme ist die fehlende oder unzureichende Unterstützung der im E-Learning auftretenden Prozesse, d.h. Lehr-, Lern- und Administrationsprozesse. Die inhaltsorientierte Sichtweise von E-Learning wird daher um eine prozessorientierte Sichtweise des Lernobjekt-Managements ergänzt. Durch die Verwendung von XML-Netzen, einer neuen Variante höherer Petri-Netze, welche die integrierte Darstellung der Prozesse des Lernobjekt-Managements und komplexer Lernobjekte erlaubt, wird die Erweiterung einer E Learning-Plattform um ein Workflow-Managementsystem möglich. Nutzen aus der prozessorientierten Sichtweise kann insbesondere bei der Ablaufunterstützung und der Erfolgskontrolle gezogen werden. Durch die Modellierung von Prozessschemata können die Prozesse des Lernobjekt-Managements auch zwischen den Prozessbeteiligten, z.B. Lehrenden, Lernenden oder Administratoren, kommuniziert werden.
Wirtschaftsinformatik 2003, Medien - Märkte - Mobilität
Workflow-gestütztes Lernobjekt-Management
Information Technology Practitioner Skills in Europe: Current Status and Challenges for the Future
Ontology Learning Part One - On Discoverying Taxonomic Relations from the Web
The goal of IBM’s Autonomic Computing strategy is to deliver IT environments with improved self-management capabilities which cover the aspects of self-healing, self-protecting, self-optimizing, and self-configuring. Data correlation and inference technologies can be used as core components to build Autonomic Computing systems. They can be used to perform an automated, continuous analysis of enterprise-wide event data, based on user-defined, configurable rules, e.g. for detecting threats or system failures. Furthermore, they may trigger corrective actions for protecting or healing the system. In this paper, we discuss the use of ontologies as a high-level, expressive conceptual modelling approach for describing the knowledge on which the processing of a correlation engine is based upon. By introducing explicit models of state-based IT resources in the correlation technology approach, Autonomic Computing systems can be built which are able to deal with policy based goals on a higher abstraction level. We demonstrate some benefits of this approach by applying it to a particular IBM implementation, referred to as the “eAutomationâ€ correlation engine.
The Role of Ontologies in Autonomic Computing Systems
Correlation engines are autonomic computing systems that perform the automated, continuous analysis of enterprise-wide event data based on user-defined, configurable rules in order to detect threats and protect a system from them. In this paper we discuss the run-time advantages of using ontologies as a conceptual backbone for describing knowledge processed by correlation engines.
International Conference on Autonomic Computing (ICAC-04)
Knowledge Engineering and Agent Technology
IOS Series on Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications
Situation and Perspective of Knowledge Engineering
Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization, Second International Conference (EMO'03)
Solving Multi-criteria Optimization Problems with Population-Based ACO
We present the Web Service Description Framework (WSDF), which provides both a representation mechanism and a runtime system architecture for semantically enriched Web Services. We analyze existing languages such as BPEL4WS and OWL-S before addressing their deficiencies in our proposal. Our approach allows a client to invoke a service based solely on a shared ontology, i.e. without prior knowledge on the API, providing an important building block towards a global, flexible information infrastructure. Another main point is that WSDF can be applied to clients and services written in a conventional object oriented programming language. This is achieved by lifting datastructures to an ontology level in which rich logical statements about services can be formalized. We also present a detailed system architecture that covers planning, invocation, and the automatic processing of the service results, which is accomplished using the observer design pattern and by asserting the result in the respective model. Furthermore, the required annotations can be specified conveniently by placing comments in the source code.
IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2004)
Ad-hoc Invocation of Semantic Web Services
Due to the fast growth of internet based electronic business activities, languages for modeling as well as methods for analyzing and executing distributed business processes are becoming more and more important. Efficient inter-organizational business processes in the field of e-commerce require the integration of electronic document interchange and inter-organizational process management. We propose to support inter-organizational business processes by so-called XML nets, a new variant of high-level Petri nets. XML nets are a formal, graphical modeling language that allows to model both the flow of XML documents and the control flow of the underlying business process. XML nets are based on GXSL, a novel graphical XML schema definition language, and its related graphical XML document manipulation language XManiLa. They can be directly executed by a respective workflow engine. Advantage of the formal foundation of XML nets can be taken, e.g., when analyzing a (global) inter-organizational workflow model. XML nets support the identification of relevant process fragments and their allocation to the appropriate organizational units. Thus XML nets help to derive an improved, process-oriented organizational structure.
Petri Net Technology for Communication-Based Systems, Advances in Petri Nets
Interorganizational Business Process Management with XML Nets
Web-basiertes Lernen: Eine Übersicht über Stand und Entwicklungen
Flexibilität, d.h. die Fähigkeit zur Anpassung an geänderte Umstände, gehört zu den wichtigsten Anforderungen, die an betriebliche Informationssysteme gestellt werden. Trotzdem verfügen Informationssysteme in der Praxis vielfach nur über unzureichende Möglichkeiten zur Anpassung bzw. erforderliche Änderungen sind oftmals nur mit unvertretbar hohem Aufwand möglich. Dieser Beitrag beleuchtet das Problem der Flexibilität, beschreibt Möglichkeiten zur Lösung und schlägt workflowbasierte Informationssysteme vor, um ein größtmögliches Maß an Flexibilität zu ermöglichen.
Informationswirtschaft: Ein Sektor mit Zukunft
Flexibilität in betrieblichen Informationssystemen
1st Australian Workshop on Engineering Service-Oriented Systems (AWESOS 2004) Wednesday, 14 April 2004, Melbourne, Australia. In conjunction with the Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC)
Enhancing Application Servers with Semantics
Proceedings of the The Second International Conference on Formal Concept Analysis (ICFCA 04)
Conceptual Knowledge Processing with Formal Concept Analysis and Ontologies
Proceedings of the Conference on Lexical Resources and Evaluation (LREC)
XML ist auf dem Wege, sich zu einer Basistechnologie im Bereich der multimedialen Lehre zu entwickeln. Mit der zunehmenden Nutzung dieser Auszeichnungssprache ergeben sich jedoch auch neuartige Frage- und Problemstellungen bezüglich der Distribution XML-basierter Lehr- und Lernmodule und deren Integration in Learning-Management-Systeme. Der vorliegende Beitrag skizziert im ersten Teil die Anforderungen an ein Distributionssystem und diskutiert, welche Systeme für eine Distribution geeignet sind. Dabei werden die Ergebnisse einer Untersuchung vorgestellt, die im Rahmen des Verbundprojektes ‚Wissenswerkstatt Rechensysteme’ durchgeführt wurde. Im zweiten Teil des Beitrags wird auf die Problematik der Integration von Lehr- und Lernmodulen in Learning-Management-Systeme eingegangen und das als Lösungsansatz vorgestellte Sharable Content Object Reference Model SCORM) näher erläutert.
Structured eLearning: Wissenswerkstatt Rechensysteme
Strategien zur Distribution und Integration XML-basierter Lehr- und Lernmodule
Mediendidaktische Aufbereitung von Vorlesungsinhalten für das Online-Lernen
Intelligent Exploration of the Web. Series - Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing
Bootstrapping an Ontology-based Information Extraction System for the Web
Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems
ORAKEL: A Natural Language Interface to an F-Logic Knowledge Base
Current learning management systems often lack suffi-cient support for processes in e-learning, including teaching, learning, and administration processes. In this paper a new approach is presented for increasing the functionality of e-learning platforms by adding workflow-support. The use of a new variant of high-level Petri nets allows for an integrated description of complex learning objects and related processes. Advantages of workflow-based learning-object management can be seen especially for the customization and personalization of processes and the measurement of results, e.g., economic benefits.
Business Information Systems, Proceedings of 7th BIS 2004
Individualization of E-Learning Processes by Workflow-Based Learning-Object Management
Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Web Services
Specification of Invocable Semantic Web Resources
Proceedings of 1st International Conference on Web Services
Access Control for Semantic Web Services
Managing Multiple and Distributed Ontologies in the Semantic Web
In this article we illustrate a methodology for introducing and maintaining ontology based knowledge management applications into enterprises with a focus on Knowledge Processes and Knowledge Meta Processes. While the former process circles around the usage of ontologies, the latter process guides their initial set up. We illustrate our methodology by an example from a case study on skills management.
Methodology for Development and Employment of Ontology Based Knowledge Management Applications.
Ontologging is an ontology-driven environment to enable next generation knowledge management applications building on Semantic Web technology. In this paper we first present the conceptual architecture underlying Ontologging. Second, we focus on two important challenges for ontology-based knowledge management, namely the supporting multiple ontologies and managing ontology evolution. We will provide a general approach for handling these two essential issues within the Ontologging architecture.
Proceedings of the Conference on Intelligent Information Processing, World Computer Congress 2002, Montreal, Canada
Managing Multiple Ontologies and Ontology Evolution in Ontologging
The existing European IT skills gap is one of the biggest challenges for ICT industry during the next years. Industry, governmental bodies, and educational bodies have to intensify their co-operation and join forces to narrow the existing IT skills gap and to reduce the IT skills shortage in industry. Especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) mostly feel the increasing pressure on their future business due to a lack of available IT practitioners with the needed skills to enhance their electronic business, products and services. In this paper we discuss the terms IT skills gap and shortage and introduce an IT Competence Maturity Model as a mean to discuss and plan identified present and required future activities and measures. The model differentiates between existing qualification and certification schemes by qualification levels. The model intends to foster the understanding and to facilitate a more precise discussion of the current IT-skills situation in Europe.
eEurope - IT Skills: Challenging Europe's Economic Future
Workshop Proceedings eChallenges e-2003 Conference
Ontology mapping is important when working with more than one ontology. Typically similarity considerations are the basis for this. In this paper an approach to integrate various similarity methods is presented. In brief, we determine similarity through rules which have been encoded by ontology experts. These rules are then combined for one overall result. Several boosting small actions are added. All this is thoroughly evaluated with very promising results.
Proceedings of the First European Semantic Web Symposium
Ontology Mapping - An Integrated Approach
First European Semantic Web Symposium, {ESWS 2004}
OntoEdit Empowering SWAP: a Case Study in Supporting DIstributed, Loosely-Controlled and evolvInG Engineering of oNTologies (DILIGENT)
Identifying and presenting useful information for a given context is an important challenge for research and development of Web technologies.Providing access to information for humans and machines is one of the main motivations for the Semantic Web. Our contribution to the 2003 Semantic Web Grand Challenge realizes semantic-based search and access facilities to information represented by semantic portals. Such portals typically provide knowledge about a specific domain and rely on ontologies to structure and exchange this knowledge. Computer science exploits ontologies to enhance knowledge sharing and reuse. First, ontologies provide a common, shared understanding of knowledge in an interest domain. Second, they capture and formalize knowledge by connecting human understanding of symbols with their machine processability. As such, ontologies play a key role for realizing the Semantic Web. Our contribution extends and implements the basic conceptual framework SEAL (SEmantic portAL) with the aim of using semantic technologies in real-world scenarios through a reliable, scalable infrastructure. We also show how multiple semantic portals can interact with one another to exchange knowledge, thus fostering reuse. The building blocks of our extension include knowledge integration, processing, representation, organization, and access. Our approach has these benefits: (i) Significant reduction of content maintenance overhead, (ii) knowledge accessibility for both human and machine agents, atop existing information sources, and (iii) suitability for productive environments.
An Infrastructure for Scalable, Reliable Semantic Portals
FPGA Implementation of Population-based Ant Colony Optimization
The Symposium on Professional Practice in AI, IFIP WG12.5 - First IFIP Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations (AIAI)
Retrieving Content with Agents in Web Service E-Learning Systems
Proceedings of the 13th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2004)
REMINDIN': Semantic Query Routing in Peer-to-Peer Networks Based on Social Metaphors
Proceedings of the WWW'04 Workshop on Semantics in Peer-to-Peer and Grid Computing
International Conference on Semantics of a Networked World: Semantics for Grid Databases, 2004, Paris
Community web sites exhibit the property that multiple content providers exist. Of course, any portal is only as useful as the quality and amount of its content. Developing original content is time consuming and expensive. To offset the cost, we present a novel framework, viz. SEAL (SEmantic portAL), that builds on Semantic Web standards. We illustrate our approach with examples from the OntoWeb community portal. Community web sites exhibit two dominating properties: They often need to integrate many different information sources and they require an adequate web site management system. SEAL exploits ontologies for fulfilling the requirements set forth by these two properties. Ontologies provide a high level of sophistication for web information integration as well as for web site management.
Proceedings of International Conference on Knowledge Management 2002 (I-KNOW'02) , July 11-12 2002, Graz, Austria
Proceedings of the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI'04)
Comparing Conceptual, Partitional and Agglomerative Clustering for Learning Taxonomies from Text
The Thirteenth International World Wide Web Conference Alternate Track Papers & Posters
An Application Server for the Semantic Web
Proceedings of the WWW2004 Workshop on Application Design, Development and Implementation Issues in the Semantic Web, New York, NY, USA, May 18, 2004
Developing and Managing Software Components in an Ontology-based Application Server
The Semantic Web relies heavily on the formal ontologies that structure underlying data for the purpose of comprehensive and transportable machine understanding. Therefore, the success of the Semantic Web depends strongly on the proliferation of ontologies, which requires fast and easy engineering of ontologies and avoidance of a knowledge acquisition bottleneck. Ontology Learning greatly facilitates the construction of ontologies by the ontology engineer. The vision of ontology learning that we propose here includes a number of complementary disciplines that feed on different types of unstructured, semi-structured and fully structured data in order to support a semi-automatic, cooperative ontology engineering process. Our ontology learn-ing framework proceeds through ontology import, extraction, pruning, refinement, and evaluation giving the ontology engineer a wealth of coordinated tools for ontology modeling. Besides of the general framework and architecture, we show in this paper some exemplary techniques in the ontology learning cycle that we have implemented in our ontology learning environment, Text-To-Onto, such as ontology learning from free text, from dictionaries, or from legacy ontologies, and refer to some others that need to complement the complete architecture, such as reverse engineering of ontologies from database schemata or learning from XML documents.
Professionelles Wissensmanagement - Erfahrungen und Visionen (Proceedings), Baden-Baden 14.-16. März 2001
Standards in e-learning have been developed to support authoring, assembly, and execution of learning objects. Due to the fact that until now e learning is mainly applied in academic teaching, pricing of learning objects still plays a minor role in current research. So far, standards for learning objects lack concepts for the integration of prices. In this paper, we present an approach to support pricing of e-learning objects on different abstraction levels. The approach is based on combining price models and learning objects by extending the learning objects' XML metadata on the one hand and on the representation of processes as exchanges and manipulations of XML documents on the other hand. Consideration of price models in a workflow-based learning-object management system thus allows for explicitly modeling processes for pricing such as price negotiations between learners and learning object providers or mediators. Moreover, pricing processes can be integrated into learning, teaching, and administration processes and thereby enhance the cooperation of all participating actors.
Proc. Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS-38
Pricing of Learning Objects in a Workflow-based E-Learning Scenario
Dieser Beitrag gibt eine Übersicht über Informationen im WWW zum Thema Web Engineering und ist wie folgt gegliedert: Zunächst werden in typische Probleme bei der Entwicklung von Webanwendungen dargestellt. Im zweiten Kapitel folgen Methoden und Werkzeuge des Web Engineering, die Lösungen für einen Teil der geschilderten Probleme bieten. Im dritten Kapitel beleuchten wir aktuelle Trends im Web Engineering.
Wirtschaftsinformatik 2003: Medien - Märkte - Mobilität
Middleware 2004, ACM/IFIP/USENIX 5th International Middleware Conference, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
In the Evaluation of Ontology-based Tools workshop we intend to bring together researchers and practitioners from the fastly developing research areas Ontologies and Semantic Web. Currently the semantic web attracts researchers from all around the world. Numerous tools and applications of semantic web technologies are already available and the number is growing fast. However, deploying large scale ontology solutions typically involves several separate tasks and requires applying multiple tools. Therefore pragmatic issues such as interoperability are key if industry is to be encouraged to take up ontology technology rapidly. The main aim of this workshop is therefore to encourage and stimulate discussions about the evaluation of ontology-based tools. The large visibility of the semantic web, it’s tools and applications already attracts industrial partners, e.g. in numerous projects funded by the European Commission. In particular, as tools move from academic institutions into commercial environments they have to fulfil stronger requirements and in some cases new requirements (e.g. concerning scalability and multi-user access). Different tools from different sources need to interoperate. Typically tools are not anymore standalone solutions but integrated into a framework. This framework must be open to other commercial applications and provide connectors and interfaces to industrial standards. Larger applications need also larger ontologies and therefore require substantially more performance and scalability. A systematic evaluation of the tools might lead to a consistent level of quality and thus acceptance by industry. For the future this might lead into certification efforts for such tools.
1st Workshop on Evaluation of Ontology-based Tools (EON2002), Siguenza (Spain), 30th September 2002
The Bibster system is an application of the use of semantics in Peer-to-Peer systems, which is aimed at researchers that share bibliographic metadata. In this paper we describe the design and implementation of recommender functionality in the Bibster system which allows personalized access to the bibliographic metadata available in the Peer-to-Peer network. These functions are based on a semantic user profile which is created from content and usage information as well as a similarity function. Furthermore, these functions make use of the semantic topology of the Peer-to-Peer system.
Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Semantic Web Personalization, 2004
Proceedings of Semantische Technologien für Informationsportale, Informatik04
Process-Based Integration of Heterogeneous Information Sources
INFORMATIK 2004 - Informatik verbindet, Band 2, Proceedings of Semantic Web Services and Dynamic Networks
Ontology Based Specification of Web Service Policies
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Knowledge Management (I-KNOW'04)
A case study in supporting DIstributed, Loosely-Controlled and evolvInG Engineering of oNTologies (DILIGENT)
Socialisation in Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Management
Proceedings of the Conference on Knowledge Representation and Reasoning - KR-2004
Towards a Quantitative, Platform-Independent Analysis of Knowledge Systems
Proceedings of the 20th Conference on Computational Linguistics, COLING-2004
Feature Weighting for Co-occurrence-based Classification of Words
Project Halo: Towards a Digital Aristotle
Conceptual Structures: Broadening the Base, Proc. ICCS 2001
Recently, the idea of semantic portals on the Web or on the intranet has gained pop-ularity. Their key concern is to allow a community of users to present and share knowledge in a particular (set of) domain(s) via semantic methods. Thus, semantic portals aim at creating high-quality access - in contrast to methods like information retrieval or document clustering that do not exploit any semantic background knowledge at all. However, by way of this construction semantic portals may easily suffer from a typical knowledge management problem. Their initial value is low, because only little richly structured knowledge is available. Hence the motivation of its potential users to extend the knowledge pool is small, too. We here present SEAL-II, a methodology for semantic portals that extends its previous version, by providing a range of ontology-based means for hitting the soft spot between unstructured knowledge, which virtually comes for free, but which is of little use, and richly structured knowledge, which is expensive to gain, but of tremendous possible value. Thus, we give the portal builder tools and techniques in an overall framework to start the knowledge process at a semantic portal. SEAL-II takes advantage of the ontology in order to initiate the portal with knowledge, which is more usable than unstructured knowledge, but cheaper than richly structured knowledge.
SEAL-II -The soft spot between richly structured and unstructured knowledge
Problem-solving methods provide reusable architectures and components for implementing the reasoning part of knowledge-based systems. The Unified Problem-solving Method description Language UPML has been developed to describe and implement such architectures and components to facilitate their semiautomatic reuse and adaptation. In a nutshell, UPML is a framework for developing knowledge-intensive reasoning systems based on libraries of generic problem-solving components. The paper describes the components and adapters, architectural constraints, development guidelines, and tools provided by UPML. UPML is developed as part of the IBROW project which provides an internet-based brokering service for reusing problem-solving methods.
Knowledge and Information Systems (KAIS)
The Unified Problem-solving Method Development Language UPML
In diesem Artikel wird dargestellt, wie Verfahren aus der Wissensrepräsentation, der Computerlinguistik, dem Information Retrieval und aus dem Bereich Datenbanken eingesetzt werden können, um für Suchmaschinen und in Dokumen tenserver neue Funktionalitäten bereitzustellen.
GETESS – Ontologien, objektrelationale Datenbanken und Textanalyse als Bausteine einer semantischen Suchmaschine
In this paper a new approach towards temporal reasoning is presented that scales up from the temporal relations commonly used in Allen's qualitative interval calculus and in quantitative temporal constraint satisfaction problems to include interval relations with distances, temporal rules and other non-binary relations into the reasoning scheme. For this purpose, we generalize well-known methods for constraint propagation, determination of consistency and computation of the minimal network from simpler schemes that only allow for binary relations. Thereby, we and that levels of granularity play a major role for applying these techniques in our more expressive framework. Indeed, the technical preliminaries we provide are especially apt to investigate the switching between different granularities of representation, hence illucitating and exploiting the tradeoff between expressiveness and efficiency of temporal reasoning schemes on the one side and between expressiveness and understandability on the other side.
From Binary Temporal Relations to Non-Binary Ones and Back
Semantic Annotation is a basic technology for intelligent content and is beneficial in a wide range of content-oriented intelligent applications. In this paper we present our work in ontology-based semantic annotation, which is embedded in a scenario of a knowledge portal application. Starting with seemingly good and bad manual semantic annotation, we describe our experiences made within the KA2-initiative. The experiences gave us the starting point for developing an ergonomic and knowledge base-supported annotation tool. Furthermore, the annotation tool described are currently extended with mechanisms for semi-automatic information-extraction based annotation. Supporting the evolving nature of semantic content we additionally describe our idea of evolving ontologies supporting semantic annotation.
ETAI Journal - Section on Semantic Web (Linköping Electronic Articles in Computer and Information Science)
From Manual to Semi-automatic Semantic Annotation: About Ontology-based Text Annotation Tools
Technology for knowledge management has so far focused on the management of knowledge containers. We present an approach that is oriented towards managing knowledge contents instead by identifying knowledge items at various levels of formality. This is done by providing various types of meta data that are tied to ontologies for conceptual interlinkage. Knowledge items are embedded into knowledge processes, which are supported by a suite of ontology-based tools. In order to handle this sort of rich knowledge process, we introduce a meta process that puts special emphasis on constructing and maintaining the ontology when introducing knowledge management systems. In order to elucidate our approach, we describe a case study about the building of CHAR, the Corporate History Analyzer.
Knowledge portals provide views onto domain-specific information on the World Wide Web, thus facilitating their users to find relevant, domain-specific information. The construction of intelligent access and the provisioning of information to knowledge portals, however, remained an ad hoc task requiring extensive manual editing and maintenance by the knowledge portal providers. In order to diminish these efforts we use ontologies as a conceptual backbone for providing, accessing and structuring information in a comprehensive approach for building and maintaining knowledge portals. We present one research and one commercial case study that show how our approach is used in practice.
Knowledge Portals - Ontologies at Work (Draft Version)
Semantic Web - Das Web der nächsten Generation
* Ontologien sind formale Modelle einer Anwendungsdomäne, die dazu dienen den Austausch und das Teilen on Wissen zu erleichtern [5] Auf der methodischen Seite werden Techniken der objektorientierten Modellierung konsequent so weiterentwickelt, dass die Modelle nicht bloß im Verborgenen zur Strukturierung on Software dienen, sondern auch ein explizites Element der Benutzerschnittstelle darstellen und zur Laufzeit verwendet werden Auf der soziokulturellen Seite erfordern Ontologien daher die Einigung einer Gruppe von Anwendern auf die jeweiligen Begriffe und deren Zusammenhänge.
The core idea of the Semantic Web is to make information accessible to human and software agents on a semantic basis. Hence, Web sites may feed directly from the Semantic Web exploiting the underlying structures for human and machine access. We have developed a domain-independent approach for developing semantic portals, viz. SEAL (SEmantic portAL), that exploits semantics for providing and accessing information at a portal as well as constructing and maintaining the portal. In this paper we focus on semantics-based means that make semantic Web sites accessible from the outside, i.e. semantics-based browsing, semantic querying, querying with semantic similarity, and machine access to semantic information. In particular, we focus on methods for acquiring and structuring community information as well as methods for sharing information. As a case study we refer to the AIFB portal - a place that is increasingly driven by Semantic Web technologies. We also discuss lessons learned from the ontology development of the AIFB portal.
K-CAP 2001 - First Intenational Conference on Knowledge Capture, Victoria, Canada, Oct. 21-23, 2001
SEAL - A Framework for Developing SEmantic portALs
The core idea of the Semantic Web is to make information accessible to human and software agents on a semantic basis. Hence, web sites may feed di-rectly from the Semantic Web exploiting the underlying structures for human and machine access. We have developed a generic approach for developing seman-tic portals, viz. SEAL (SEmantic portAL), that exploits semantics for providing and accessing information at a portal as well as constructing and maintaining the portal. In this paper, we discuss the role that semantic structures make for establishing communication between different agents in general. We elaborate on a number of intelligent means that make semantic web sites accessible from the outside, viz. semantics-based browsing, semantic querying and querying with semantic similarity, and machine access to semantic information at a semantic portal. As a case study we refer to the AIFB web site a place that is increasingly driven by Semantic Web technologies.
BNCOD 2001 - 18th British National Conference on Databases, Oxford, UK, 9th - 11th July 2001
eLearning is efficient, task relevant and just-in-time learning grown from the learning-requirements of the new, dynamically changing, distributed business world. The term ?Semantic Web? encompasses efforts to build a new WWW architecture that enhances content with formal semantics, which enables better possibilities for navigating through the cyberspace and accessing its contents. As such, the Semantic Web represents a promising technology for realizing eLearning requirements. This paper presents an approach for implementing the eLearning scenario using Semantic Web technologies. It is primarily based on ontology-based descriptions of content, context and structure of the learning materials and thus provides flexible and personalized access to these learning materials.
WebNet2001, World Conference on the WWW and Internet, October 23-27, 2001, Orlando, Florida, USA
In database marketing, the behavior of customers is ana- lyzed by studying the transactions they have performed. In order to get a global picture of the behavior of a customer, his single transactions have to be composed together. In On-Line Analytical Processing, this operation is known as reverse pivoting. With the ongoing data analysis process, reverse pivoting has to be repeated several times, usually requir- ing an implementation in SQL. In this paper, we present a construction for conceptual scales for reverse pivoting in Conceptual Information Sys- tems, and also discuss the visualization. The construction allows the reuse of previously created queries without reprogramming and offers a visualization of the results by line diagrams.
Conceptual Structures: Broadening the Base. Proc. ICCS '01
Reverse Pivoting in Conceptual Information Systems
Ontologies have been established for knowledgesharing and are widely used as a means for con-ceptually structuring domains of interest. Withthe growing usage of ontologies, the problem of overlapping knowledge in a common domain be-comescritical. We propose the new method FCA-MERGE for merging ontologies following a bottom-up approach which offers a structural de-scription of the merging process. The method is guided by application-specific instances of the given source ontologies, that are to be merged. We apply techniques from natural language processing and formal concept analysis to derive a lattice of concepts as a structural result of FCA-MERGE. The generated result is then explored and trans-formed into the merged ontology with human in-teraction.
Proc. 17th Intl. Conf. on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI '01), Seattle, WA, USA
FCA-Merge: Bottom-Up Merging of Ontologies
Association rules are used to investigate large databases. The analyst is usually confronted with large lists of such rules and has to find the most relevant ones for his purpose. Based on results about knowledge representation within the theoretical framework of Formal Concept Anal- ysis, we present relatively small bases for association rules from which all rules can be deduced. We also provide algorithms for their calculation.
KI 2001: Advances in Artificial Intelligence. Proc. KI 2001
Intelligent Structuring and Reducing of Association Rules with Formal Concept Analysis
Ontologies provide explicit models of shared conceptualiza- tions, and are useful for modeling formal, semi-formal, and informal knowledge needed for communication within a company. As there is typ- ically more than one ontology used in a company (for instance one in each department), techniques are needed to merge ontologies in order to assure cross-company communication. In this paper, we summarize one such approach, called FCA{Merge. During its development, it turned out that a formal definition of `ontology' is needed. The resulting defini- tion is presented for the first time in detail in this paper.
Using Ontologies and Formal Concept Analysis for Organizing Business Knowledge
Text clustering typically involves clustering in a high dimensional space, which appears difficult with regard to virtually all practical settings. In addition, given a particular clustering result it is typically very hard to come up with a good explanation of why the text clusters have been constructed the way they are. In this paper, we propose a new approach for applying background knowledge during preprocessing in order to improve clustering results and allow for selection between results. We built various views basing our selection of text features on a heterarchy of concepts. Based on these aggregations, we compute multiple clustering results using K-Means. The results may be distinguished and explained by the corresponding selection of concepts in the ontology. Our results compare favourably with a sophisticated baseline preprocessing strategy.
Workshop "Text Learning: Beyond Supervision"
The Semantic Web relies heavily on the formal ontologies that structure underlying data for the purpose of compre- hensive and transportable machine understanding. There- fore, the success of the Semantic Web depends strongly on the proliferation of ontologies, which requires fast and easy engineering of ontologies and avoidance of a knowledge ac- quisition bottleneck. Ontology Learning greatly facilitates the construction of ontologies by theontology engineer. The vision of ontology learning that we propose here includes a number of comple- mentary disciplines that feed on dierent types of unstruc- tured, semi-structured and fully structured data in order to support a semi-automatic, cooperative ontology engineering process. Our ontology learning framework proceeds through ontology import, extraction, pruning, renement, and eval- uation giving the ontology engineer a wealth of coordinated tools for ontology modeling. Besides of the general frame- work and architecture, we show in this paper some exem- plary techniques in the ontology learning cycle that we have implemented in our ontology learning environment, Text- To-Onto, such asontology learning from free text, from dic- tionaries, or from legacy ontologies, and refer to some others that need to complement the complete architecture, such as reverse engineering of ontologies from database schemata or learning from XML documents.
Semantic Web 2001 (at WWW10), May 1, 2001, Hongkong, China
Learning Ontologies for the Semantic Web
Interoperability is one of the major design objectives when building applications for B2B and Semantic Web applications. In this paper, we present a methodology for engineering semantic knowledge such that these semantic structures are easier reusable when switching between several representa-tion languages. For this purpose, we re-consider the commonalities of representation languages and their usage in actual applica-tions. Out of this consideration we derive se-mantic patterns as a means to communicate knowledge at an epistemological level of rep-resentation and as a means for (partial) exe-cution by any particular implementation of any representation language. The underlying method we propose combines the advantages of formal specification methods (where fea-sible) with informal, natural language expla-nations such as used in software engineering for design patterns.
Proceedings of the IJCAI-01 Workshop on E-Business & the Intelligent Web, Seattle, WA, USA, August 5, 2001
Engineering ontologies using semantic patterns
In the Semantic Web Mining workshop we intend to bring together researchers and practitioners from the two fastly developing research areas Semantic Web and Web Mining. One can improve the results of Web Mining by exploiting the new semantic structures in the web. Furthermore, Web Mining can help to build the Semantic Web.
Ontologies serve as a means for establishing a conceptually concise basis for communicating knowledge for many purposes. They are a popular research topic in Artificial Intelligence, e.g. knowledge engineering, natural language processing, intelligent information integration and multi-agent systems. Recently, ontologies are also applied outside the AI world, e.g. in the World Wide Web community that try to represent machine-processable data on the web using ontologies and formal metadata.
Wissen ist seit jeher ein bedeutender Wettbewerbsfaktor für Unternehmen. Erst in neuerer Zeit jedoch wird das Management dieser Ressource als betriebliche Führungsaufgabe betrachtet. Um Wissen explizit und damit maschinell verarbeitbar zu machen, benötigt Wissen stets eine Repräsentation. Diese kann, je nach Art des Wissens und der geplanten Anwendung, vielfältige Erscheinungsformen haben, die von der gesprochenen über die geschriebene Sprache bis hin zu logik-basierten Formalismen reichen. Um betriebliches Wissen zu erschließen, ist oftmals die Verwendung vorhandener unvollständiger Wissensrepräsentationsformen erforderlich. Für die Konzeption einer IT-basierten Wissensmanagementumgebung ist die Auswahl des Repräsentationsformalismus und der Verarbeitungsmethoden von wesentlicher Bedeutung. Innerhalb des Workshops "Methoden und Techniken der Wissensverarbeitung" wurden sowohl unterschiedliche Methoden und Techniken der Wissensverarbeitung in Bezug auf das Wissensmanagement als auch deren Anwendungen in konkreten Problemdomänen diskutiert.
Professionelles Wissensmanagement - Erfahrungen und Visionen. Proc. WM '01
Methoden und Techniken der Wissensverarbeitung, Workshop der 1. Tagung Professionelles Wissensmanagement - Erfahrungen und Visionen, Baden-Baden, 15.-16. März 2001
One of the core challenges for the Semantic Web is the aspect of decentralization. Local structures can be modeled by ontologies. How- ever, in order to support global communication and knowledge exchange, mechanisms have to be developed for integrating the local systems. We adopt the database approach of autonomous federated database systems and consider an architecture for federated ontologies for the Semantic Web as starting point of our work. We identify the need for merging specific ontologies for developing feder- ated, but still autonomous web systems. We present the method FCA{ Merge for merging ontologies following a bottom-up approach which offers a structural description of the merging process. The method is guided by application-specific instances of the given source ontologies that are to be merged. We apply techniques from natural language pro- cessing and formal concept analysis to derive a lattice of concepts as a structural result of FCA{Merge. The generated result is then explored and transformed into the merged ontology with human interaction.
Proc. Intl. Workshop on Foundations of Models for Information Integration, Viterbo, Italy, Sept. 16-18, 2001
Ontology Merging for Federated Ontologies for the Semantic Web
We introduce the notion of iceberg concept lattices and show their use in Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD). Iceberg lattices are a conceptual clustering method, which is well suited for analyzing very large databases. They also serve as a condensed representation of frequent itemsets, as starting point for computing bases of association rules, and as a visualization method for association rules. Iceberg concept lattices are based on the theory of Formal Concept Analysis, a mathematical theory with applications in data analysis, information retrieval, and knowledge discovery.
Proc. GI-Fachgruppentreffen Maschinelles Lernen '01
Conceptual Clustering with Iceberg Concept Lattices
Automatic intelligent web exploration will benefit from shallow information extraction techniques if the latter can be brought to work within many different domains. The major bottleneck for this, however, lies in the so far difficult and expensive modeling of lexical knowledge, extraction rules, and an ontology that together define the information extraction system. In this paper we present a bootstrapping approach that allows for the fast creation of an ontology-based information extracting system relying on several basic components, viz. a core information extraction system, an ontology engineering environment and an inference engine. We make extensive use of machine learning techniques to support the semi-automatic, incremental bootstrapping of the domain-specific target information extraction system
Bootstrapping an Ontology-based Information Extraction System
Inside AIFB - Access to a Semantic Knowledge Portal
RDF(S)1 constitutes a newly emerging standard for metadata that is about to turn the World Wide Web into a machine-understandable knowledge base. It is an XML application that allows for the denotation of facts and schemata in a web-compatible format, building on an elaborate object-model for describing concepts and relations. Thus, it might turn up as a natural choice for a widely-useable ontology description language. However, its lack of capabilities for describing the semantics of concepts and relations beyond those provided by inheritance mechanisms makes it a rather weak language for even the most austere knowledge-based system. This paper presents an approach for modeling ontologies in RDF(S) that also considers axioms as objects that are describable in RDF(S). Thus, we provide flexible, extensible, and adequate means for accessing and exchanging axioms in RDF(S). Our approach follows the spirit of the World Wide Web, as we do not assume a global axiom specification language that is too intractable for one purpose and too weak for the next, but rather a methodology that allows (communities of) users to specify what axioms are interesting in their domain.
Knowledge Media in Healthcare: Opportunities and Challenges
Ontobroker applies Artificial Intelligence techniques to improve access to heterogeneous, distributed and semistructured information sources as they are presented in the World Wide Web or organization-wide intranets. It relies on the use of ontologies to annotate web pages, formulate queries and derive answers. In the paper we will briefly sketch Ontobroker. Then we will discuss its main shortcomings, i.e. we will share the lessons we learned from our exercise. We will also show how On2broker overcomes these limitations. Most important is the separation of the query and inference engines and the integration of new web standards like XML and RDF.
International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems
Lessons Learned from Applying AI to the Web
Providing user support for the application of Data Mining algorithms in the field of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) is an important issue. Based on ideas from the fields of statistics, machine learning and knowledge engineering we provided a general framework for defining user support. The general framework contains a combined top-down and bottom-up strategy to tackle this problem. In the current paper we describe the Algorithm Selection Tool (AST) that is one component in our framework. AST is designed to support algorithm selection in the knowledge discovery process with a case-based reasoning approach. We discuss the architecture of AST and explain the basic components. We present the evaluation of our approach in a systematic analysis of the case retrieval behaviour and thus of the selection support offered by our system.
Classification and Information Processing at the Turn of the Millennium, Proc. of the 23rd Annual Conf. of the Gesellschaft fuer Klassifikation e.V.
Algorithm Selection Support for Classification
Richly interlinked, machine-understandable data constitute the basis for the Semantic Web. We provide a framework, CREAM, that allows for creation of metadata. While the annotation mode of CREAM allows to create metadata for existing web pages, the authoring mode lets authors create metadata almost for free while putting together the content of a page. As a particularity of our framework, CREAM allows to create relational metadata, i.e. metadata that instantiate interrelated definitions of classes in a domain ontology rather than a comparatively rigid template-like schema as Dublin Core. We discuss some of the requirements one has to meet when developing such an ontology-based framework, e.g. the integration of a metadata crawler, inference services, document management and a meta-ontology, and describe its implementation, viz. Ont-O-Mat a component-based, ontology-driven Web page authoring and annotation tool.
Proceedings of the 11th International World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2002, Honolulu, Hawaii, May 7-11, 2002
Authoring and Annotation of Web Pages in CREAM
Der Erfolg von Organisationen hängt unmittelbar von dem zur Verfügung stehenden Wissen ab. Wissensmanagement dient dazu,die Kreierung und Nutzung des Wissens nicht nur dem Zufall zu überlassen,sondern auch gezielt Verbesserungen vorzunehmen.Dabei müssen Wissensmanagementmaßnahmen primär die nichttechnologischen Aspekte berücksichtigen. Sekundär,aber eminent ichtig für effizientes Arbeiten sind Wissensmanagementsysteme, die nicht nur eine IT-Infrastruktur bieten,sondern Wissen inhaltsbasiert zur Verfügung stellen.Hierfür eignen sich Ontologien und Metadaten.In diesem Artikel ird ein Rahmen vorgestellt,der dazu dient, Wissensmanagementsysteme,die auf Ontologien und Metadaten aufbauen,zu konstruieren und zu nutzen. Für die entsprechenden Prozesse werden Methoden und Werkzeuge vorgestellt,die die Konstruktion und die Nutzung von Ontologien für Zwecke des Wissensmanagements erleichtern bzw. erlauben,selbst aber wiederum in anderen Anwendungsgebieten, wie z.B.Semantic Web und e-Learning,relevant sind.
Wissensmanagement mit Ontologien und Metadaten
The next generation of the Web is often characterized as the ?Semantic Web?: information will no longer only be intended for human readers, but also for processing by machines, enabling intelligent information services, personalized Web-sites, and semantically empowered search-engines. The Semantic Web requires interoperability on the semantic level. Semantic interoperability requires standards not only for the syntactic form of documents, but also for the semantic content. Proposals aiming at semantic interoperability are the results of recent W3C standardization efforts, notably XML/XML Schema and RDF/RDF Schema. In this paper, we make the following claims: · A further representation and inference layer is needed on top of the currently available layers of the WWW. · To establish such a layer, we propose a general method for encoding arbitrary ontology representation languages into RDF/RDF Schema. · We illustrate the extension method by applying it to a particular ontology representation and inference language (OIL).
The Semantic Web - on the respective Roles of XML and RDF
Knowledge Engineering was in the past primarily concerned with building and developing knowledge-based systems, an objective which puts Knowledge Engineering in a niche of the world-wide research efforts - at best. This has changed dramatically: Knowledge Engineering is now a key technology in the upcoming knowledge society. Companies are recognizing knowledge as their key assets, which have to be exploited and protected in a fast changing, global and competitive economy. This situation has led to the application of Knowledge Engineering techniques in Knowledge Management. The demand for more efficient (business to) business processes requires the interconnection and interoperation of different information systems. But information access and integration is not an algorithmic task that is easy to solve: much knowledge is required to resolve the semantic differences of data residing in two information systems. Thus Knowledge Engineering has become a major technique for information integration. And, last but not least the fast growing World Wide Web generates an ever-increasing demand for more efficient knowledge exploitation and creation techniques. Here again Knowledge Engineering technologies may become the key technology for solving the problem. In this paper we discuss these recent developments and describe our view of the future.
Knowledge Engineering and Agent Technologies
Proc. of First Workshop on the Semantic Web at the Fourth European Conference International Workshop on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, Lisbon, Portugal 18-20 September 2000
Bringing Knowledge to Business Processes. Papers from 2000 AAAI Spring Symposium
Begriffliche Wissensverarbeitung - Methoden und Anwendungen
Proceedings of the First Workshop on Ontology Learning OL'2000, Berlin, Germany, August 25, 2000.
Semantic Annotation is a basic technology for intelli-gent content and is beneficial in a wide range of content-oriented intelligent applications. In this paper we present our work in ontology-based semantic annotation, which is embedded in a scenario of a knowledge portal appli-cation. Starting with seemingly good and bad manual semantic annotation, we describe our experiences made within the KA2-initiative. The experiences gave us the starting point for developing an ergonomic and knowl-edge base-supported annotation tool. Furthermore, the annotation tool described are currently extended with mechanisms for semi-automatic information-extraction based annotation. Supporting the evolving nature of semantic content we additionally describe our idea of evolving ontologies supporting semantic annotation.
Proceedings of the COLING 2000 Workshop on Semantic Annotation and Intelligent Content, Luxembourg, August 5-6, 2000
We describe an approach towards integrating the semantics of semi-structured documents with task- support for (weakly-structured) business processes and proactive inferencing capabilities of a desk sup- port agent. The proactive assistance of the intelli- gent agent is motivated by the requirements posed in (weakly-structured) business processes performed by a typical knowledge worker. First, we introduce a reactive agent that provides knowledge out of an organizational memory for the business task at hand. The building of the reactive agent requires rather rigid query structures that do not _t nicely with varying precision of knowledge found in the organizational memory. Thus, we propose an enhanced agent that reasons proactively about what might be interesting to you and what might be dueinyour next step.
Proceedings of the AAAI Symposium on Bringing Knowledge to Business Processes, Stanford, CA, USA, March 20-22, 2000
A Proactive Inferencing Agent for Desk Support
Up-to-date corporate information research, i.e. the active tracking and management of knowl-edge relevant to one's business, is a major task for knowledge-intensive companies. While the correct analysis of market situations and competitors are critical requirements for success, the failure to provide adequate knowledge about one's business environment may incur large losses. In order to support the tracking of external business knowledge and its analysis, we have built CHAR, the Corporate History AnalyseR, a new type of system for gathering and analysing tem-poral data about companies. CHAR integrates facts about organizational structures and strategic activities into a common knowledge base. Building on an ontology with an elaborate temporal structure, knowledge pieces are amalgamated in order to derive a plentitude of summarizing views onto current and previous states of affairs.
Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management, Basel, Switzerland, October 30-31, 2000
The Times They Are A-Changin' - The Corporate History Analyzer
Abstract. Richly interlinked, machine-understandable data constitute the basis for the Semantic Web. We provide a framework, S-CREAM, that allows for creation of metadata and is trainable for a speci¯c domain. Annotating web documents is one of the major techniques for creating metadata on the web. The implementation of S-CREAM, Ont-O-Mat supports now the semi-automatic annotation of web pages. This semi- automatic annotation is based on the information extraction component Amilcare. Ont-O-Mat extract with the help of Amilcare knowledge struc- ture from web pages through the use of knowledge extraction rules. These rules are the result of a learning-cycle based on already annotated pages.
S-CREAM - Semi-automatic CREAtion of Metadata
Skill management systems serve as technical platforms for mostly, though not exclusively, corporate-internal market places for skills and know-how. The systems are typically built on top of a database that contains profiles of employees and applicants. Thus, the skills may be retrieved through database queries. However, these approaches incur two major problems, viz. the finding of approximate matches and the maintenance of skill data. In this paper we describe two systems that leverage corporate skill knowledge by offering advanced means for both. We present ProPer that uses means from decision theory to allow for compensate skill matching. Then, we describe OntoProPer that combines these methods with intelligent means for inferencing of skill data. For the latter an ontology provides background knowledge, i.e. conceptual structures and rules, which supplement the skill database with ground and inferred facts from secondary information, such as project documents. These supplement facts re-duce maintenance efforts since much secondary information is gathered in the organizational memory through common working tasks. Keywords: skill management, human resource management, ontologies, intranet application.
Leveraging Corporate Skill Knowledge - From ProPer to OntoProper
Non-taxonomic relations between concepts appear as a major building block in common ontology definitions. In fact, their definition consumes much of the time needed for engineering an ontology. We here describe a new approach for mining non-taxonomic conceptual relations from text building on shallow text processing tech-niques. We use a generalized association rule algorithm that does not only detect re-lations between concepts, but also determines the appropriate level of abstraction at which to define relations. This is crucial for an appropriate ontology definition in order that it be succinct and conceptually adequate and, hence, easy to understand, maintain, and extend. We also perform an empirical evaluation of our approach with regard to a manually engineered ontology. For this purpose, we present a new paradigm suited to evaluate the degree to which relations that are learned match relations in a manually engineered ontology.
EKAW-2000 - 12th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, October 2-6, 2000, Juan-les-Pins, France
ECDL 2000 - Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries. Lisbon, Portugal, September 18-20, 2000
An Information Food Chain for Advanced Applications on the WWW
This paper discusses steps towards an order-theoretic foundation for maintaining and merging ontologies. We claim that the commitment to ontologies having certain structural properties allows a semantically founded (semi-)automation of operations on ontologies. We provide a list of research questions and give first answers. In particular we argue for the use of Formal Concept Analysis for maintaining ontologies.
Proc. Referenzmodellierung 2000, Siegen, Germany, October 12-13, 2000
Towards an Order-Theoretical Foundation for Maintaining and Merging Ontologies
This papers presents an approach for modeling largescale ontologies. We extend well-established methods for modeling concepts and relations by transportable methods for modeling ontological axioms. The gist of our approach lies in the way we treat the majority of axioms. They are categorized into different types and specified as complex objects that refer to concepts and relations. Considering language and system particularities, this first layer of representation is then translated into the target representation language. This two-layer approach benefits engineering, because the intended meaning of axioms is captured by the categorization of axioms. Classified object representations allow for versatile access to and manipulations of axioms via graphical user interfaces.
Proceedings of the ECAI'2000 Workshop on on Applications of Ontologies and Problem-Solving Methods, Berlin
Ontology Engineering beyond the Modeling of Concepts and Relations
Community web portals serve as portals for the information needs of particular communities on the web. We here discuss how a comprehensive, ontology-based approach for building and maintaining a high-value community web portal has been conceived and implemented. The ontology serves as a semantic backbone for accessing knowledge on the portal, for contributing information, as well as for developing and maintaining the portal. In particular, the ontology allows for flexible querying and inferencing of knowledge. Actual usage of our technology is facilitated through a set of tools that are about to turn our research system into a portal for wide-spread usage right now. The development of these tools has greatly benefited from some first experiences we had with actual users of the community web portal of the knowledge acquisition community.
AAAI 2000/IAAI 2000 - Proceedings of the 17th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence and 12th Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference, Austin/TX, USA, July 30-August 3, 2000
Poster Session at the 5th International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems NLDB'2000, Versailles - France, June 28-30, 2000
The application of any data mining algorithm needs a goal-oriented preprocessing of the data. In practical applications the preprocessing task is very time consuming and has an important in uence on the quality of the generated models. In this paper we describe an new approach for data preprocessing. While merging database technology with classical data mining systems using an OLAP engine as interface we outline an architecture for OLAP-based preprocessing, which enables interactive and iterative processing of data. This high level of interaction between human and database systems enables eÃ†cient understanding and preparing of data for building scalable data mining applications. Our case study taken from the data-intensive telecommunications domain uses the proposed methodology for the generation of user communication proles. The user proles are then investigated with data mining algorithms for clustering customers with similar communication behavior and describing the investigated clusters using intensional rules.
DaWaK'2000 - 2nd International Conference on Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery, LCNS September 4-6, 2000, Greenwich, UK
Enhancing Preprocessing in Data-Intensive Domains using Online-Analytical Processing
Ontologies have become an important means for structuring information and information systems and, hence, important in knowledge as well as in software engineering. However, there remains the problem of engineering large and adequate ontologies within short time frames in order to keep costs low. For this purpose, eorts have been made to facilitate the ontology engineering process, in particular the acquisition of ontologies from domain texts. We present a general architecture for discovering conceptual structures and engineering ontologies. Based on the architecture we propose a new approach to extend current approaches, who mostly focus on the semi-automatic acquisition of taxonomies, by the discovery of non-taxonomic conceptual relations. We use a generalized association rule algorithm that does not only detect relations between concepts, but also determines the appropriate level of abstraction at which to define relations.
Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE'2000)
Semi-automatic Engineering of Ontologies from Text
Non-taxonomic relations between concepts appear as a major building block in common ontology definitions. In fact, their definition consumes much of the time needed for engineering an ontology. We here describe a new approach to discover non-taxonomic conceptual relations from text building on shallow text processing techniques. We use a generalized association rule algorithm that does not only detect relations between concepts, but also determines the appropriate level of abstraction at which to define relations. This is crucial for an appropriate ontology definition in order that it be succinct and conceptually adequate and, hence, easy to understand, maintain, and extend. We also perform an empirical evaluation of our approach with regard to a manually engineered ontology. For this purpose, we present a new paradigm suited to evaluate the degree to which relations that are learned match relations in a manually engineered ontology.
ECAI 2000, Proceedings of the 14th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2000
Currently dozens of XML-based applications exist or are under development. Many of them offer DTDs that define the structure of actual XML documents. Access to these documents relies on special purpose applications or on query languages that are closely tied to the document structures. Our approach uses ontologies to derive a canonical structure, i.e. a DTD, to access sets of distributed XML documents on a conceptual level. We will show how the combination of conceptual modeling, inheritance, and inference mechanisms on the one hand with the popularity, simplicity, and flexibility of XML on the other hand leads to applications providing a broad range of high quality information.
How to Structure and Access XML Documents With Ontologies
In this paper we present a new approach for language-neutral modeling of large-scale ontologies. The gist of our approach lies in the way we treat the majority of axioms. Instead of capturing axiom semantics in some specific representation language, we categorize axioms into different types and specify them as complex objects that refer to concepts and relations. A separate layer that is language-specific, in fact it may even vary for different inference engines working on the same language, describes how these objects are translated into a goal representation. In addition to its far reaching independence with regard to specific representation languages, this approach benefits engineering since the semantics of important types of axioms may be much more elucidated in our ontology engineering tool, OntoEdit, than in comparable tools. Furthermore, our approach is principled in a way that allows for comparably easy adaptation of our tool to requirements for modeling axioms in specific domains.
Proceedings of the German Workshop "Modellierung" 2000, Koblenz, Germany, April, 5-7, 2000
Representation Language-Neutral Modeling of Ontologies
Proceedings of the Third International Semantic Web Conference, Hiroshima, Japan, 2004.
A Conceptual Information System consists of a database together with conceptual hierarchies. The visualization of arbitrary combinations of conceptual hierar­ chies by nested line diagrams allows an on­line interaction with a database to analyze data conceptually. The chapter describes the conception of Conceptual Information Systems and discusses the use of their visualization techniques for On­Line Analytical Processing (OLAP).
Conceptual On-Line Analytical Processing
In this paper, we propose the algorithm Pascal which introduces a novel optimization of the well-known algorithm Apriori. This optimization is based on a new strategy called pattern counting inference that relies on the concept of key patterns. We show that the support of frequent non-key patterns can be inferred from frequent key patterns without accessing the database. Experiments comparing Pascal to the three algorithms Apriori, Close and Max-Miner, show that Pascal is among the most efficient algorithms for mining frequent patterns.
SIGKDD Exploration Special Issue on Scalable Algorithms
Mining Frequent Patterns with Counting Inference
Pascal : un algorithme d'extraction des motifs frequents
The problem of the relevance and the usefulness of extracted association rules is of primary importance because, in the majority of cases, real-life databases lead to several thousands association rules with high confidence and among which are many redundancies. Using the closure of the Galois connection, we define two new bases for association rules which union is a generating set for all valid association rules with support and confidence. These bases are characterized using frequent closed itemsets and their generators; they consist of the non-redundant exact and approximate association rules having minimal antecedents and maximal consequents, i.e. the most relevant association rules. Algorithms for extracting these bases are presented and results of experiments carried out on real-life databases show that the proposed bases are useful, and that their generation is not time consuming.
Computational Logic - CL 2000. Proc. CL '00
Mining Minimal Non-Redundant Association Rules Using Frequent Closed Itemsets
In this paper, we discuss Conceptual Knowledge Discovery in Databases (CKDD) in its connection with Data Analysis. Our approach is based on Formal Concept Analysis, a mathematical theory which has been developed and proven useful during the last 20 years. Formal Con­ cept Analysis has led to a theory of conceptual information systems which has been applied by using the management system TOSCANA in a wide range of domains. In this paper, we use such an application in database marketing to demonstrate how methods and procedures of CKDD can be applied in Data Analysis. In particular, we show the interplay and integration of data mining and data analysis techniques based on For­ mal Concept Analysis. The main concern of this paper is to explain how the transition from data to knowledge can be supported by a TOSCANA system. To clarify the transition steps we discuss their correspondence to the five levels of knowledge representation established by R. Brachman and to the steps of empirically grounded theory building proposed by A. Strauss and J. Corbin.
Conceptual Structures:Logical, Linguistic, and Computational Issues. Proc. ICCS '00
Conceptual Knowledge Discovery and Data Analysis
CEM is an email management system which stores its email in a concept lattice rather than in the usual tree structure. By using such a conceptual multi-hierarchy, the system provides more in retrieving stored emails. The paper presents the underlying mathematical structures, discusses requirements for their maintenance and presents their implementation.
Conceptual Structures: Logical, Linguistic, and Computational Issues. Proc. ICCS'00
The aim of this paper is to indicate how TOSCANA may be extended to allow graphical representations not only of concept lat- tices but also of concept graphs in the sense of Contextual Logic. The contextual-logic extension of TOSCANA requires the logical scaling of conceptual and relational scales for which we propose the Peircean Al- gebraic Logic as reconstructed by R. W. Burch. As graphical represen- tations we recommend, besides labelled line diagrams of concept lattices and Sowa's diagrams of conceptual graphs, particular information maps for utilizing background knowledge as much as possible. Our considera- tions are illustrated by a small information system about the domestic in Austria.
Conceptual Structures: Logical, Linguistic, and Computational Issues. Proc. ICCS '00
We propose to modify a type of ant algorithm called Population based Ant Colony Optimization (P-ACO) to allow implementation on an FPGA architecture. Ant algorithms are adapted from the natural behavior of ants and used to find good solutions to combinatorial optimization problems. General layout on the FPGA and algorithmic description are covered. The most notable achievements featured in this paper are a runtime reduction and including the approximation of the heuristic function by a small set of favored decisions which changes over time.
Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology (FPT), Hong Kong, 2002
Population based Ant Colony Optimization on FPGA
Principles of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery. Proc. PKDD 2000
CEM - A Program for Visualization and Discovery in Email
Conceptual Information Systems are based on a formaliza- tion of the concept of `concept' as it is discussed in traditional philo- sophical logic. This formalization supports a human-centered approach to the development of Information Systems. We discuss this approach by means of an implemented Conceptual Information System for supporting IT security management in companies and organizations.
Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management. Methods, Models, and Tools. Proc. EKAW '00
Conceptual Information Systems Discussed Through an IT-Security Tool
This paper discusses steps towards an order-theoretic foundation for maintaining and merging ontologies. We claim that the commitment to ontologies having certain structural properties allows a semantically founded (semi-) automation of operations on ontologies. We provide a list of research questions and give first answers. In particular we argue for the use of Formal Concept Analysis for maintaining ontologies.
Verbundtagung Wirtschaftsinformatik 2000
In this paper, we propose the algorithm Pascal which introduces a novel op- timization of the well-known algorithm Apriori. Being provided with a given minsup threshold, Pascal discovers all frequent patterns by performing as few counting as possible. In order to derive the support of larger patterns without accessing the database whenever it is possible, we use the knowledge about the support of some of their sub-patterns, the so-called key patterns. Experiments comparing Pascal to the three algorithms Apriori, Close and Max-Miner, each of which being representative of a frequent patterns discovery strategy, show that Pascal is the most eÃ†cient algorithm for extracting patterns from strongly correlated data. Moreover, its execution times are equivalent to those of Apriori and Max-Miner when data is weakly correlated.
Actes des 16 Journ Bases de Donn Avanc, Blois, France, 24-27 Octobre 2000
Community web portals serve as portals for the information needs of particular communities on the web. We here discuss how a comprehensive and flexible strategy for building and maintaining a high-value community web portal has been conceived and implemented. The strategy includes collaborative information provisioning by the community members. It is based on an ontology as a semantic backbone for accessing information on the portal, for contributing information, as well as for developing and maintaining the portal. We have also implemented a set of ontology-based tools that have facilitated the construction of our show case - the community web portal of the knowledge acquisition community.
WWW9 - Proceedings of the 9th International World Wide Web Conference, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, May, 15-19, 2000
On2broker provides brokering services to improve access to heterogeneous, distributed and semistructured information sources as they are presented in the World Wide Web. It relies on the use of ontologies to make explicit the semantics of web pages. In the paper we will discuss the general architecture and main components of On2broker and provide some application scenarios. We show how we can provide semantic based access to web sources described with HTML, XML, or RDF.
Proceedings of the World Conference on the WWW and Internet (WebNet 99), Honolulu, Hawai, USA, October 25-30, 1999
On2broker: Semantic-Based Access to Information Sources at the WWW
The diversity and availability of information sources on the World Wide Web has set the stage for integration and reuse at an unparalleled scale. There remain signi.cant hurdles to exploiting the extent of the Web's resources in a consistent, scalable and maintainable fashion. The autonomy and volatility of Web sources complicates maintaining wrappers consistent with the requirements of the data's target application. Also, the sources' semantic heterogeneity requires practical methods to mediate their contents. This paper describes our e.orts in developing an algebra on semistructured data. This algebra is the tool we use to develop and maintain wrappers, and mediate their semantic content. We describe wrapper creation, re.nement and maintenance as the process of developing a congruity measure between source data sets and their target application. The congruity measure expresses explicitly the context within which the source data is relevant for its target use. Enabling mediation between wrappers corresponds to establishing an articulation between data sources through a similarity measure. The similarity measure encapsulates conditions under which distinct sources may be used together. Examples using the algebra show how the Summarize operator enables creation and maintenance of a target data set from a source. We de.ne the Match operator and demonstrate its use in mediating the content of similar sources. We have applied these two operators respectively to an online dictionary with over 125,000 di.erent terms, and to the web pages of NATO gov- ernments and their allies. We give a description of the rule language that we use to wrap and mediate sources, and conclude with the applications that motivate the other operations in the algebra.
1999 IEEE Knowledge and Data Engineering Exchange Workshop (KDEX'99), Chicago
An Algebra for Semantic Interoperation of Semistructured Data
Access to XML-based documents currently relies on query languages that are closely tied to the document structures, i.e. when looking for information one has to be aware of this structure and cannot easily specify the information needs conceptually. Our approach uses ontologies to access sets of distributed XML documents on a conceptual level. We integrate conceptual modeling, inheritance, and inference mechanisms on the one hand with the popularity, simplicity, and flexibility of XML on the other hand. We present an approach that defines the relationship between a given ontology and a document type definition (DTD) for classes of XML documents. Thus, we are able to supplement syntactical access to XML documents by conceptual, i.e. real semantic access.
Proceedings of the 12th Workshop for Knowledge Acquisition, Modeling and management (KAW'99), Banff, Canada
Ontologies as Conceptual Models for XML Documents
Principles of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, Proceedings of the Third European Symposium, PKDD '99, LNAI 1704, Prag, CZ, Sept. 15-18, 1999
AST: Support for Algorithm Selection with a CBR Approach
Proceedings of Workshop "From Machine Learning to Knowledge Discovery in Databases" at the ICML 1999, Bled, Slowenia, June, 26-31, 1999
Forecasting the Fault Rate Behavior for Cars
Dynamically and partially reconfiguranle field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) allow to swap in and out tasks without interrupting the execution of other tasks. The FPGA controller can decide on-line where to place new tasks onto the FPGA. Rearranging a subset of the tasks executing on the FPGA may allow the next pending task to be processed sooner. When tasks are rearranged, the arriving input data have to be buffered while the execution is suspended. In this paper, we describe and evaluate an evolutionary approach to solve the problem of placing and rearranging tasks that are supplied by input streams which have constant data rates. We use two genetic algorithms (GAs): one for iodentifying feasible rearrangements and the other for scheduling a selected rearrangement so that the delay caused by this rearrangement is small and the limited input buffer size is respected.
Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing
An Evolutionary Approach to Dynamic Task Scheduling on FPGAs with Restricted Buffer
IJCAI '99 - Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Stockholm, Schweden, August, 1-6, 1999
HCI '99 - Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Munich, Germany, August, 22-27, 1999
An Architecture for Recovering Business Events Bottom-Up
WWW8 - Poster Proceedings of the 8th World Wide Web Conference, Toronto, May 11-14, 1999
IWANN '99 - Proceedings of International Working Conference on Artificial and Neural Networks. Alicante, ES, 1999
A System for Facilitating and Enhancing Web Search
Proceedings of the international Workshop on Intelligent Workflow and Process Management: The New Frontier for AI in Business (IJCAI-99). Stockholm, Sweden
Knowledge and Business Processes: Approaching an Integration. In:OM '99 - Proceedings of the international Workshop on Knowledge Management and Organizational Memory (IJCAI-99). Stockholm, Sweden
Knowledge and Business Processes: Approaching an Integration
Workshop on Exploring Synergies of Knowledge Management and Case-Based Reasoning (AAAI-99)
CIA '99 - Proceedings of the 3rd international Workshop on Cooperating Information Agents. Upsala, Sweden
GETESS - Searching the Web Exploiting German Texts
A library of software components should be essentially more than just a juxtaposition of its items. For problem-solving methods the notion of a family is suggested as means to cluster the items and to provide partially a structure of the library. This paper especially investigates how the similar control flows of the members of such a family can be described in one framework.
Proceeding of the 11th European Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modeling,and Management (EKAW '99), Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, May 26-29, 1999
Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI)
Describing Similar Control Flows for Families of Problem-Solving Methods
Knowledge-based Systems: Survey and Future Directions, Proceeding of the 5th German Conf. on Knowledge-based Systems, Wuerzburg, March 1999,
Organizational Memory: Knowledge Acquisition, Integration, and Retrieval Issues
Quality information systems (QIS) are providing all the quality-relevant information during the whole life cycle of a product to all the people involved. With regard to e-learning applications this means that a QIS should provide quality-relevant information to the authors of e-learning materials as well as to the instructors and the learners using them. In this work it is described how such a QIS can be implemented in the context of e-learning applications. In this connection a prototypic system design and strategies for the integration of a QIS into the information system infrastructure of e-learning providers are presented.
Proceedings of ICL 2002 – Blended Learning. Villach/Österreich, 25.-27.09.2002
Implementation of Quality Information Systems for E-Learning Applications
This paper provides an overview of important developments in the field of Knowledge Engineering. We discuss the paradigm shift from a transfer to a modeling approach and discuss two prominent methodological achievements: problem-solving methods and ontologies. To illustrate these and additional concepts we outline several modeling frameworks: CommonKADS, MIKE, PROTÉGÉ-II, and D3. We also discuss two fields which have emerged in the last few years and are promising areas for applying and further developing concepts and methods from Knowledge Engineering: Intelligent Information Integration and Knowledge Management.
Knowledge-based Systems: Survey and Future Directions, Proceeding of the 5th German Conf. on Knowledge-based Systems, Wuerzburg, March 1999
Knowledge Engineering: Survey and Future Directions
The World Wide Web (WWW) can be viewed as the largest multimedia database that has ever existed. However, its support for query answering and automated inference is very limited. Metadata and domain specific ontologies were proposed by several authors to solve this problem. We developed Ontobroker which uses formal ontologies to extract, reason, and generate metadata in the WWW. The paper describes the formalisms and tools for formulating queries, defining ontologies, extracting metadata, and generating metadata in the format of the Resource Description Framework (RDF), as recently proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). These methods provide a means for semantic based query handling even if the information is spread over several sources. Furthermore, the generation of RDF descriptions enables the exploitation of the ontological information in RDF-based applications.
Database Semantics: Semantic Issues in Multimedia Systems, Proceedings TC2/WG 2.6 8th Working Conference on Database Semantics (DS-8), Rotorua, New Zealand
The paper describes the MIKE (Model-based and Incremental Knowledge Engineering) approach for developing knowledge-based systems. MIKE integrates semiformal and formal specification techniques together with prototyping into a coherent framework. All activities in the building process of a knowledge-based system are embedded in a cyclic process model. For the semiformal representation we use a hypermedia-based formalism which serves as a communication basis between expert and knowledge engineer during knowledge acquisition. The semiformal knowledge representation is also the basis for formalization, resulting in a formal and executable model, specified in the Knowledge Acquisition and Representation Language (KARL). Since KARL is executable the model of expertise can be developed and validated by prototyping. A smooth transition from a semiformal to a formal specification and further on to design is achieved because all the description techniques rely on the same conceptual model to describe the functional and non-functional aspects of the system. Thus, the system is thoroughly documented at different description levels, each of which focuses on a distinct aspect of the entire development effort. Traceability of requirements is supported by linking the different models to each other.
Journal of Automated Software Engineering
Developing Knowledge-Based Systems with MIKE
Following the tradition of workshops on application of Machine Learning that took place last years, this year a combined ICML/AAAI 98 workshop took place in Madison, Wisconsin. Where the ICML-97 workshop was focussed on real applications, this years workshop sought to proceed along these lines and extend the focus to the structure behind such applications. Questions where raised like: is there a possibility to find such structures, if so, which general structure can be found and how can they be described? Does our knowledge of structure in application processes aim us at new topics? Which topics should be raised, or are important? The one-days workshop program finally consisted of 8 accepted papers of which 7 where actually presented, and a total of 4 invited speakers let their lights shine on several topics concerning the process of application of ML. At the end of the day there was a discussion session that reflected on issues that rose during the presentations (which meant a slight change of program as it was originally defined).
The Methodology of Applying Machine Learning: Problem Definition, Task Decomposition and Technique Selection. Workshop at the AAAI-98/ ICML-98. Madison, WI, july 27th, 1998
Providing User Support for Developing Knowledge Discovery Applications; A Midterm report
Der Bereich der Wissensentdeckung aus großen Datenbeständen ('Knowledge Discovery in Databases', KDDS spielt eine immer größer werdende Rolle in der Wirtschaft. Ein wichtiges Akzeptanzkriterium bei der Einführung von Wissensentdeckungssverfahren in der Industrie bildet die Benutzerunterstützung. Insbesondere für ungeschulte Anwender, die mit einer Vielzahl von möglicherweise überaus komplexen Problemen konfrontiert sind, die mit Hilfe von Wissensentdeckungsverfahren gelöst werden könnten, stellt sich die Frage, wie diese Anwender unterstützt werden können. Frühere Erfahrungen aus den Bereichen Wissensakquisition und Knowledge Engineering weisen darauf hin, daß die Bereitstellung einer methodischen Vorgehensweise und das Wiederverwenden von bereits erfolgreich angewendeten (Teil-) Lösungen eine gute Basis bilden, um eine Benutzerunterstützung zu entwickeln. In unserem Ansatz spielt das Zerlegen von Aufgaben und die Anwendung von Problemlösungsmethoden ('Problem Solving Methods', PSMs) zusammen mit einer halbautomatischen Konfigurierung einer Anfangslösung für ein KDD-Problem eine zentrale Rolle. Diese Anfangslösung kann dem Anwender vorgeschlagen werden, der sie als Basis für weitere Tests und Verfeinerungen benutzen kann. Dieses Kapitel behandelt den Aspekt der Benutzerunterstützung bei der Lösung von KDD-Problemen basierend auf methodischen Arbeiten in den Bereichen KDD und Knowledge Engineering.
Data Mining: Theoretische Aspekte und Anwendungen. Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsinformatik
Benutzerunterstützung für Wissensentdeckung in Datenbanken
Most enterprises agree that knowledge is an essential asset for success and survival on a increasingly competitive and global market. This awareness is one of the main reasons for the exponential growth of knowledge management in the past decade. Our approach to knowledge management is based on ontologies, and makes knowledge assets intelligently accessible to people in organizations. Most company-vital knowledge resides in the heads of people, and thus successful knowledge management does not only consider technical aspects, but also social ones. In this paper, we describe an approach to intelligent knowledge management that explicitly takes into account the social issues involved. The proof of concept is given by a large-scale initiative involving knowledge management of a virtual organization.
Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management (PAKM'98), Basel, Switzerland
Context dependency of knowledge models causes several problems: unreliability of knowledge-based systems, maintainability effort and limitations for sharing and reuse. Problem-solving methods are knowledge models of the reasoning process of knowledge-based systems. In the paper we present a method called inverse verification to deal with the situatedness of problem-solving methods. Inverse verification investigates the context dependency of a method by making underlaying assumptions explicit. It uses failed proof attempts as a search method for assumptions and analysis of these failures for constructing and refining assumptions.
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS)
Inverse Verification of Problem-Solving Methods
The Knowledge Acquisition and Representation Language (KARL) combines a description of a knowledge-based system at the conceptual level (a so-called model of expertise) with a description at a formal and executable level. Thus, KARL allows the precise and unique specification of the functionality of a knowledge-based system independent of any implementational details. A KARL model of expertise contains the description of domain knowledge, inference knowledge, and procedural control knowledge. That is, it includes the specification of static and procedural knowledge. For capturing these different types of knowledge KARL offers corresponding modeling primitives which are based on Frame-logic and Dynamic Logic. A declarative semantics for a complete KARL model of expertise is given by a novel combination of these two types of logic. In addition, an operational definition of this semantics, which relies on a fixpoint approach, is given. This operational semantics defines the basis for the implementation of the KARL interpreter which includes appropriate algorithms for efficiently evaluating KARL specifications. This enables the evaluation of KARL specifications by means of testing.
IEEE Transcactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering
The Knowledge Acquisition And Representation Language KARL
The paper presents an ontology driven approach to bridging reference resolution. It presents a formal definition of an ontology and defines an inference mechanism based on this definition. The application domain of the approach are short texts of a biochemical nature.
Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Computational Semantics (IWCS-5), Tilburg, Netherlands
Ontology Driven Resolution of Bridging References
We investigate the formal specification of the reasoning process of knowledge-based systems. We analyse the corresponding parts of the KADS specification languages KARL and (ML)2 and deduce some general requirements for such specifications. The essence of these languages is that they integrate a declarative specification of inferences with control information. The languages differ in the way they achieve this integration and each of them has shortcomings. We propose a unifying semantical framework that integrates the core of the different solutions and overcomes their problems. We define a semantics and axiomatization with the logic MLCM (Modal Logic of Creation and Modification). MLCM was developed to reason about dynamic properties of the specification language COLD. MCL (Modal Change Logic) is a generalization of MLCM based on experience in applying MLCM to knowledge-based systems and specifications with evolving algebras. The main contribution of the paper is not to introduce yet another specification language. Instead we aim on four goals: (1) defining a framework for describing the dynamic reasoning behaviour of knowledge-based systems which integrates existing approaches; (2) defining a semantics for the specification of the dynamic reasoning behaviour of a knowledge-based system within the states as algebras setting of MLCM that overcomes several shortcomings and ad-hoc solutions of existing approaches; and (3) providing an axiomatization that enables the development of mechanised proof support. (4) Through conceptual and semantical clarity, we investigate the relationships to similar work in software engineering and database engineering opening possibilities for further cross-fertilization of these fields.
Modal Change Logic (MCL): Specifying the Reasoning of Knowledge-based Systems
The paper provides an approach for developing reliable knowledge-based systems. Its main contributions are: Specification is done at an architectural level that abstracts from a specific implementation formalism. The model of expertise of CommonKADS distinguish different types of knowledge and describes their interaction. Our architecture refines this model and adds an additional level of formalization. The Karlsruhe Interactive Verifier KIV is used for specifying and verifying such architectures. We have chosen KIV for four reasons: (1) it provides the formal means required for specifying the dynamics of knowledge-based systems (i.e., dynamic logic), (2) it provides compositional specifications, (3) it provides an interactive theorem prover, and (4) last but not least it comes with a sophisticated tool environment developed in several realistic application projects.
Information Technology Management: An International Journal, special issue on Lessons Learned About Safety-Critical Software
Formal support for Development of Knowledge-Based Systems
Problem-solving methods are means to describe the inference process of knowledge-based systems. During the last years, a number of these problem-solving methods have been identified that can be reused for building new systems. However, problem-solving methods require specific types of domain knowledge and introduce specific restrictions on the tasks that can be solved by them. These requirements and restrictions are assumptions that play a key role in reusing problem-solving methods, in acquiring domain knowledge, and in defining the problem that can be tackled by the knowledge-based systems. In the paper, we discuss the different roles, assumptions play in the development process of knowledge-based systems and provide a survey of assumptions used by diagnostic problem solving. We show how such assumptions introduce target and bias for goal-driven machine learning and knowledge discovery techniques.
International Journal on Intelligent Systems (IJIS)
The Role of Assumptions in Knowledge Engineering
Developing software by selecting, adapting, combining, and integrating existing components instead of starting the system development process from scratch has become a key factor in economic software development. However, such a development process has to deal with four problems: First, components must be selected. Second, components must be adapted because they neither fit precisely the task that should be performed nor do they necessarily fit well to other selected components. Third, components must be combined and their interaction must be established. Fourth, it may be necessary to decompose complex problems into smaller subtasks for which components can be found. In this case, a general system frame must be established that enables to form an integrated system out of separate components. In this paper, we present our means to deal with these problems: brokers, adapters, connectors, and task structures. Although we discuss our approach in the context of problem-solving methods, some concepts are also applicable to software components in general.
Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-98), Brighton, UK
Key Issues for Automated Problem-Solving Methods Reuse
During the last years, a number of formal specification languages for knowledge-based systems have been developed. Characteristic for knowledge-based systems are a complex knowledge base and an inference engine which uses this knowledge to solve a given problem. Specification languages for knowledge-based systems have to cover both aspects: they have to provide means to specify a complex and large amount of knowledge and they have to provide means to specify the dynamic reasoning behaviour of a knowledge-based system. This paper will focus on the second aspect, which is an issue considered to be unsolved. For this purpose, we have surveyed existing approaches in related areas of research. We have taken approaches for the specification of information systems (i.e., Language for Conceptual Modelling and \troll), approaches for the specification of database updates and the dynamics of logic programs (Transaction Logic and Dynamic Database Logic), and the approach of Abstract State Machines. This paper, which is a short version of a longer report, concentrates on the methodology of our comparison and on the conclusions we have drawn. The detailed description of the languages and a worked-out example have been removed from this version because of space limitations.
Transaction and Change in Logic Databases
Specification of Dynamics for Knowledge-based Systems (extended abstract)
In this paper we present the following view on problem-solving methods for knowledge-based systems: Problem-solving methods describe an efficient reasoning strategy to achieve a goal by introducing assumptions about the available domain knowledge and the required functionality. Assumptions, dynamic reasoning behavior, and functionality are the three elements necessary to characterize a problem-solving method. In the paper we elaborate this argument and introduce a framework for characterising and developing such efficient problem solvers.
The Essence of Problem-Solving Methods: Making Assumptions for Gaining Efficiency
The specification of reusable and sharable terminological knowledge is one of the key issues in now-a-day knowledge engineering. Proving formal languages with precise semantics and inference support can significantly support this activity. The aim of the workshop was to understand and to compare existing approaches developed in other research communities. We investigated research on description languages and research on object-oriented databases. Both provide the combination of rich terminological modelling primitives with well studied semantics and inference support. Their better understanding and their comparison that should highlight common aspects and differences were the goals of the workshop.
Workshop on Comparing Description and Frame Logics
This paper gives an overview about the development of the field of Knowledge Engineering over the last 15 years. We discuss the paradigm shift from a transfer view to a modeling view and describe two approaches which considerably shaped research in Knowledge Engineering: Role-limiting Methods and Generic Tasks. To illustrate various concepts and methods which evolved in the last years we describe three modeling frameworks: CommonKADS, MIKE, and PROTÉGÉ-II. This description is supplemented by discussing some important methodological developments in more detail: specification languages for knowledge-based systems, problem-solving methods, and ontologies. We conclude with outlining the relationship of Knowledge Engineering to Software Engineering, Information Integration and Knowledge Management.
Knowledge Engineering: Principles and Methods
m Folgenden werden unterschiedliche Vorgehensweisen zur Entwicklung wissensbasierter Systeme (WBS) aufgezeigt. In der Praxis noch weit verbreitet ist der Ansatz des Rapid Prototyping. Beim Rapid Prototyping wird informales Wissen unmittelbar in einer operationalen Wissensrepräsentationsform oder einer Programmiersprache implementiert. Eine andere Vorgehensweise setzt sog. Role Limiting Methoden voraus. Role Limiting Methoden sind ausführbare Werkzeuge, die bereits alles Wissen zur Lösung von Problemen eines speziellen Typs enthalten. Sie müssen nur noch um das bereichsspezifische Wissen angereichert werden. Bei modellbasierte Entwicklungsmethoden werden eine Reihe aufeinanderfolgender Modelle bis hin zum endgültigen System entwickelt, deren Detaillierungs- und Formalisierungsgrad zunimmt. Der Beitrag skizziert alle drei Vorgehensweisen und zeigt deren Vor- und Nachteile und deren Einsatzgebiete auf.
Vorgehensmodelle für die betriebliche Anwendungsentwicklung
Vorgehensmodelle für die Entwicklung wissensbasierter Systeme
This paper introduces a conceptual framework for cooperation support in educational e-business applications. The main goal of this conceptual framework is to provide a systematical overview for the development and application of cooperation support in educational e-business applications. The foundations of educational e-business applications will be briefly explained at first. With respect to cooperation, the problems in existing approaches will be analyzed. The core elements of this framework, i.e. the different forms of cooperation, the organizational units of cooperation, diverse supporting services and their integration through spatial metaphors will be then described. This work is developed in the context of the project ViKar.
Proc. of the International Coference on e-Business (ICEB2002), May 23-26 2002, Beijing, China
A Framework for the Cooperation Support in Educational e-Business Applications
The value of the knowledge incorporated in an enterprise is more and more recognized and enterprises are defining knowledge management strategies to capitalize this assets. But up to now there is little methodological support for building, maintaining and using knowledge management systems (KMS). To remedy this we propose an enterprise reference scheme, that can be used to elicitate the requirements for building a KMS, to model parts of the KMS, and to study the impact of a KMS on an organization.
Proceedings of the Modellierung '98, Münster
Towards an Enterprise Reference Scheme for Building Knowledge Management Systems
The Knowledge Annotation Initiative of the Knowledge Acquisition Community (KA2) is an initiative to develop an ontology that models the knowledge acquisition community (its researchers, topics, products, etc.). This ontology will form the basis to annotate WWW documents of the KA community in order to enable intelligent access to these documents. KA2 is an open joint-initiative where the participants are actively involved in (i) a distributive ontological engineering process to model the knowledge acquisition community (a domain ontology), and (ii) annotating web pages relevant for the KA community (the instances of the domain ontology). KA2 aims at intelligent knowledge retrieval from the Web and automatic derivation of ``new'' knowledge. In other words, it aims at knowledge-based reasoning on the Web, as opposed to information retrieval. Another objective of the initiative is to get better insight in distributive ontological engineering processes.
Proceedings of the International Conference on Formal Ontologies in Information Systems (FOIS-98), Trento, Italy
The Ontological Engineering Initiative (KA)2
The World Wide Web (WWW) is currently one of the most important electronic information sources. However, its query interfaces and the provided reasoning services are rather limited. Ontobroker consists of a number of languages and tools that enhance query access and inference service of the WWW. The technique is based on the use of ontologies. Ontologies are applied to annotate web documents and to provide query access and inference service that deal with the semantics of the presented information. In consequence, intelligent brokering services for web documents can be achieved without requiring to change the semiformal nature of web documents.
Proceedings of the 11th International Flairs Conference (FLAIRS-98), Sanibel Island, Florida
The World-Wide Web is changing the nature of software development to a distributive plug & play process. This requires a new way of managing software by so-called intelligent software brokers. The aim of the European IBROW3 project is to develop an intelligent brokering service that enables third party knowledge-component reuse through the World-Wide Web. Suppliers provide libraries of knowledge components adhering to some standard, and customers can consult these libraries -- through intelligent brokers -- to configure a knowledge system suited to their needs by selection and adaptation. IBROW3 integrates research on heterogeneous databases, interoperability and web technology with knowledge-system technology and ontologies. The aim is to develop a broker that can handle web requests for classes of knowledge system (e.g. diagnostic systems) by accessing libraries of reusable problem-solving methods on the Web, and selecting, adapting and configuring these methods in accordance with the domain at hand. The aim of this paper is to give a general overview of the project and to presents its main ideas and approach. IBROW3 has started on January 1, 1998 and thus we can only present preliminary results.
Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modeling, and Management (KAW '98), Banff, Canada
IBROW3: An Intelligent Brokering Service for Knowledge-Component Reuse on the World-Wide Web
The Knowledge Annotation Initiative of the Knowledge Acquisition Community, (KA)2 is an initiative to develop an ontology that models the knowledge acquisition community (its researchers, topics, products, etc.). This ontology will form the basis to annotate WWW documents of the KA community in order to enable intelligent access to these documents. (KA)2 is an open joint-initiative where the participants are actively involved in (i) a distributive ontological engineering process to model the knowledge acquisition community (a domain ontology), and (ii) annotating web pages relevant for the KA community (the instances of the domain ontology). (KA)2 aims at intelligent knowledge retrieval from the Web and automatic derivation of ``new'' knowledge. In other words, it aims at knowledge-based reasoning on the Web, as opposed to information retrieval. Another objective of the initiative is to get better insight in distributive ontological engineering processes.
Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modeling, and Management (KAW '98)
The Knowledge Annotation Initiative of the Knowledge Acquisition Community (KA)2 is an initiative officially launched at EKAW-97 to develop an ontology that models the knowledge acquisition community (its researchers, topics, products, etc.). This ontology will form the basis to annotate WWW documents of the knowledge acquisition community in order to enable intelligent access to these documents. (KA)2 is an open joint-initiative where the participants are actively involved in (i) a distributive ontological engineering process to model the knowledge acquisition community (a domain ontology), and (ii) annotating webpages relevant for the KA community (the instances of the domain ontology). (KA)2 aims at "intelligent" knowledge retrieval from the Web and automatic derivation of "new" knowledge. In other words, it aims at knowledge-based reasoning on the Web, as opposed to the more usual information retrieval. Another objective of the initiative concerns a distributive ontological engineering process.
The Knowledge Annotation Initiative of the Knowledge Acquisition Community (KA)2
Problem solving methods (PSMs) are domain-independent reasoning components, which specify patterns of behavior which can be reused across applications. While the availability of extensive PSM libraries and the emerging consensus on PSM specification languages indicate the maturity of the field, a number of important research issues are still open. In particular, very little progress has been achieved on foundational and methodological issues. Existing libraries of PSMs lack a clear theoretical basis and only provide weak support for the method development process, usually in the form of informal guidelines. In this paper we will address these issues by illustrating a framework which characterizes PSMs in terms of problem commitments, problem-solving paradigms and domain assumptions. This framework provides i) a theoretical foundation for situating PSM research and individual PSMs, as well as ii) an organization which allows us to characterize method development and selection as a process of navigating through a three-dimensional space (defined by the three components of our framework). Individual moves through this space are specified by means of adapters. In the paper we will illustrate these ideas in detail, with examples taken from parametric design problem solving.
Structured Development of Problem Solving Methods
The World Wide Web (WWW) is currently one of the most important electronic information sources. However, its query interfaces and the provided reasoning services are rather limited. Ontobroker consists of a number of languages and tools that enhance query access and inference service in the WWW. It provides languages to annotate web documents with ontological information, to represent ontologies, and to formulate queries. The tool set of Ontobroker allows us to access information and knowledge from the web and to infer new knowledge with an inference engine based on techniques from logic programming. This article provides several examples that illustrate these languages and tools and the kind of service that is provided. We also discuss the bottlenecks of our approach that stem from the fact that the applicability of Ontobroker requires two time-consuming activities: (1) developing shared ontologies that reflect the consensus of a group of web users and (2) annotating web documents with additional information.
Ontobroker: Or How to Enable Intelligent Access to the WWW
The World Wide Web (WWW) is currently one of the most important electronic information sources. However, its information retrieval mechanisms and the provided reasoning services are rather limited. Ontobroker consists of a number of languages and tools that enhance query access and inference service in the WWW. The paper provides a detailed description of how to use Ontobroker.
This paper describes research that is performed in the course of a project where a methodology for providing user support for KDD processes plays a central role. Although methodologically we aim at supporting the whole process of applying inductive learning techniques, the current paper focusses on a part of this process. The main issue in this paper is the support of data preprocessing for KDD. One of our experiences is that preprocessing of data possibly is the most time consuming part of Data Mining applications, and is almost always included in an application of machine learning. We give some insights in the metadata we calculate from a dataset as part of the method for user support and focus on how metadata can be used to guide preprocessing definition in combination with top down task decomposition. DCT (Data Characterisation Tool) is implemented in a software environment (Clementine). Some examples are given that resulted from running the UGM/DCT (User Guidance Module combined with DCT) on the data. Finally we will provide some examples based on UCI datasets and consider the improvements we made w.r.t. other approaches as well as what we gained using this extension to our User Guidance Module (UGM) for user support.
Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI '98), Brighton, UK, August 23-28, 1998
Using a Data Metric for Offering Preprocessing Advice in Data Mining Applications
In this work we’ll present an overview of all the quality-relevant data occurring in the context of e-learning applications. This compilation may be used as a basis for the modelling and implementation of quality information systems within the scope of e-learning. Firstly we’ll have a look on the state of the art related to this work. Then we’ll present different types of quality-relevant data, which should be the principal constituents every quality information system for e-learning applications should have. Afterwards we’ll close with a conclusion and an outlook.
Proceedings of the Second Research Workshop of the European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN) "Research and Policy in Open and Distance Learning", Hildesheim, 21.-23.03.2002
Quality-Relevant Data in the Context of eLearning Applications
The development of knowledge-based systems requires the availability of domain and problem-solving knowledge. This knowledge must be acquired from domain experts. For this purpose the paper proposes to use scenarios to enrich the set of acquisition techniques. Scenarios are known from requirements engineering and object oriented modelling where they are used to define a vision of a future system. In knowledge engineering their scope has to be extended, but their advantages (ease of understanding, support of communication, focus on relevant aspects etc.) still hold for knowledge-based systems.
Proceedings of Information Technology and KNOWledge Systems (IT&KNOWS), a part of the 15th IFIP World Computer Congress, Vienna/Budapest
Use-Cases and Scenarios for Developing Knowledge Based Systems
INFORMATIK 2004 - Informatik verbindet, GI-Jahrestagung, Ulm
Entwicklung eines Informationsportals für die Informatik
Informationssysteme im E-Business und E-Government (EMISA 2004)
RDF-basierte Integration von E-Learning-Metadaten in einem Informationsportal
In this paper we present the language G-KARL. G-KARL allows to describe the static, the functional and the dynamic view to a knowledge based system (kbs) graphically. This graphical representation makes the communication between the expert and the knowledge engineer easier. The underlying conceptual model for G-KARL is derived from the KADS model of expertise. Every primitive of G-KARL may be mapped to a language primitive of the language KARL (Knowledge Acquisition and Representation Language). KARL is a formal language, so every primitive of G-KARL has a defined formal semantics. KARL is an executable language, so G-KARL is also executable which supports the validation of the model of expertise by testing and thus allows the model of expertise to be built by prototyping. G-KARL allows to visualize the execution of this model which additionally supports the validation process. While G-KARL contains well established graphical means for the different views like the OMT-notation for the static view, data flow diagrams for the functional view and program flow diagrams for the dynamic view, G-KARL also offers new graphical primitives for specifying elementary inference actions within data flow diagrams and for specifying sufficient and necessary conditions within the static view. In KARL these model elements are described by L-KARL, a logical language enriched by additional modeling primitives.
Proceedings der 4. Deutschen Tagung "Wissensbasierte Systeme", XPS'97, Bad Honnef, 5.-7. März 1997
G-KARL, A graphical, formal, and executable specification language
The paper introduces an approach for the specification and verification of knowledge-based systems that combines conceptual and formal techniques. We identify four elements of the specification of a knowledge-based system: a task definition, a problem-solving method, a domain model, and an adapter that relates the other elements. We present abstract data types and a variant of dynamic logic as formal means to specify and verify these different elements. As a consequence of our conceptual model we can decompose the overall verification task of the knowledge-based systems into different proof obligations. Each proof obligation deals with a different aspect of the entire system. The use of the conceptual model in specification and verification improves understandability and reduces the effort for both activities. The modularization enables reuse of specifications and proofs. A knowledge-based system can be build by combing and adapting different components.
Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Software Engineering & Knowledge Engineering (SEKE'97), Madrid, Spain, June 18-20, 1997
The rapid-prototyping approach of the early 1980's failed to deliver high-quality knowledge-based systems. As a reaction, in the early 90's, there has been a large activity in the knowledge engineering community to define methodologies for principled knowledge-based system development. These methodologies (e.g., CommonKADS, MIKE, VITAL, TASK) succeeded in organising the development process as a set of intermediate models of the functionality of the system to be built, to end in the final implementation. Feedback from industries that use these methodologies in practice reveals, however, that building a high-quality implemented system remains a difficult and error-prone process. The main reason for this is that, although the structure of the development process is rather well understood, the transition process is less clear. In this paper, we outline an approach for assuring the transition of a conceptual model into a final implementation which satisfies particular quality criteria. The approach is based on identifying adequate transition paths and activities on models in order to achieve particular quality criteria. An essential part of the approach is formed by methodological guidelines and tool support such as change-management systems, reusable libraries, translators, decision support tools, and support for validation and verification.
Making Knowledge Engineering Technology Work
Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) is currently a hot topic in industry and academia. Unfortunately, the focus of research behind most emerging products is on underlying algorithms and modelling techniques. The main bottleneck for KDD applications is not the lack of techniques. The challenge is to exploit and combine existing algorithms effectively. In this paper, we describe the project Citrus which addresses these practically relevant issues. Starting from a commercially available system, we develop a scalable, extensible tool inherently based on the view of KDD as an interactive and iterative process. In this paper we sketch the main components of this system, namely an information manager for effective retrieval of data and results, an execution server for efficient execution, and a process support interface for guiding the user through the process.
Proceedings of the 1st European Symposium on Principles of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, Trondheim, Norway
Towards Process-Oriented Tool Support for KDD
Mit Fragen der methodischen Unterstützung des Entwicklungsprozesses von Softwaresystemen beschäftigen sich verschiedene Teildisziplinen der Informatik. Speziell sind hier das Software Engineering, das Information Systems Engineering und das Knowledge Engineering zu nennen. Während das Software Engineering insbesondere Beiträge zur Beschreibung des Entwicklungsprozesses durch Vorgehensmodelle und zur Beschreibung (nicht-)funktionaler Aspekte von Softwaresystemen geliefert hat, beschäftigte man sich im Information Systems Engineering zunächst primär mit der Modellierung statischer Aspekte von Informationssystemen durch semantische Datenmodelle. In den zurückliegenden Jahren gewannen dynamische Aspekte jedoch immer mehr an Bedeutung. Im Knowledge Engineering wurden ursprünglich hauptsächlich Fragen der methodischen Untersützung der Wissenserhebung untersucht, in jüngster Zeit bekamen jedoch Methoden zur Wissensmodellierung und -wiederverwendung ein immer stärkeres Gewicht. Bei einer näheren Betrachtung dieser Fachgebiete zeigt es sich, daß einerseits eine Vielzahl gemeinsamer Fragestellungen und Lösungsansätze existiert, andererseits aber auch sehr unterschiedliche Problemstellungen untersucht werden. [ . . . ] Um einen systematischen Vergleich der Methodiken zu ermöglichen, erarbeitete die Arbeitsgruppe einen Kriterienkatalog, mit dem charakteristische Eigenschaften einer Methodik erfaßt werden können. Dieser Kriterienkatalog wird nachfolgend verwendet, um jede der vier Methodiken detailliert zu charakterisieren. [aus der Einleitung]
Abschlußbericht der GI-Arbeitsgruppe "Vergleichende Analyse von Problemstellungen und Lösungsansätzen in den Fachgebieten Information Systems Engineering, Software Engineering und Knowledge Engineering"
An important success factor for the field of KDD lies in the development and integration of methods for supporting the construction and execution of KDD processes. Crucial aspects in this context are the (incremental) development of a precise problem description, a decomposition of this top level problem description into manageable and compatible subtasks which can be reused, and a selection and combination of adequate algorithms for solving these subtasks. In this paper we describe an approach for supporting the systematic decomposition of a KDD process into subtasks and for selecting appropriate problem-solving methods and algorithms for solving these subtasks. Our approach has been partially integrated into the CLEMENTINE system and has been used to develop a real world application in the area of prediction.
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD'97)
A Guided Tour through the Data Mining Jungle
Problem-solving methods (PSMs) for knowledge-based systems need to make assumptions to provide effective and efficient problem solving: assumptions about the scope of the problem they should solve and assumptions about the domain knowledge they can use as a resource for their reasoning process. If these assumptions are made explicit they can improve the reusability of PSMs by guiding the selection and refinement process of problem-solving methods for a given application and by defining goals for the acquisition process of domain knowledge. However, making the underlying assumptions explicit is not an easy task. The goal of our paper is to contribute to solve this problem. The main idea is to construct mathematical proofs and analysis of their failure as a systematic means for forming assumptions. Tool support is provided by adapting the Karlsruhe Interactive Verifier (KIV) for our purpose. KIV is an interactive theorem prover that returns with open goals if a proof could not be completed. These open goals can be used to derive the assumptions we are looking for.
Workshop Proceedings Problem-solving Methods for Knowledge-based Systems in Connection with the Fifteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'97), Nagoya, Japan, August 23-25, 1997
Hunting for Assumptions as Developing Method for Problem-Solving Methods
We present the architecture of an intelligent broker for enabling the use of problem-solving methods via the World Wide Web (WWW). The core component of such a broker is realised by an ontologist and an adapter. Ontologies mediate between domain-specific requirements and knowledge, task-specific problem descriptions and method-specific terms describing the competence and requirements of the reasoning components. The ontological reasoning for relating the different ontologies is supported by the ontologies. Adapters are necessary to provide domain knowledge and case data to problem-solving methods and to rephrase the output of problem-solving methods into domain-specific terms. Therefore, the ontologist mediates the selection and adaptation process of PSMs whereas the adapter mediates the execution of them.
The World Wide Web (WWW) can be viewed as the largest knowledge-based system that has ever existed. However, its support in automated inference is very limited. We present ontologies as means to enrich web documents for representing semantic information for overcoming this bottleneck. Ontologies enable informed search for information as well as the derivation of additional knowledge that is not directly represented as facts in the WWW. Such an ontology can be used by a subgroup of web users that share a common point of interest like it is known from newsgroups in the internet. Therefore, we propose ontologies to be used to annotate intranets or certain subnets within the entire WWW. The paper presents such an ontology that can be used to annotate web documents of a research community. In fact, we have chosen the knowledge acquisition community. Further, an architecture of an ontology-based broker is sketched that can make use of these ontologies for the automatic derivation of knowledge.
Proceedings of the International Workshop Intelligent Information Integration during the 21st German Annual Conference on Artificial Intelligence (KI'97), Freiburg, Germany, September 9-12, 1997
Semantically Enriched Subnets of the WWW
In recent years the demand on business process modelling (BPM) became apparent in many different communities. To provide a unifying framework for different needs on enterprise modelling we define an enterprise reference scheme and show how the development of knowledge based systems can be incorporated in such a framework. From this framework conclusions for tool support are drawn.
Proceedings of the 10th European Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modeling, and Management (EKAW'97)
We present a structured approach for developing problem-solving methods for knowledge-based systems. We view this process as a stepwise combination process of methods and adapters. We start from very generic search strategies with very general data structures and add adapters that refine the states of the search process, that refine state transitions, and that add assumptions necessary to link the competence of a method with given problem definitions and domain knowledge. The paper provides three novel contributions to knowledge engineering. First, we provide a structured approach for the development and adaptation of problem-solving method. Second, we show how the usability-reusability trade-off of task-specific versus task-independent problem-solving methods can easily be overcome by the virtual existence of specific methods. Third, we provide the concept of an integrated library combining reusable problem definitions, problem-solving methods, and adapters.
The Tower-of-Adapter Method for Developing and Reusing Problem-Solving Methods
In recent years two main technologies for knowledge sharing and reuse have emerged: ontologies and problem solving methods (PSMs). Ontologies specify reusable conceptualizations which can be shared by multiple reasoning components communicating during a problem solving process. PSMs describe in a domain-independent way the generic reasoning steps and knowledge types needed to perform a task. Typically PSMs are specified in a task-specific fashion, using modelling frameworks which describe their control and inference structures as well as their knowledge requirements and competence. In this paper we discuss a novel approach to PSM specification, which is based on the use of formal ontologies. In particular our specifications abstract from control, data flow and other dynamic aspects of PSMs to focus on the logical theory associated with a PSM (method ontology). This approach concentrates on the competence and knowledge requirements of a PSM, rather than internal control details, thus enabling black-box-style reuse. In the paper we also look at the nature of PSM specifications and we show that these can be characterised in a task-independent style as generic search strategies. The resulting "modelling gap" between method-independent task specifications and task-independent method ontologies can be bridged by constructing the relevant adapter ontology, which reformulates the method ontology in task-specific terms. An important aspect of the ontology-centred approach described here is that, in contrast with other characterisations of task-independent PSMs, it does away with the simple, binary distinction between weak and strong methods. We argue that any method can be defined in either task-independent or task-dependent style and therefore such distinction is of limited utility in PSM reuse. The differences between PSMs which affect reuse concern the ontological commitments which they make with respect to domain knowledge and goal specifications.
Proceedings of 10th European Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modeling, and Management (EKAW`97)
Using Ontologies For Defining Tasks, Problem-Solving Methods and Their Mapping
In the last years a common notion of a Problem-Solving Method (PSM) emerged from different knowledge engineering frameworks. As a generic description of the dynamic behaviour of knowledge based systems PSMs are favored subjects of reuse. Up to now, most investigations on the reuse of PSMs focus on static features and methods as objects of reuse. By this, they ignore a lot of information of how the PSM was developed that is, in principle, entailed in the different parts of a conceptual model of a PSM. In this paper the information of the different parts of PSMs is reconsidered from a reuse process point of view. A framework for generalized problem-solving methods is presented that describes the structure of a category of methods based on family resemblances. These generalized methods can be used to structure libraries of PSMs and - in the process of reuse - as a means to derive an incarnation, i.e. a member of its family of PSMs. For illustrating the ideas, the approach is applied to the task rsp. problem type of parametric design.
Reuse of Problem-Solving Methods and Family Resemblances
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
PSMs do IT! - Summary of track on Sharable and Reusable Problem-Solving Methods of the 10th KAW'96, Banff, Canada
During the last years, a number of formal specification languages for knowledge-based systems have been developed. Characteristic for knowledge-based systems are a complex knowledge base and an inference engine which uses this knowledge to solve a given problem. Specification languages for knowledge-based systems have to cover both aspects: they have to provide means to specify a complex and large amount of knowledge and they have to provide means to specify the dynamic reasoning behaviour of a knowledge-based system. This paper will focus on the second aspect, which is an issue considered to be unsolved. For this purpose, we have surveyed existing approaches in related areas of research. We have taken approaches for the specification of information systems (i.e., Language for Conceptual Modelling and Troll), approaches for the specification of database updates and the dynamics of logic programs (Transaction Logic and Dynamic Database Logic), and the approach of Evolving Algebras. This paper, which is a short version of a longer report, concentrates on the methodology of our comparison and on the conclusions we have drawn. The actual comparison between the languages has been removed from this version because of space limitations.
Proceedings of the Workshop on (Trans)Actions and Change in Logic Programming and Deductive Databases (DYNAMICS '97). Post-Conference of International Logic Programming Symposium (ILPS-97), Port Jefferson, Long Island N.Y., USA, October 17, 1997
Specification of Dynamics for Knowledge-based Systems
Building knowledge-based systems from reusable elements is a key factor in their economic development. However, one has to ensure that the assumptions and functionality of the reused building block fit to each other and the specific circumstances of the actual problem and knowledge. We use the Karlsruhe Interactive Verifier (KIV) for this purpose. We show how the verification of conceptual and formal specifications of knowledge-based systems can be done with it. KIV was originally developed for the verification of procedural programs but it fits well for verifying knowledge-based systems. Its specification language is based on algebraic specification means for the functional specification of components and dynamic logic for the algorithmic specification. It provides an interactive theorem prover integrated into a sophisticated tool environment supporting aspects like the automatic generation of proof obligations, generation of counter examples, proof management, proof reuse etc. Such a support is essential in making verification of complex specifications feasible. We provide some examples on how to specify and verify tasks, problem-solving methods, and their relationships. An earlier version was appeared as: Specifying and Verifying Knowledge-Based Systems with KIV. In Proceedings of the European Symposium on the Validation and Verification of Knowledge Based Systems EUROVAV-97, Leuven Belgium, June 26-28, 1997.
Proceedings of the 12th IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASEC-97), Incline Village, Nevada, November 3-5, 1997
Using KIV to Specify and Verify Architectures of Knowledge-Based Systems
Collaboration in virtual teams and media competence are in great demand in today’s business life. With the aid of a new form of seminars we aim to give our students these qualifications. In this work we present our teleseminar scenario, where students can practice new collaboration technologies in a teaching scenario integrating groupware and videoconferencing. After describing our teleseminar scenario both in technical and organizational aspects, we evaluate them, in order to give recommendations and to present our improvement plans.
Proceedings of Networked Learning 2002. Berlin, 01.-04.05.2002.
Learning Virtual Collaboration in Teleseminars
Community web sites exhibit two dominating properties: They often need to integrate many different in-formation sources and they require an adequate web site management system. SEAL (SEmantic portAL) is a conceptual model that exploits ontologies for fulfilling the requirements set forth by these two prop-erties at once. The ontology provides a high level of sophistication for web information integration as well as for web site management. We describe the SEAL conceptual architecture as well as its current implementation in KAON.
SEAL - Tying Up Information Integration and Web Site Management by Ontologies
Reusable problem-solving methods improve knowledge engineering by allowing developers to design reasoners quickly from pre-existing components. An important factor for successful method reuse is the specification of preexisting methods and support in their task- and domain-specific refinements. The PROTÉGÉ-II approach allows developers to select methods from a library, and to map the methods to a domain ontology. KARL is a formal and executable knowledge-specification language that provides modeling primitives for expressing problem-solving methods. In this paper, we show how the code and informal descriptions of problem-solving methods in PROTÉGÉ-II can be supplemented with the formal method definitions in KARL. For our case study, we have chosen two methods from the PROTÉGÉ-II framework: chronological backtracking and its task specific refinement: the board-game method. In the paper, we give insights in the refinement of general-purpose methods to task-specific (i.e., strong) problem-solving methods. We show further, how a task-specific method can be adapted to a given domain and application. In both cases this is achieved by introducing ontological commitments over the terminological structure of the entities used to describe the states of the reasoning process of a method.
International Journal of Expert Systems: Research & Applications
Conceptual and Formal Specifications of Problem-Solving Methods
The paper describes the MIKE (Model-based and Incremental Knowledge Engineering) approach for the development of knowledge-based systems (kbs). It integrates semiformal specification techniques, formal specification techniques, and prototyping into a coherent framework. This allows the domain and task model of a kbs to be described on different formalization levels. All activities in the building process are embedded in a cyclic life cycle model. For the semiformal representation we use a hypermedia-based formalism which serves as a communication basis between expert and knowledge engineer during knowledge acquisition. The semiformal knowledge representation is also the basis for formalization, resulting in a formal and executable model of expertise specified in the Knowledge Acquisition and Representation Language (KARL). Since KARL is executable the model of expertise can be developed and validated by prototyping. A smooth transition from a semiformal to a formal specification and further on to design is achieved as all the description techniques rely on the same conceptual model to describe the functional and non-functional aspects of the system. Thus, the system is thoroughly documented at different description levels, each of which focuses on a distinct aspect of the entire development effort. Traceability of requirements is supported by linking the different models to each other. Though the MIKE approach aims at supporting the building process of kbs, its principles and methods apply also to the development of non-knowledge-based software systems, e.g. information systems.
Domain Knowledge for Interactive System Design, Proceedings of IFIP WG 8.1/13.2 Joint Working Conference, Geneva, May 1996
A topic in the field of knowledge acquisition is the reuse of components that are described at the knowledge level. Problems concern the description, indexing and retrieval of components. In our case there is the additional feature of integrating so-called automated building blocks in a knowledge level description. This paper describes what knowledge level descriptions of components for reuse should look like, and proposes a way to describe assumptions and requirements that are to be made explicit. In the paper an extension of the "normal" knowledge acquisition setting is made in the direction of machine learning components and their description and integration at the knowledge level.
Position Paper Collection of the European Knowledge Acquisition Workshop (EKAW '96), Matlock Bath, U.K., May 14 - 17, 1996
Describing and Integrating Competence Theories for Problem Solving Components and Machine Learning Algorithms
Performing the complex task of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) requires a break-down of the task-complexity to enable the possibility of performing the KDD-task. Since even more techniques will appear in the future that can solve a variety of KDD-problems, a domain expert that wants to analyse his domain should have the means to work with tools that integrate several of these techniques as well as the techniques themselves. In this paper a framework is proposed for a strategy component that is to be used for a KDD-system that can guide users in breaking down the complexity of a typical KDD-task and supports him in selecting and using several ML-techniques. The goals of such a guidance component are reuse of (predefined) taskcomponents in order to decrease development time and to simplify the process of decomposing a KDD-task, task-oriented planning in order to break down complexity of a typical KDD-task and supporting post-processing (evaluation) of KDD-processes.
Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD'96), Portland, Oregon, August 2 - 4, 1996
Planning tasks for Knowledge Discovery in Databases; Performing Task-Oriented User-Guidance
The paper presents an approach for using a bidirectional search strategy for inductively learning clauses in a restricted first-order language. The learning target is to find a set of goal clauses that describe the true ground facts of a given target predicate. In our example setting we further assume that the background knowledge is also given in the form of true (and false) ground facts of each background predicate. By fixing the number of variables allowed in the derived clauses we show that no explicit negative goal facts are needed in the case of the closed-world assumption since the rules are evaluated from the premise to the head rather than binding the variables of the goal literal first. As a consequence we get an efficient ILP algorithm that tries to minimize the tuples of variable substitutions stored at each step of our covering approach.
Proceedings of the MLnet Familiarization Workshop on Data Mining with Inductive Logic Programming (ILP for KDD) held in conjunction with the 13th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML '96), Bari, Italy, July 2, 1996
Beiträge zum 9. Fachgruppentreffen Maschinelles Lernen der GI Fachgruppe 1.1.3, Chemnitz, August 1996, Chemnitzer Informatik-Berichte CSR-96-06, Fakultät für Informatik, Technische Universität Chemnitz-Zwickau
New KARL (Knowledge Acquisition and Representation Language) allows to specify all parts of a problem-solving method (PSM). It is a formal language with a well-defined semantics and thus allows to represent PSMs precisely and unambiguously yet abstracting from implementation detail. In this paper it is shown how the language KARL has been modified and extended to New KARL to better meet the needs for the representation of PSMs. Based on a conceptual structure of PSMs new language primitives are introduced for KARL to specify such a conceptual structure and to support the configuration of methods. An important goal for this extension was to preserve three important properties of KARL: to be (i) a conceptual, (ii) a formal, and (iii) an executable language.
Proceedings of the 10th Knowledge Acquisition for Knowledge-Based Systems Workshop (KAW'96), Banff, Canada, November 9 - 14, 1996
Modeling Problem-Solving Methods in New KARL
Recently the demand on business process modelling (BPM) became apparent in many different communities. To provide a unifying framework we propose an approach to integrate (well known) knowledge engineering techniques into a business process modelling context. We see knowledge based systems as one possibility (among others) to implement (re-engineered) business processes or parts thereof. Our framework is exemplified by integrating the MIKE approach (Model based and Incremental Knowledge Engineering) with ARIS (ARchitecture of Information Systems), a prominent representative of business process modelling. An important aspect of our framework is a proposal for linking business process models with a model of expertise.
A Unifying View on Business Process Modelling and Knowledge Engineering
Problem-solving methods model the problem-solving behavior of knowledge-based systems. The PROTÉGÉ-II framework includes a library of problem-solving methods that can be viewed as reusable components. For developers to use these components as building blocks in the construction of methods for new tasks, they must configure the components to fit with each other and with the needs of the new task. As part of this configuration process, developers must relate the ontologies of the generic methods to the ontologies associated with other methods and submethods. We present a model of method configuration that incorporates the use of several ontologies in multiple levels of methods and submethods, and we illustrate the approach by providing examples of the configuration of the board-game method.
Ontologies and the Configurations of Problem-Solving Methods
Most papers in model-based diagnosis and most papers in knowledge engineering on problem-solving methods focus on the description of reasoning strategies and discuss their underlying assumptions as a side-aspect. We take a complementary point of view by focusing on these underlying assumptions as these assumptions play an important role: They are necessary to characterise the precise competence of a problem-solving method in terms of the tasks that can be solved by it and in terms of the domain knowledge that is required by it. They are necessary to enable tractable problem solving for complex problems. Their introduction and the refinement of existing assumptions can be used to develop new problem-solving methods or to adapt existing ones according to task and domain-specific circumstances of a given application. For this purpose, one require a framework for dealing with these assumptions. The paper makes a step in this direction by summarizing the assumptions that can be found in the literature on component-based diagnosis. The main contribution of the paper is to collect these assumptions, to make their role for the reasoning process explicit, and to systematize these assumptions by making explicit their relationships.
Proceedings of the 10th Banff Knowledge Acquisition for Knowledge-Based Systems Workshop (KAW-96), Banff, Canada, November 9-14, 1996
Current courseware is often tightly coupled with a specific e-learning system for its access and presentation. We identify the system components and their interaction in creating, publishing, accessing and executing platform independent learning content. We present a system model aimed at using inexpensive of-the-shelf components to supply the core functionality while being ready to integrate flexible and powerful content management and e-learning support systems in future.
Proc. of the World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications(edmedia 2002), June 24-29 2002, Denver, Colorado, USA
XML based content and its integration into existing e-learning solutions: results and consequences of a survey
The paper introduces a formal approach for the specification and verification of knowledge-based systems. We identify different elements of such a specification: a task definition, a problem-solving method, a domain model, an adapter, and assumptions that relate these elements. We present abstract data types and a variant of dynamic logic as formal means to specify these different elements. Based on our framework we can distinguish several verification tasks. In the paper, we discuss the application of the Karlsruhe Interactive Verifier (KIV) for this purpose. KIV was originally developed for the verification of procedural programs but it fits well for our approach. We illustrate the verification process with KIV and show how KIV can be used as an exploration tool that helps to detect assumptions necessary to close the gap between the task definition and the competence of a problem-solving method.
Proceedings of the 10th Banff Knowledge Acquisition for Knowledge-Based Systems Workshop (KAW-96), Banff, Canada, Novemver 9-14, 1996
Specification and Verification of Knowledge-Based Systems
A problem-solving method describes a reasoning process that efficiently achieves a goal by applying domain knowledge. However, a problem-solving method cannot directly be applied because of the existence of a gap between, on the one hand, a problem-solving method and the domain knowledge it uses, and, on the other hand, a problem-solving method and the goal that it is supposed to achieve. In this paper, we distinguish two types of assumptions based on an architecture of problem-solving methods, that are able to bridge the gap: one type of assumption is used to strengthen a problem-solving method, and the other to weaken the goal to be achieved. We also show how the effect of one assumption type can be substituted by the effect of the other type, and refer to this as "the law of conservation of assumptions".
Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-96), Budapest, August 12-16, 1996
We investigate the formal specification of the dynamic reasoning process of knowledge-based systems. The main contributions of the paper are: defining a formal framework for describing the dynamic reasoning behaviour of knowledge-based systems which unifies existing approaches; defining a semantics for the specification of the dynamic reasoning behaviour of a knowledge-based system within the states as algebra setting that overcomes several shortcomings of the existing approaches; and providing for the first time an axiomatization and proof theory of specification languages for knowledge-based systems. We achieve this by developing the logical language MLPM (Modal Logic of Predicate Modification).
MLPM: Defing a Semantics and Axiomatization for Specifying the Reasoning Process of Knowledge-based Systems
In this paper we present the following view on problem-solving methods for knowledge-based systems: Problem-solving methods describe an efficient reasoning strategy to achieve a goal by introducing assumptions about the available domain knowledge and the required functionality. Assumptions, dynamic reasoning behavior, and functionality are the three elements necessary to characterize a problem-solving method.
Proceedings of the 9th European Knowledge Acquisition Workshop EKAW-96, Nottingham, England, May 14-17 1996
Problem-Solving Methods: Making Assumptions for Efficiency Reasons
Uncertainty, incompleteness and vagueness are typical features of common-sense as well as expert knowledge. Reasoning based on such knowledge demands strategies to combine divergent information. All the more this is true in the context of integrating knowledge bases. This paper addresses knowledge representation, reasoning, and conflict management with many-valued logics. We show by some examples how information can be expressed in many-valued Horn clauses, how fitting truth value spaces can be found -in this context we also consider bilattices- and how conflict solving strategies can be involved. We do not focus on technical details but try to open up prospects of applications.
Proceedings of the 6th Conference of the Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence, November 1995, Alicante
Knowledge Representation in Many-Valued Horn Clauses
The subject of the book is the Knowledge Acquisition and Representation Language KARL which is a formal and operational specification language for knowledge-based systems. It provides language primitives to represent knowledge according to the layers of a KADS-oriented model of expertise. The main features of KARL are: It provides epistemologically adequate modelling primitives allowing knowledge specifications at the so-called knowledge level. It is a formal knowledge specification language. That is, it has a declarative semantics. It is an operational knowledge specification language which allows prototyping. Chapter one introduces the basic idea of KARL. The main object of KARL is to fill or to narrow the gap between the implementation and the conceptual description of a knowledge-based system by defining a formal and operational specification language. It is related to the symbol level because it is a language with a formal and operational semantics. It is related to the knowledge level because it abstracts from all implementational details which are concerned with the realization by an efficient implementation. Chapter two, three, and four introduce the language KARL itself. KARL consists of the two languages L-KARL and P-KARL. Chapter two introduces the language L-KARL which is used to model static knowledge. P-KARL which is used to model procedural knowledge (i.e., knowledge about the control flow of a problem-solving method) is described in chapter three. Finally, chapter four shows how these languages and their interaction are used to model the domain layer, the inference layer, and the task layer of a model of expertise. Then, the mathematical semantics of KARL is defined in chapter five. A model-theoretic semantics is defined which allows a precise and unique specification of knowledge-based systems. Besides KARL, some other languages have been developed during the last few years which aim to formalize or operationalize KADS models of expertise. Besides all technical details, the main difference between KARL and the other languages is the fact that KARL aims to be a formal and operational knowledge specification language. The object here is not only operationalization in principle, i.e., the possibility of using a kind of theorem-proving, but also an efficient evaluation to allow prototyping. In the conclusion, we compare KARL with one these languages which where developed as part of the KADS project. We also characterize some shortcomings of KARL and outline aspects of future work with it.
Knowledge Engineering (KE) and Software Engineering (SE) have similar goals: developing methods, techniques, and tools for the building process of either knowledge based systems (kbs) or (complex) traditional software. Due to this kinship it seems obvious to analyse to which extent both areas, KE and SE, can benefit from each other. In this paper we want to argue from the KE point of view. The main paradigm in KE has switched from a transfer point of view to a modeling point of view. So a lot of emphasis has been put on the development of notions and methods for building and structuring models, which capture different results of the development process. Much effort has been investigated into the analysis and development of reusable components: problem solving methods describing the dynamic behaviour of kbs and ontologies defining the vocabulary and structure of (domain) models. We describe specific approaches in KE in some detail which exploit these ideas in different ways: Role-Limiting Methods, KADS and MIKE. Finally Life Cycle Models, Non Functional Requirements and Transformational Development are discussed as areas where we think KE might profit from research and experiences made in SE.
Proceedings of Softwaretechnik `95, Braunschweig, 10. -11. Oktober, GI-Fachausschuß 2.1 "Softwaretechnik und Programmiersprachen", Verbund SofTec NRW
Requirements Specification and Model-based Knowledge Engineering
The paper presents an approach for machine learning in a restricted first-order language with finite minimal Herbrand models by means of a search through a propositional representation space. The learning target is to find a set of goal clauses which can be used to define a target predicate. That is, we deal with single-predicate learning. For the search process we use the learning algorithm JoJo/Frog which provides a flexible search strategy. The transition from the first-order representation to the representation in propositional logic is achieved by ground substitutions which transform clauses into ground clauses. Taking a closer look at this transition makes clear that the sufficiency condition which is used by algorithms like FOIL and LINUS as a criterion for judging the achieved learning results does not correspond to the completeness condition in the propositional case. Therefore, we use an extended completeness condition which captures all information given by the example knowledge. As a consequence we get a new definition of positive and negative examples. Instead of ground facts we regard ground substitutions as examples.
Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Inductive Logic Programming ILP-95, Leuven, September 4-6, 1995, Technical Report, Department of Computer Science, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Are Substitutions the Better Examples? Learning Complete Set of Clauses with Frog
Are Substitutions the Better Examples? Learning Complete Sets of Clauses with Frog
Der Beitrag beschreibt die Einsatzmöglichkeiten von XML in der multimedialen Lehre.Es werden XML-basierte Beschreibungssprachen für verschiedene Aspekte eines Lehr-und Lernsystems vorgestellt,Werkzeuge zur Verarbeitung von XML-Dokumenten genannt und die XML-Unterstützung webbasierter Lehr-und Lernplattformen evaluiert.
It+ti. Informationstechnik und Technische Informatik
XML: Nur ein neues Schlagwort? Zum Nutzen von XML in Lehr- und Lernsystemen
When applying Inductive Logic Programming techniques in real-world settings, many problems will come up. Since not many real-world applications are reported using ILP-techniques this report describes some problems that may appear when starting such a project. The project was done in co-operation with Högdalenverket, a heat and power plant burning household refuse in the Stockholm area, Sweden. The application problems with collecting data and the application of ILP-techniques are discussed. Results of tests performed while using SPECTRE, an ILP-algorithm developed at Stockholm University, are reported. These results show that the addition of background knowledge and addition/retraction of parameters has positive effect on the performance of the ILP-techniques. After initial tests a knowledge acquisition stage was started. This resulted in knowledge about the domain that was used for evaluating the results of learning using SPECTRE. This prevented several mistakes by interpreting data and evaluating performance. This knowledge was partly used as background knowledge for the learning algorithm. Noise handling was applied and increased the efficiency of the SPECTRE-algorithm. The paper lists the results of tests performed on data from the refuse-burning plant. It also compares the performance of the SPECTRE-algorithm on theoretical databases with the performance on this practical domain. It also gives some insight in the change of performance that can be expected when transferring from the laboratory-domains to domains gathered in the real-world.
Proceedings of the Fifth Scandinavian Conference on Artificial Intelligence SCAI '95 (Trondheim, Norway, May 29-31), 1995
Högdalenverket: Applying ILP in an Industrial Setting
Proceedings of Intelligent Adaptive Systems Workshop IAS-95, Melbourne-beach, Florida
Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Computer Science for Environment Protection (Berlin, September 27-29)
Der MIKE-Ansatz zur Modellierung von Expertenwissen im Umweltbereich - dargestellt am Beispiel des Bauschuttrecyclings
Non-functional requirements significantly affect and determine the quality of software systems. In this paper it is shown how non-functional requirements are modelled in MIKE, an approach to the development of knowledge-based systems. A semi-formal hypermedia-based model is used to describe the results of the elicitation and interpretation of non-functional requirements and their relationships. Non-functional requirements are the driving force behind the decisions taken in the design phase of MIKE. The impact of non-functional requirements on design decisions and interdependencies between design decisions are explicitly recorded in an additional model in MIKE, thus resulting in a rich documentation of the rationale of design decisions and also providing an important contribution to the traceability of these requirements.
Proceedings of the 5th European Software Engineering Conference ESEC'95 (Sitges, Spain, September 25 - 28, 1995)
The Treatment of Non-Functional Requirements in MIKE
Dissertation, Institut für Angewandte Informatik und Formale Beschreibungsverfahren, Universität Karlsruhe, DISKI 84, infix-Verlag
Die Entwurfsphase in MIKE. Methode und Beschreibungssprache
Dissertation, Institut für Angewandte Informatik und Formale Beschreibungsverfahren, Universität Karlsruhe, DISKI 85, infix-Verlag
Wiederverwendung von Commonsense Ontologien. Methoden und Werkzeuge
Im folgenden werden die wesentlichen Prinzipien und Methoden des MIKE-Ansatzes (Modellbasiertes Inkrementelles Knowledge Engineering) beschrieben. MIKE bietet eine Sammlung von Methoden zur Erhebung, Interpretation, Formalisierung und Implementierung von Wissen zur Erstellung eines wissensbasierten Systems. Ziel von MIKE ist es, die Vorteile von Lebenszyklusmodellen, Prototyping und formalen Spezifikationssprachen in einem übergreifenden Ansatz für das Knowledge Engineering zu integrieren.
Modellbasiertes Inkrementelles Knowledge Engineering: der MIKE-Ansatz
The paper attempts a step in the direction of competence theories of reusable problem-solving methods (psm's). In fact, we examine a variant of the psm propose-and-revise. The variant was developed as a solution to the current Sisyphus task (VT-task). We decompose the entire method into its individual subtasks and examine each subtask for its underlying assumptions concerning the available domain knowledge. By doing this, we determine assumptions and limitations of the entire method. In addition, we examine how different control flows between these subtasks can influence the efficiency and effectiveness of the method. Again, we show how these differences are related to the assumptions of the method. Making these assumptions explicit defines interesting goals for validation and verification efforts. First, we show that under some circumstances two psm's behave equally well or that one is more suitable than another. Second, we have to prove for a given domain knowledge whether it fulfils the assumptions of a selected problem-solving method. We believe that such studies are necessary to allow the reuse of psm's and, conversely, that the reuse of psm's justifies the effort of such activities.
Proceedings of the 9th Knowledge Acquisition for Knowledge-Based Systems Workshop KAW'95 (Banff, Canada, February 26 - March 3)
Assumptions and Limitations of a Problem-Solving Method: A Case Study
AIPS Workshop on On-line Planning and Scheduling
Anticipatory scheduling for dynamic job shop problems
Domain models can be constructed more easily and made more robust by reusing ontologies in a well-defined way. In this paper the KARO approach is introduced which provides various means of retrieving and adapting components of an ontology as part of a domain model construction process. KARO is based on the knowledge-processing component LILOG-KB provided by the LILOG text-understanding system. Above all, the notion of classification is applied for the retrieval of relevant categories. The upper structure of LILOG-KB serves as an exemplary ontology. By integrating KARO into the Model-based and Incremental Knowledge Engineering Environment (MIKE) the reuse of a predefined ontology can be integrated into the development process of expert systems in a systematic way.
International Journal on Human-Computer Studies
An environment for reusing ontologies within a knowledge engineering approach
During the last years, a number of formal specification languages for knowledge-based systems (kbs) have been developed. Characteristic of such systems are a complex knowledge base and an inference engine which uses this knowledge to solve a given problem. Languages for kbs have to cover both these aspects. They have to provide a means to specify a complex and large amount of knowledge and they have to provide means to specify the dynamic reasoning behavior of a kbs. Nethertheless, kbs are just a specific type of software systems. Therefore it seems quite natural to compare formal languages for specifying kbs with formal languages which were developed by the software engineering community for specifying software systems. That is the subject of this paper.
Formal Specification Languages in Knowledge and Software Engineering
This paper presents a general discussion of the role of formal methods in Knowledge Engineering. We give an historical account of the development of the field of Knowledge Engineering towards the use of formal methods. Subsequently, we discuss the pro's and cons of formal methods. We do this by summarising the proclaimed advantages, and by arguing against some of the commonly heard objections against formal methods. We briefly summarise the current state of the art and discuss the most important directions that future research in this field should take. This paper presents a general setting for the other contributions in this issue of the Journal, which each deal with a specific issue in more detail.
This paper shows how KARO (Knowledge Acquisiton Environment with Reusable Ontologies) supports the development of the domain layer in MIKE (Model-based and Incremental Knowledge Engineering). KARO supplements the reuse of generic problem-solving methods at the task and inference layers in MIKE with a commonsense ontology at the domain layer. The intention is to make the development process easier and the final domain layer more robust. In order to reuse ontologies powerful and integrated tools and methods are absolutely necessary. Therefore, we will describe the formal, linguistic and graphical methods, the architecture and other properties of KARO. We will enrich this survey with several examples which clarify the modeling process of the domain layer in a scheduling task using MIKE. We will show the integration of KARO and MIKE in respect of the development of the domain layer of a model of expertise. We finish the paper with a comparison of related approaches.
Proceedings of the European Knowledge Acquisition Workshop (EKAW-94), Hoegaarden, Belgium, September 26-29, 1994
KARO: An Integrated Environment for Reusing Ontologies
This paper discusses and compares two different approaches to model-based knowledge acquisition. That is, we regard the Model-based and Incremental Knowledge Engineering (MIKE) approach and the Configurable Role-limiting Method approach (CRLM). MIKE is based on the distinction of different phases in the software development process. It uses the formal and operational knowledge specification language KARL allowing a precise and unique description of a model of expertise which is the outcome of the analysis phase. CRLM is based on the role-limiting method approach. Role limiting shells are implementations of strong problem-solving methods and substantially simplify knowledge acquisition through guidance by predefined models of problem-solving and by sophisticated graphical user interfaces. The main disadvantages, namely inflexibility and brittleness, are to some degree overcome by the CRLM where the problem-solving methods are split into smaller parts, which can then be reconfigured allowing the integration of new methods or other method combinations. Although these two approaches are often discussed as contradictory, we, however, experienced that both approaches complete each other very well. As an outcome of our comparison, we outline topics of future research for both approaches.
A Comparision Of Two Approaches To Model-Based Knowledge Acquisition
Learning from examples is a field of research in machine learning where class descriptions, like decision trees or implications (production rules or horn clauses) are produced using positive and negative examples as information. To solve this task many different heuristic search strategies have been developed, so far. The search by specialization is the most widely used search strategy, whereas other approaches use a search by generalization only. JoJo is an algorithm that combines both search directions into one search procedure. According to the estimated quality of the currently regarded rule either a generalization or specialization step is carried out by deleting or adding one premise to the conjunction part of the rule. But, to create an even more flexible (and faster) algorithm, it should be possible to delete or add more than just one premise at a time. Relaxing this restriction of JoJo led to the new highly flexible algorithm Frog that additionally uses a third search direction.
Beiträge zum 7. Fachgruppentreffen Maschinelles Lernen, Kaiserslautern, August, 1994, Forschungsbericht LSA-95-01, Zentrum für Lernende Systeme und Anwendungen, Fachbereich Informatik, Universität Kaiserslautern
From JoJo to Frog: Extending a bi-directional Search Strategy to a more flexible three-directional Search
We present a framework to represent distributed knowledge based on many-valued logics, combined with bilattices. The use of these truth-value spaces enables us to express fuzzy, incomplete and even inconsistent knowledge. At a supervisory level of such a systeman, decision-theoretic result should be applied to match divergent statements or preferences. We describe some strategies that are useful for this purpose.
Integrating Knowledge Bases: Towards Symbolic Representation and Conflict Managing
The paper describes a development approach for knowledge-based systems (KBS) combining semiformal and formal techniques for specification and design. For the semiformal representation we use a hypermedia-based formalism which serves as a communication basis between expert and knowledge engineer during knowledge acquisition. The semiformal knowledge representation is the basis for formalization, resulting in a formal and executable model of expertise specified in the Knowledge Acquisition and Representation Language (KARL). In the design phase, this representation is enriched by additional language primitives which focus on issues of realization and which facilitate the mapping of the model of expertise to the implementation environment. A smooth transition from semiformal to formal specification and further on to design is achieved as all the description techniques rely on the same conceptual model to describe the system. Thus, the system is thoroughly documented at different description levels, each of which focuses on a distinct aspect of the entire development effort. Traceability of requirements is supported by linking the different formalisms to each other.
Proceedings of the 3rd Japanese Knowledge Acquisition Workshop JKAW'94 (Hatoyama, Japan, Nov. 7-9)
Integrating Semiformal and Formal Methods in Knowledge-Based Systems Development
Strukturierung wissensbasierter Systeme in MIKE
Coevolutionary ant algorithms playing games
The Knowledge Acquisition and Representation Language (KARL) combines a description of a knowledge-based system (kbs) at the conceptual level (a so-called model of expertise) with a description at a formal and executable level. It is a specification language which allows the precise and unique description of a kbs independently from implementation details. In the paper, KARL is mainly discussed as a formal language. That is, the paper introduces a formal semantics for KARL. Because KARL allows the representation of static and dynamic (i.e., procedural) knowledge, its semantics must integrate both types of knowledge. First, an object-oriented logic L-KARL was developed which can be used to specify static knowledge. Second, dynamic logic was used to develop P-KARL for specifying knowledge about dynamics. Third, both languages had to be combined to represent a complete model of expertise. As a result, the integrated description of static and dynamic knowledge based on a well-defined declarative framework becomes possible.
The Specification Language KARL and Its Declarative Semantics
Dissertation, Institut für Angewandte Informatik und Formale Beschreibungsverfahren, Universität Karlsruhe, DISKI 60, infix-Verlag
Modellkonstruktion in MIKE. Methoden und Werkzeuge
In order to reduce the complexity of large knowledge-based systems and promote reusability, means for decomposing them to smaller chunks are required. MIKE, our knowledge engineering framework, provides three basic means for structuring which are described in this paper: different kinds of knowledge are separated at different knowledge layers, knowledge layers can be structured by modules, and knowledge within modules is expressed in terms of an object-centred data model. In addition, ideas from entity relationship model clustering are adapted and extended to facilitate the understandability of domain knowledge and support the formation of modules.
Mechanisms for Structuring Knowledge-Based Systems
The issue how to achieve a principled transition from knowledge acquisition to implementation such that a knowledge-based system (kbs) of high quality results is rarely discussed in the knowledge engineering literature. Here, this topic is addressed in the context of the design phase of the MIKE approach to kbs development. In MIKE, design decisions are motivated primarily by non-functional requirements. Due to the iterative nature of the design process, design decisions have to be evaluated early. In MIKE, this can be achieved by experimental prototyping, but also by quantitative measures associated to requirements. Furthermore, in order to improve transparency and traceability, the description of the design includes a record of the design decisions and their motivation in addition to a description of the artefact. DesignKARL is sketched as the formalism for expressing these aspects.
Software Quality Management II - Vol. 2: Building Quality into Software
An Approach to the Design of Knowledge-Based Systems
Model-based approaches to the development of knowledge-based systems require appropriate description formalisms for representing intermediate results of the development. In the MIKE approach, several such formalisms have been developed spanning the range from the informal specification of requirements to a representation focusing on the realization of the system. In this paper, one of these formalisms, DesignKARL, is presented in some detail. DesignKARL is intended to support the transition from knowledge acquisition to implementation, i.e. the design phase. Besides language primitives for describing the design product, DesignKARL also includes primitives for documenting design decisions and the underlying rationale.
Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering SEKE'94 (Jurmala, Latvia, June 20-23)
DesignKARL - A Language for the Design of Knowledge-Based Systems
We argue that non-functional requirements are the driving force behind the design decisions in the MIKE approach to the development of knowledge-based systems. We outline the model adopted in MIKE to record the rationale of design decisions by explicitly linking them to non-functional requirements and indicate how the evaluation of the design wrt. the posed requirements can be integrated into the development process.
Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Requirements Engineering: Foundation of Software Quality REFSQ'94 (Utrecht, Netherlands, June 6-7)
Addressing Non-Functional Requirements in the Development of Knowledge-Based Systems
This paper presents an approach to support the top-down development of knowledge based systems. We propose to use predefined knowledge elements for eliciting, structuring, and formalizing the knowledge. The predefined elements are arranged in a library. We differentiate between three types of reusable knowledge elements: generic problem solving methods (PSMs), generic concept taxonomies and template forms from which rule templates are generated in accordance to the concrete application. The generic PSMs as well as the generic concept taxonomies of our library is described informally and formally so that they can be used at the one hand as guidelines for elicitation and on the other hand as basis for the formalization which has to be modified according to the application. For integrating the principle of reuse we propose different tools that support the usage of the predefined methods, concepts and template forms from the library. The paper gives an overview of our library components as well as of our reuse principles. Moreover, the tools supporting the top-down knowledge acquisition are introduced.
Proceedings of the International Conference on Expert Systems for Development, Bangkok, Thailand, March 28-31, 1994
The paper discusses an approach which allows the specification of a knowledge-based system (kbs) at several levels. The Knowledge Acquisition and Representation Language KARL combines a description of a kbs at the conceptual level supported by graphical modelling primitives with a description at a formal and executable level. Therefore, a KARL-specification can be used as a means for communication between expert and knowledge engineer as well as an intermediate representation, closing the conceptual gap between an informal specification and an implementation of a kbs. In the paper, KARL is mainly discussed as a graphical modelling language.
Graphical and Formal Knowledge Specification with KARL
Das in dieser Arbeit beschriebene Blended-Learning-Szenario basiert auf einer Erweiterung der Präsenzlehre um E-Learning-Komponenten. Die Vorlesungen werden um multimediale Lehrmaterialien und digitale Aufzeichnungen erweitert. Teleseminare und Telepraktika bestehen aus virtueller Projektarbeit und Videokonferenz-Präsentationen.
Tagungsband der GI-Jahrestagung 2002. Dortmund, 1. - 3. Oktober 2002
GI-Edition – Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI)
Model-based approaches to the development of knowledge-based systems require appropriate description formalisms for representing intermediate results of the development. In the MIKE approach, several such formalisms have been developed which span the range from the informal specification of requirements to an implementation-biased representation. In this paper, one of these formalisms, DesignKARL, is presented in some detail. DesignKARL is intended to support the transition from knowledge acquisition to implementation, i.e. the design phase. Besides language primitives for describing the design product, DesignKARL includes additional primitives for the documentation of design decisions and their underlying rationale.
Proceedings of the 4th KADS Meeting (St. Augustin, Germany, March 24-25)
Language Support for Knowledge-Based Systems Design
In this paper, we describe a solution to the Sisyphus elevator configuration problem by combining the formal and operational specification language KARL and the configurable role-limiting shell approach. The knowledge is described in a graphical and semiformal manner which is influenced by the KADS models of expertise. A formal description is gained by supplementing the semiformal description with formal specifications which add a new level of precision and uniqueness. A role limiting shell for propose-and-revise systems was designed and implemented as realization of the final system. This shell has been derived by adapting another shell which is based on a similar problem-solving method, namely the propose-and-exchange method.
Proceedings of the 8th Knowledge Acquisition for Knowledge-Based Systems Workshop KAW'94 (Banff, Canada, January 30 - February 4)
Combining KARL and Configurable Role Limiting Methods for Configuring Elevator Systems
Das Ziel des Teilprojektes war es, eine automatische Verteilung von Software für unterschiedlichste Hard- und Softwareplattformen zur Verfügung zu stellen. Dazu sollte ein Verleihsystem für mobile Geräte entwickelt werden, das es unter anderem ermöglicht, persönliche Daten bei Rückgabe des Gerätes zu sichern und automatisch auf neue Leihgeräte zu übertragen. Da bei Leihgeräten die Benutzer relativ häufig wechseln, musste ein Konzept entwickelt werden, das es erlaubt, abhängig vom aktuellen Benutzer Software zur Nachinstallation anbieten zu können.
NUKATH - Die Notebook-Universität Karlsruhe (TH)
Das Teilprojekt "Campus Mobile Communication Center" zielt auf eine integrierte Application-Server-Umgebung ab, die es ermöglicht, mobile Lehr- und Lernanwendungen sowohl im 'herkömmlichen' Internet als auch für mobile Endgeräte anzubieten. Eine Zugriffsmöglichkeit innerhalb der nahtlosen Infrastruktur des Campus wurde modellhaft realisiert.
In this paper we present an approach for efficient navigation through an on-line product catalog. The goals of the approach are (i) to support a user in a step-by-step searching for a product and (ii) to ensure the product he has found is the best solution for his need. The product database is based on a light-weighted ontology and structured in the form of a lattice that enables hierarchical clustering of users’ requests. It means that a user can navigate from a very general product-attribute cluster, which satisfies user’s buying need and contains a lot of products, to the very specific clusters that seem to contain a few, but for the user highly relevant, products. In each navigation step, the user is provided with the minimal set of navigation alternatives. In order to enhance the processing of the lattice, the partial ordering of the products-attributes clusters is computed using methods from formal concept analysis.
On Using Query Neighbourhood for Better Navigation Through a Product Catalog: SMART Approach
In this paper we present an approach that models the behaviour of an on-line shop assistant on the knowledge level, i.e. it takes into account not only which actions (questions) a shop assistant will perform, but also which goals he wants to achieve by taking an action. As a generic reasoning pattern of such an e-shop agent we use the cover-and-differentiate problem-solving method, a method very successfully applied in various diagnosis and classification tasks. In that way, we can (i) model the question-answering process such that the minimal set of useful questions will be provided to a user, (ii) easily reinterpret and fine-tune shopping strategies that exist in other e-shop portals and (iii) design and integrate new methods into generic reasoning pattern. We present an evaluation study which illustrates these benefits.
Software Engineering Knowledge Engineering, SEKE '04
On Modelling an e-shop Application on the Knowledge Level
Although several approaches have been proposed for modelling an on-line shop assistant, recent customer’s analyses show that they miss some assistance in the buying process. The common problem is that the behaviour of an on-line shop assistant is modelled on the procedural level, i.e. like a workflow. In this paper we present an approach that models this behaviour on the knowledge level, i.e. it takes into account not only which actions (questions) a shop assistant will perform, but also which goals he wants to achieve by taking an action. As a generic reasoning pattern of such an e-shop agent we use the cover-and-differentiate problem-solving method, a method very successfully applied in various diagnosis and classification tasks. In that way, we can (i) model the question-answering process such that the minimal set of useful questions will be provided to a user, (ii) easily reinterpret and fine-tune shopping strategies that exist in other e-shop portals and (iii) design and integrate new methods into generic reasoning pattern. We present an evaluation study which illustrates these benefits.
On the Knowledge Level of an On-line Shop Assistant
An Approach for Step-By-Step Query Refinement in the Ontology-based Information Retrieval
In this paper we present a novel approach for the refinement of relational queries that enables so-called step-by-step refinement of a users query. The approach is based on discovering causal relationships between queries regarding the inclusion relation between the answers of these queries. We define a formal model for these query-answering pairs and use methods from inductive logic programming for the efficient calculation of a (lattice) order between them. The approach is very suitable for modelling information retrieval tasks based on the database repositories, like searching product catalogues.
A Logic-based Approach for Query Refinement
International Workshop on Semantic Intelligent Middleware for the Web and the Grid at ECAI 04
Efficiency of Ontology Mapping Approaches
Informatik 2004 - Informatik verbindet, Beiträge der 34. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V., Workshop Dynamische Informationsfusion
Series of the Gesellschaft für Informatik
Quick Ontology Mapping (QOM) - Extended Abstract
Not only knowledge acquisition, but also the principled transition from knowledge acquisition to implementation is an important question in knowledge engineering. This paper focuses on this transition and characterises the design phase of the MIKE approach to model-based incremental development of knowledge-based systems. The role of non-functional requirements in the development process is discussed and it is argued that for reasons of transparency, the description of the design should not just contain the description of the artefact, but should additionally include a record of the design decisions and their motivation, i.e. their relationship to the requirements posed. DesignKARL is outlined as the formalism for describing the artefact as well as design decisions and their rationale in MIKE.
In the paper we present the modelling primitives of KARL. KARL is a formal and operational language to represent models of expertise of knowledge-based systems. Since KARL offers epistemologically adequate modelling primitives it allows to describe the model of expertise on a high level of abstraction. The formal semantics of KARL provides means to describe the expertise unambiguously and the operational semantics of KARL allows to directly execute models of expertise in order to provide feedback for the expert, the knowledge engineer and the user of the final knowledge-based system. KARL is based on object oriented logic and dynamic logic.
Proceedings of the 2nd World Congress on Expert Systems, Lisbon/Estoril, Portugal, January 10-14, 1994
In den siebziger und frühen achtziger Jahren wurde im Software Engineering (SE) eine Debatte geführt, die nun mit Zeitverzögerung auch im Knowledge Engineering (KE) geführt wird. Es geht dabei um den Sinn und Unsinn formaler Spezifikationstechniken zur implementierungsunabhängigen Beschreibung von Softwaresystemen. Im KE-Bereich geht es dabei speziell um wissensbasierte Systeme bzw. Expertensysteme. Im folgenden soll zunächst kurz die Historie zusammengefasst werden, die zur Entwicklung formaler Spezifikationstechniken im KE geführt hat. Damit werden zugleich die Gründe genannt, die die Entwicklung und die Verwendung formaler Spezifikationssprachen rechtfertigen. Danach werden einige Einwände gegen formale Spezifikationstechniken diskutiert, die Situation mit der im SE verglichen und im Anschluß versucht, einen versöhnenden Standpunkt aufzuzeigen.
Sinn und Unsinn formaler Spezifikationssprachen für wissensbasierte Systeme
The Knowledge Acquisition and Representation Language (KARL) combines a description of a knowledge-based system (kbs) at the conceptual level (a so-called model of expertise) with a description at a formal and executable level. It is a specification language which allows the precise and unique description of a kbs independently from implementational details. In the paper, KARL is mainly discussed as a formal language. That is, the paper introduces a formal semantics for KARL. Because KARL allows the representation of static and dynamic (i.e., procedural) knowledge, its semantics must integrate both types of knowledge. First, an object-oriented logic L-KARL was developed which can be used to specify static knowledge. Second, dynamic logic was used to de velop P-KARL for specifying knowledge about dynamics. Third, both languages had to be combined to represent a complete model of expertise. As a result, the integrated description of static and dynamic knowledge based on a well-defined declarative framework becomes possible.
Proceedings of the IS-CORE94 Workshop, Amsterdam, September 27-30, 1994, research report, Free University of Amsterdam
Although some of the existing approaches for enhancing searching for information in an information portal account for some aspects of users’ behaviour in the portal, a more systematic treatment of this issue is needed, foremost the role of the content and the structure of a portal on the analysis of usage information. In this paper, we first present the analysis of the factors which the efficient searching depends on and based on it, we propose the conceptual architecture of the management component for an information portal. We assume that the information portal is built around a common taxonomy (in our case an ontology), which is an emerging trend in knowledge management applications we are particularly intereseted in. The management component ensures that searching for information will include all factors which determine the relevance of an information resource, enabling the top-ranking of the highly relevant information resources. The approach is mainly based on tracking users’ interactions with the portal. We have applied the approach in the information portal of our Institute and an evaluation study is presented.
First International Workshop on Mining for Enhanced Web Search (MEWS 2002) held in conjunction with 3rd International Conference on Web Information System Engineering WISE 2002, Singapore, 2002
On Enhancing Searching for Information in an Information Portal by Tracking Users’ Activities
The paper describes a specification approach for knowledge-based systems (kbs) combining semiformal and formal specification techniques. The semiformal knowledge representation uses a hypermedia-based formalism which serves as a communication basis between expert and knowledge engineer. This representation is also the basis for the formalization process resulting in the formal and executable model of expertise written in KARL. A smooth transition from the semiformal to the formal specification is enabled as both description techniques use the same conceptual model to describe the system.
Innovation bei Rechen- und Kommunikationssystemen
Integration Of Semiformal and Formal Methods For Specification of Knowledge-Based Systems
In the field of Knowledge Engineering, dissatisfaction with the rapid-prototyping approach has led to a number of more principled methodologies for the construction of knowledge-based systems. Instead of immediately implementing the gathered and interpreted knowledge in a given implementation formalism according to the rapid-prototyping approach, many such methodologies centre around the notion of a conceptual model: an abstract, implementation independent description of the relevant problem solving expertise. A conceptual model should describe the task which is solved by the system and the knowledge which is required by it. Although such conceptual models have often been formulated in an informal way, recent years have seen the advent of formal and operational languages to describe such conceptual models more precisely, and operationally as a means for model evaluation. In this paper, we study a number of such formal and operational languages for specifying conceptual models. In order to enable a meaningful comparison of such languages, we focus on languages which are all aimed at the same underlying conceptual model, namely that from the KADS method for building KBS. We describe eight formal languages for KADS models of expertise, and compare these languages with respect to their modelling primitives, their semantics, their implementations and their applications. Future research issues in the area of formal and operational specification languages for KBS are identified as the result of studying these languages. The paper also contains an extensive bibliography of research in this area.
A Comparison Of Languages Which Operationalize And Formalize KADS Models of Expertise
In the paper we discuss a new approach for learning classification rules from examples. We sketch out the algorithm JoJo and its extension to a four step procedure which can be used to incrementally refine a set of classification rules. Incorrect rules are refined, the entire rule set is completed, redundant rules are deleted and the rule set can be minimized. The first two steps are done by applying JoJo with searches through the lattice of rules by generalization and specialization.
Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Machine Learning ECML-93, Vienna, Austria, April, 1993
Proceedings of the Workshop Knowledge and Data Engineering, Atelier d'Ingenierie des Connaissances et des Donees, A.I.C.D., Strasbourg, France, January 25-27, 1993
JoJo: Integration Of Generalization And Specialization
Proceedings of the 13th International Conference AI, Expert Systems, Natural Language (Avignon-93), Avignon, May 24-28, 1993
Ein integriertes System zum maschinellen Lernen aus Beispielen (A integrated system for machine learning from example)
Requirements Engineering 93: Prototyping
Giving Structured Analysis Techniques A Formal And Operational Semantics With KARL
Formal Specification Of Complex Reasoning Systems
Formalizing And Operationalizing A Design Task With KARL
Model-Based And Incremental Knowledge Engineering: The MIKE Approach
Proceedings of the IJCAI-93 Workshop Machine Learning and Knowledge Acquisition: Common Issues, Contrasting Methods, And Integrated Approaches, W16, Chambery, France, August 29, 1993
Applying A Machine Learning Algorithm In A Knowledge Acquisition Scenario
Complement Proceedings of the European Knowledge Acquisition Workshop (EKAW-93), Toulouse, France, September 6-10, 1993
Description And Formalization Of Problem-Solving Methods For Reusability: A Case Study
Grundlagen und Anwendungen der Künstlichen Intelligenz, Berlin, September 13-16, 1993
Maschinelles Lernen: Theoretische Ansätze und Anwendungen (Machine Learning: Theoretical Approaches And Applications)
Proceedings of the Workshop Machine Learning at the 17th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence (KI-93), Berlin, September 13-16, 1993
Proceedings of the Workshop "Alles für die Katz, KADS?" at the 17th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence (KI-93), Berlin, September 13-16, 1993
Integration von Software Engineering Methoden in den KADS-Ansatz (Integration Of Software Engineering And KADS)
Proceedings of the 9th German Workshop on Logic Programming, Hagen, Germany, October 11-13, 1993
Proceedings of the 6th Annual Workshop on Software Reuse (WISR-6), Owego, New York, November 1-4, 1993
Reuse Of Problem-Solving Methods In Knowledge Engineering (short paper)
Wissensbasierte Systeme in der Betriebswirtschaft, Reihe betriebliche Informations- und Kommunikationssysteme
What Could The Knowledge Engineer Learn From The Software Engineer?
In the series of “Evaluation of Ontology-based Tools” workshops we intend to bring together researchers and practitioners from the fastly developing research areas “ontologies” and “Semantic Web”. Currently the semantic web attracts researchers from all around the world. Numerous tools and applications of semantic web technologies are already available and the number is growing fast. However, deploying large scale ontology solutions typically involves several separate tasks and requires applying multiple tools. Therefore pragmatic issues such as interoperability are key if industry is to be encouraged to take up ontology technology rapidly. The main aim of this workshop is therefore to encourage and stimulate discussions about the evaluation of ontology-based tools. For the future this effort might lead to future benchmarks and certifications.
Workshop at the 3rd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2004), 7th-11th November 2004, Hiroshima Prince Hotel, Hiroshima, Japan
3rd International Workshop on Evaluation of Ontology based Tools (EON2004)
The intention of the workshop is to bring together researchers from the two research areas Semantic Web and Knowledge Discovery. According to T. Berners-Lee the Semantic Web is "an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation". Current standardization efforts include e.g. the W3C recommendation for the Web Ontology Language (OWL). Knowledge Discovery is defined by U.M. Fayyad as "the nontrivial process of identifying valid, previously unknown, potentially useful patterns in data". We foresee two ways of combining these areas. On the one hand, mining for the semantic web includes the application of knowledge discovery methods and techniques to support the setting up of the semantic web itself. Prominent examples are here ontology learning and population of ontologies (instance learning). On the other hand, mining from the semantic web emphasizes the usage of semantic web technologies for mining purposes such as e.g. the usage of taxonomies in recommender systems, applying association rules with generalizations or clustering with background knowledge in form of ontologies.
located at the 10th International ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining KDD 2004, 22nd August 2004 - Seattle, WA, USA
International Workshop on Mining for and from the Semantic Web (MSW2004)
Turning the current Web into a Semantic Web requires automatic approaches for annotation of existing data since manual approaches will not scale in general. We here present an approach for automatic generation of frames out of tables which subsequently supports the automatic population of ontologies from table-like structures. The approach consists of a methodology, an accompanying implementation and a thorough evaluation. It is based on a grounded cognitive table model which is stepwise instantiated by our methodology.
Proceedings of the 3rd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2004), 7th-11th November 2004, Hiroshima Prince Hotel, Hiroshima, Japan
In this paper, we present a novel approach for the management of ontology-based knowledge portals. The approach is based on the analysis of the factors, which influence the precision of the searching for information. We focus on the structure of user queries, which are an estimation of the user information needs. Two kinds of analyses of the users’ queries are performed: static - related to the ontological properties and dynamic - related to the users’ interaction with the system. Regarding to the first analysis we define several assessment criteria for the quality of the metadata. For the second analysis, we introduced the Log ontology as a backbone for storing and analysing information about users’ behaviours in the Portal. We extended the previous research done in the analysing Query logs by introducing query-rewriting patterns. Moreover, we developed a new technology for tracking users’ interactions with the system, which is applied in our case study. The short evaluation shows the benefits of our approach in the real-world portals.
Fourth International Conference on Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management (PAKM 2002), Vienna
More efficient searching in a knowledge portal - an approach based on the analysis of users queries
Proceedings of the 16th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2004), August 22nd - 27th
DILIGENT: Towards a fine-grained methodology for DIstributed, Loosely-controlled and evolvInG Engingeering of oNTologies
Informatik 2004 - Informatik verbindet, Beiträge der 34. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V., Workshop Semantische Technologien für Informationsportale
Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Computer Supported Activity Coordination (CSAC 2004) in conjunction with the International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2004)
Modeling Processes for Managing Reputation Information - A Petri Net Approach
Proceedings of the IASTED International Conference APPLIED MODELLING AND SIMULATION (AMS 2002)
Certifying Business Processes to Build Trust in E-Business
Proceedings of the 16th Bled Electronic Commerce Conference, eTransformation
Information and Communications Technology in Croatia: Hope carrier for more growth?
We present a workbench for integrating Web documents into semantically enriched representations suitable on the Semantic Web. The approach benefits on the one hand from thefacilities provided by Semantic Web technologies and on the other hand from the applicability of well-known knowledge discovery techniques. The main achievement of our contribution is an up-and-running, open and component based prototype which can be easily extended by 3rd parties.
Workshop on Mining for and from the Semantic Web at the ACM SIGKDD
A Knowledge Discovery Workbench for the Semantic Web
In this paper, we present a novel approach for the change discovery in the ontology-based knowledge management systems. It extends our previous work in the ontology evolution by taking into account the usage of the ontology in the knowledge management system. The approach is mainly based on the analysis of the user’s interaction with the system in providing annotations for knowledge resources, as well as in the process of accessing the knowledge by querying the knowledge repository. We defined several assessment criteria to estimate the quality of annotations and the user’s needs from the point of view of the knowledge management. These criteria result in the recommendations for the continual system improvement. Two evaluation studies illustrate the benefits of our approach.
Second International Workshop on Evolution and Change in Data Management (ECDM 2002), held in conjunction with the 21st International Conference on Conceptual Modelling, ER 2002, Tampere, Finland
Change Discovery in the Ontology-based Knowledge Management Systems
OntoWeb is an European Union IST-funded thematic network for Ontology-based information exchange for knowledge management and electronic commerce. The corresponding OntoWeb portal constitutes a Web-based research information system that is driven by some of the technologies which it reports about. In this paper, we present the core methodology underlying the OntoWeb portal, viz. SEAL (SEmantic portAL). In particular, we describe some of the core challenges that SEAL must meet. Because of the distributed nature of research information, SEAL has been developed as a methodology that integrates heterogeneous information from distributed resources. Because of the complexity of the application domain, SEAL is based on ontologies about research information that greatly contribute to the combined goals of low-effort information integration and user-friendly information presentation. Because of the high quality requirements obliged onto the OntoWeb portal, SEAL has been extended with content management functionality supporting portal editors in their process to rule out undesirable content.
Gaining Insight from Research Information. CRIS 2002 - Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Current Research Information Systems, August 29-31, 2002, Kassel, Germany
Ontology technologies are popular and attract much attention because they’re cornerstones for realizing the Semantic Web. This issue’s Trends and Controversies explores different perspectives on evaluating ontology technologies. It examines the distinction between evaluating ontology tools and ontology content and also discusses ontology consumers' needs.
Why Evaluate Ontology Technologies? Because It Works!
Proceedings of the Third International Semantic Web Conference
The explosion of data caused by the success of the Internet has positioned 'semantics' as a core topic for declarative descriptions of data and services. Semantic descriptions enable interoperability of data and aim at supporting the dynamic fusion of data and services among a multitude of applications. The convergence of paradigms such as currently being monitored in the areas of Semantic Web, Web Services, Agents, Peer-to-Peer networks and Grid Computing requires multi-disciplinary approaches and cooperations. This workshop is intends to bring together researchers and practitioners from the mentioned areas and to act as a platfrom for discussions for experiences and visions.
Workshop located at the "Informatik 2004 - Informatik verbindet", Friday, 24th Sep 2004, University of Ulm
Workshop on Semantic Web Services and Dynamic Networks (SWSDN2004)
Ontologies provide a shared understanding of a domain of interest to support communication among human and computer agents, typically being represented in a machine-processable representation language. Thus, ontologies are seen as key enablers for the Semantic Web. However, recently the convergence of paradigms such as currently being monitored in the areas of Semantic Web, Web Services, Agents, Peer-to-Peer networks and Grid Computing requires multi-disciplinary approaches and cooperation. This workshop is intends to bring together researchers and practitioners from the mentioned areas and to act as a platform for discussions for experiences and visions.
Web Information Systems - WISE 2004 Workshops, WISE 2004 International Workshops, Brisbane, Australia, November 22-24, 2004, Proceedings
On-To-Knowledge Methodology --- Baseline Version
On-To-Knowledge Methodology --- Evaluated and Employed Version
On-To-Knowledge Methodology --- Expanded Version
On-To-Knowledge Methodology --- Final Version
In this paper, we present a novel approach for the management of the ontology-based knowledge management system. It extends our previous work in the ontology evolution by taking into account the usage of the ontology in the knowledge management system. The approach is mainly based on the analysis of the users’ behaviour in two phases of a knowledge management cycle: (i) in providing knowledge by analysing the quality of annotations and (ii) in searching for knowledge by analysing users’ queries and the responses from the knowledge repository. This analysis results in the recommendations for changes in the underlying ontology, the annotations and/or the knowledge repository in order to make the whole system more efficient. We present two short case studies.
International Conference on Ontologies, Databases and Applications of SEmantics, (ODBASE 2002), Irvine, CA
Usage-oriented Evolution of Ontology-based Knowledge Management Systems
On-To-Knowledge Technical Fact Sheet for the OTK Tool Suite Demo
KAON -- Ontology Management Infrastructure
A survey on methodologies for developing, maintaining, integrating, evaluating and reengineering ontologies
Successful Scenarios for Ontology-based Applications
Creation of a browsable Prototype of the Portal
Web Portal: Complete Ontology and Portal
Informationssysteme und Künstliche Intelligenz: Modellierung, Informatik Fachbericht
Contemporary Knowledge Engineering And Cognition
Knowledge Acquisition And The Interpretative Paradigm
Proceedings of the 2nd KADS User Meeting, Munich, February 17-18, 1992
Modelling The Selection Of Scheduling Algorithm With KARL
Interpretation Models for KADS - Proceedings of the 2nd KADS User Meeting (KUM-92)
An Executable Model At The Knowledge Level For The Office-Assignment Task
Proceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposien Series, Cognitive Foundations of Knowledge Acquisition, Stanford, March 25-27, 1992
Knowledge Acquisition And Qualitatively Oriented Social Science
An Assignment Problem In Sisyphus - No Problem With KARL
Proceedings of the 7th Banff Knowledge Acquisition for Knowledge-Based System Workshop (KAW-92), Banff, Canada, October 11-16, 1992
An Analysis Of Languages Operationalizing And Formalizing KADS Models Of Expertise
Text Understanding in LILOG: Integrating Computational Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence
Knowledge Engineering In The Context Of Related Fields Of Research
Proceedings of the 11th International Conference Expert Systems And Their Applications, Avignon, May 27-31, 1991
General Conference Tools, Techniques and Methods
The Knowledge Acquisition And Representation Language (KARL)
Knowledge Acquisition: From Science to Technology to Tools, Workshop Notes from the Ninth National Conference on AI (AAAI-91), Anaheim, California
Proceedings of the 6th Knowledge Acquisition for Knowledge-Based Systems Workshop (KAW-91), Banff, Canada, October 6-11, 1991
KARL: An Executable Language For The Conceptual Model
Proceedings of the International Conference on Tools for Artificial Intelligence ICTAI'91, San Jose, CA, November 10-13, 1991
A New Approach To Rule Induction And Pruning (short paper)
Effektiver Zugriff auf Wissensinhalte benötigt eine gemeinsame Sprache zur Beschreibung der Wissensinhalte, sowie Methoden und Werkzeuge, die in der Lage sind, diese Beschreibung zu nutzen. In der Forschungsgruppe Wissensmanagement an der Universität Karlsruhe wurde ein ganzheitlicher Ansatz für Wissensmanagementsysteme konzipiert, der auf Ontologien, das sind eine Art formaler Begriffssysteme, beruhend, verschiedene Methoden zum intelligenten Ablegen und Zugreifen auf Wissen bereitstellt. Im Rahmen dieses Ansatzes wurde diverse Techniken erforscht, in Werkzeuge umgesetzt und ihre Prinzipien an Wissensportalen aufgezeigt. In diesem Artikel beschreiben wir die erste Implementierung eines kommerziellen ontologiebasierten Wissensmanagementsystems.
Awarded with the first prize of the Integrata foundation, Tübingen, (Dr. Wolfgang Heilmann Award for humane usage of information technology)
Arbeitsgerechte Bereitstellung von Wissen - Ontologien für das Wissensmanagement
Finding right information in the right moment is quite a tedious task on the Web. The main difficulty is the wrong context in which information is found and, therefore, part of the problem lies in the process of providing metadata about information resources on the web. In other words, only by searching for keywords, which are assigned to the content of an information resource, a machine agent cannot differ between various contexts of using these keywords, and some non-relevant resources will be retrieved as the result of the searching process. In this paper, we propose a method for improving the annotation of information resources – by forming conditional statements about keywords used in the describing content of a resource. This kind of annotation leads to the better precision of the information retrieval process – by expressing the context of searching in a more precise manner. Moreover, such more expressive form of describing content of information resources supports a more powerful knowledge sharing process enabling the discovery of new information by considering the combination of existing information resources. In that way, the system provides some answers which are not explicitly stated in the information repository. We present a knowledge management framework, which implements such type of annotation and give a small evaluation study. The framework is supported by Semantic Web technologies, which are based on the machine-understandable description of document content, enabling in that way the automation of the knowledge sharing process.
A novel approach for the document annotation and its benefits in the searching for knowledge
Ontologiebasiertes Wissensmanagement - Ein umfassender Ansatz zur Gestaltung des Knowledge Life Cycle
Das Teilprojekt AMSULA widmet sich der Frage, welche neuen Fragestellungen und Möglichkeiten es durch die Verfügbarkeit verschiedener Arten von Funknetzen und mobiler Endgeräte für Studierende und Universitätsangehörige gibt. Aufbauend auf einer Analyse der Erwartungshaltung von Studierenden und nach Einführung eines Modells zur Beurteilung mobiler Anwendungsszenarien werden die im Projekt gewonnenen Erfahrungen mit mobilen Lehrszenarien beschrieben. Hierbei werden die für die Lehre entwickelten NUKATH-Kooperations- Werkzeuge vorgestellt. Abschließen werden die Erkenntnisse aus dem Projekt in didaktische Folgerungen für die Notebook-Universität überführt.
Der Bildungsbereich unterliegt wie viele andere Bereiche einer modernen Gesellschaft dem soeben begonnenen Informationszeitalter. Dadurch entstehen neue Möglichkeiten lebenslanges Lernen mit Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien zu unterstützen und einen Mehrwert für jeden Beteiligten im Bildungssektor zu liefern. Der Einsatz von Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien geschieht im Rahmen der Internet-basierten Aus- und Weiterbildung. Das ed.tec-Rahmenwerk beschreibt die Geschäftsprozesse der beteiligten Rollen Autor, Dozent und Lernender und die Unterstützung durch Werkzeuge aus dem realisierenden ed.tec- System. Die Architektur berücksichtigt die anfallenden Geschäftsprozesse und wird anhand der hieraus hervorgehenden Anforderungen an das zu implementierende IT-System konzipiert. Dieser Beitrag beschreibt die Prozesse der beteiligten Rollen, ihre Anforderungen, die hieraus resultierende Architektur und der exemplarische Einsatz des implementierenden Systems.
Eine Werkzeugarchitektur zur Unterstützung von Autoren und Dozenten in der Internet-basierten Aus- und Weiterbildung
Proceedings of the ECAI 2004 Ontology Learning and Population Workshop
Learning Taxonomic Relations from Heterogeneous Evidence
This document is an informal deliverable provided to SEKT partners. The main aim of this document is to provide an overview of existing research results and ongoing research in the are of ontology evolution. It further identifies relevant open research questions with respect to ontology evolution that will be addressed within the SEKT project.
In Peer-to-Peer data sharing systems, peers typically play equal roles and have equal capabilities. From the service perspective, peers provide a single service. For this reason, there is no need to explicitly model services. We argue, that for knowledge sharing systems, we need an effective combination of the capabilities of the peers both in terms of the services as well as the content they provide. In this paper we present an approach for modeling peers with content and service capability descriptions that allows a decentralized discovery and selection of peers. We show instantiations for various kinds of bibliographic services that are realized in the Bibster system, a semantics-based Peer-to-Peer system for sharing bibliographic metadata.
Web Information Systems Engineering -- Workshop Proceedings, November 22nd, 2004, Brisbane, Australia
Service-Oriented Semantic Peer-to-Peer Systems
On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2004: CoopIS, DOA, and ODBASE, OTM Confederated International Conferences, Agia Napa, Cyprus, October 25-29, 2004, Proceedings, Part I
Knowledge Extraction from Classifiaction Schemas
Annotation, Composition and Invocation of Semantic Web Services
Security is considered as a major driver for the success of E-Business, especially in a business-to-business environment. Current research activities in this area are conducted in European Union funded research projects, such as TrustCoM putting an emphasis on the collaborative aspects of business processes across administrative and trust domains. With respect to the tendency of business partners to set up their own security islands, e.g. based on isolated Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs), this development introduces a contradiction for collaborative business process. Clearly expressed process related security requirements across domains can not be met by domain specific security infrastructures. This contribution explores the possibility to bridge the identified gap using semantic relationships contributed by ontologies.
Towards Cross-domain Security Properties supported by Ontologies
Intelligent systems based on first-order logic on the one hand, and on artificial neural networks (also called connectionist systems) on the other, differ substantially. It would be very desirable to combine the robust neural networking machinery with symbolic knowledge representation and reasoning paradigms like logic programming in such a way that the strengths of either paradigm will be retained. Current state-of-the-art research, however, fails by far to achieve this ultimate goal. As one of the main obstacles to be overcome we perceive the question how symbolic knowledge can be encoded by means of connectionist systems: Satisfactory answers to this will naturally lead the way to knowledge extraction algorithms and to integrated neural-symbolic systems.
Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Information, Tokyo, Japan, November/December 2004
The Integration of Connectionism and First-Order Knowledge Representation and Reasoning as a Challenge for Artificial Intelligence
Visual modeling of OWL DL ontologies using UML
Dieser Beitrag stellt ein Konzept vor, wie ubiquitäres E-Learning durch eine zielgerechte Bereitstellung von Hard - und Software unterstützt werden kann. Dazu wird eine automatisierte, benutzerzentrierte Softwareverteilung für unterschiedlichste Hard- und Softwareplattformen und ein Verleihsystem für mobile Geräte vorgestellt. Neben den Grundfunktionalitäten umfasst das Konzept unter anderem einen personalisierten
DeLFI 2004: Die 2. e-Learning Fachtagung Informatik
Lecture Notes in Informatics - Proceedings, Series of the Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI)
Die "Softwaretankstelle" mit integriertem Verleihsystem für mobile Geräte
Enabling Organisations and Society through Information Systems, Proceedings of the 13th Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS 2002), Melbourne
A Maturity Model for Quality Improvement in Knowledge Management
CRM-Systeme mit EAI - Konzeption, Implementierung und Evaluation
Die Integration des Wissensmanagement in den Entwicklungsprozess von CRM-Systemen
The Semantic Web workshop at the 11th International WWW Conference (WWW-2002)
Informatik 2001. Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft in der Network Economy - Visionen und Wirklichkeit, Tagungsband der GI/OCG Jahrestagung 2001, Wien
Ein wissensbasiertes Vorgehensmodell zur Gestaltung von CRM-Systemen
KnowTech 2003: 5. Konferenz zum Einsatz von Knowledgemanagement in Wirtschaft und Verwaltung, München
Kontinuierliche Qualitätsverbesserung im Wissensmanagement - ein prozessbasiertes Reifegradmodell
Proceedings der Data Warehousing 2002 (DW2002): Vom Knowledge Warehouse zum Corporate Knowledge Center
Data Warehousing und Knowledge Management in der Logistik - Praxisbeispiele und Erfolgsfaktoren
Competitive & Business Intelligence - Neue Konzepte, Methoden & Instrumente
Integration von Knowlege Warehouses und Knowlege Networks - Konzept und Methodik am Beispiel des Intelligent Supplier Management
Three Dimensions of Knowledge Representation in WonderWeb
Proceedings of the 1st International Doctoral Symposium on Middleware, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
An intersection of OWL with (function-free non-disjunctive) Datalog, called DLP (for Description Logic Programs), has recently been described. We provide normal forms for DLP in Description Logic syntax and in Datalog syntax.
Description Logic Programs: Normal Forms
KI2004: Advances in Artificial Intelligence. Proceedings of the 27th Annual German Conference on AI, KI2004, Ulm, Germany
Default Reasoning over Domains and Concept Hierarchies
The integration of symbolic and neural-network-based artificial intelligence paradigms constitutes a very challenging area of research. The overall aim is to merge these two very different major approaches to intelligent systems engineering while retaining their respective strengths. For symbolic paradigms that use the syntax of some first-order language this appears to be particularly difficult. In this paper, we will extend on an idea proposed by Garcez and Gabbay (2004) and show how first-order logic programs can be represented by fibred neural networks. The idea is to use a neural network to iterate a global counter n. For each clause Ci in the logic program, this counter is combined (fibred) with another neural network, which determines whether Ci outputs an atom of level n for a given interpretation I. As a result, the fibred network computes the singlestep operator TP of the logic program, thus capturing the semantics of the program.
Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Symposium Conference, Clearwater Beach, Florida, USA
Computing First-Order Logic Programs by Fibring Artificial Neural Networks
Java 5.0 - Konzepte, Grundlagen und Erweiterungen in 5.0
Praxis der Informationsverarbeitung und Kommunikation
Semantics for Service Oriented Architectures
7. Internationale Tagung Wirtschaftsinformatik, Track Internetökonomie
An Auction Reference Model for Describing and Running Auctions
In retail information systems it is common practice to subsume the data of products into product groups, which offers organizational advantages for example when new branches are opened, because they are assigned product groups instead of single products. Inspired by this approach, this paper focuses on business processes and proposes the usage of workflow modules stored in a workflow warehouse, which represent reusable, standardized components that are used to build more complex workflow models. In particular, the paper provides a formal foundation for such compositions in form of a workflow algebra based on Petri nets, which has similar operators known from relational algebra in databases. In addition, the need for a concept of workflow normalization is presented, which arises during the composition of workflow modules. Finally, it is shown how the algebra can also be applied in the context of Web service composition.
Proc. of the Second Asia-Pacific Conference on Conceptual Modelling (APCCM2005)
A Formal Foundation for Workflow Composition, Workflow View Definition, and Workflow Normalization based on Petri Nets
Workshop Enterprise Modelling and Ontology: Ingredients for Interoperability, at PAKM 2004
Similarity for Ontologies - a Comprehensive Framework
Learning Objects (LOs) have evolved as a means to organize, encapsulate, and exchange reusable granules of learning material between different e-learning systems. A common problem encountered in practical situations is that conceptually coherent learning material may be distributed across several LOs, a problem which may originate in the way the material is decomposed into LOs. From a maintenance perspective, modifications and updates of such material are tedious and expensive, since modifications may have to be done in various locations in several LOs. This paper proposes to remedy this problem by using solutions already established in the area of Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP). Furthermore, it is shown from a reengineering perspective how crosscutting concerns of LOs can be modularized as aspects and how aspects can be linked with LOs using XQUERY.
4th IASTED International Conference on Web-based Education (WBE2005)
Business-Process- und Workflow-Management: Prozessverbesserung durch Prozess-Management
Proc. of the European Simulation and Modelling Conference (ESMc2004)
Simulation of Business Process Improvement by a Customized Genetic Algorithm
Proc. of the International Conference on Advances in Intelligent Systems - Theory and Applications (AISTA 2004)
Adaptive Business Process Improvement Using Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithms
Proc. of the International Conference of Operations Research 2000
Computergestützte Analyse der von Rommelfanger vorgeschlagenen Operatoren in unscharfen Netzplänen
We present a novel approach to the automatic acquisition of taxonomies or concept hierarchies from a text corpus. The approach is based on Formal Concept Analysis (FCA), a method mainly used for the analysis of data, i.e. for investigating and processing explicitly given information. We follow Harris' distributional hypothesis and model the context of a certain term as a vector representing syntactic dependencies which are automatically acquired from the text corpus with a linguistic parser. On the basis of this context information, FCA produces a lattice that we convert into a special kind of partial order constituting a concept hierarchy. The approach is evaluated by comparing the resulting concept hierarchies with hand-crafted taxonomies for two domains: tourism and finance. We also directly compare our approach with hierarchical agglomerative clustering as well as with Bi-Section-KMeans as an instance of a divisive clustering algorithm. Furthermore, we investigate the impact of using different measures weighting the contribution of each attribute as well as of applying a particular smoothing technique to cope with data sparseness.
Learning Concept Hierarchies from Text Corpora using Formal Concept Analysis
Proceedings of the European Workshop on the Integration of Knowledge, Semantics and Digital Media Technology (EWIMT)
Knowledge Representation for Semantic Multimedia Content Analysis and Reasoning
Die kommerzielle Nutzung von UMTS steht in Deutschland kurz bevor, aber auch lizenzfreie Alternativen wie WLAN haben Marktreife erreicht und erfreuen sich wachsender Nutzerzahlen. UMTS fehlen derzeit nicht nur marktreife Endgeräte, sondern auch Ideen für Anwendungen, die diesen neuen Mobilfunkstandard für Endkunden attraktiv machen. Ortsbezogene Dienste (bzw. Location-based Services – LBS) könnten die Basis für neuartige Anwendungen mit der notwendigen Attraktivität darstellen. Im Rahmen der Notebook University Karlsruhe (NUKATH) wurde der Prototyp eines Ortsdienstes entwickelt, bei dem auf teure Lizenzen, spezielle neue Protokolle und neue Typen von Endgeräten verzichtet wird. Der Prototyp ermöglicht die Ortung mittels GPS (Global Positioning System), die Kommunikation über WLAN (IEEE 802.11) und die Benutzung von Notebooks, Tablet PCs oder – mit leichter Modifikation – auch anderer mobiler Geräte.
VDE Kongress 2004 - Innovationen für Menschen, ITG Fachtagung, Ambient Intelligence
Location-based Services: Konkurrenz durch lizenzfreie Alternativen
Formal concept analysis has grown from a new branch of the mathematical field of lattice theory to a widely recognized tool in Computer Science and elsewhere. In order to fully benefit from this theory, we believe that it can be enriched with notions such as approximation by computation or representability. The latter are commonly studied in denotational semantics and domain theory and captured most prominently by the notion of algebraicity, e.g. of lattices. In this paper, we explore the notion of algebraicity in formal concept analysis from a category-theoretical perspective. To this end, we build on the the notion of approximable concept with a suitable category and show that the latter is equivalent to the category of algebraic lattices. At the same time, the paper provides a relatively comprehensive account of the representation theory of algebraic lattices in the framework of Stone duality, relating well-known structures such as Scott information systems with further formalisms from logic, topology, domains and lattice theory.
A categorical view on algebraic lattices in formal concept analysis
Data Warehouse Systeme - Architektur, Entwicklung, Anwendung
Erfolgsfaktoren beim Aufbau eines Data-Warehouse-Systems
This paper proposes an architecture and a model of Business Process Support (BPS) Systems for e-government organizational boundaries. Today, processes are mostly adapted to existing technologies; in contrast, the proposed architecture intends to support typical e-government processes. The proposed system consists of three main IT components: a workflow system for administration and control of information flows; Web Services enabling data transfer between computers; and a Web Server controlling all applications for communication with all users in each organization. The proposed model of the Workflow Enactment Server consists of two nodes: the Rule Base Collection, and the Workflow Engine. The workflow engine consists of two components A and B for process execution and control.
Database and Expert Systems Applications, DEXA2004
A Model of Business Process Support System for E-Government
This paper proposes a model of Business Process Support Systems crossing organizational boundaries. Such systems have to support interorganizational workflows which are mainly characterized by interoperability, autonomy and openess. Interoperability is enabled through Web Services, providing required functionalities of integration and flexibility, and by using applied ebXML as communication language. The proposed system consists of three main IT nodes: a workflow system for administration and control of information flows; Web Services enabling data transfer between computers; and a Web Server controlling all applications for communication with all users in each organization. The proposed model of the Workflow Enactment Server consists of two nodes: the Rule Based Collection, and the Workflow Engine. The Rule Based Collection consists of a set of rules mapping the requirements of the involved organizations. The workflow engine consists of two components A and B for process execution and control.
Model of an interorganizational Business Process Support System for public institutions
Mining Information for Functional Genomics
ACM/IEEE 27th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE2005)
Information Systems Development at the Virtual Global University: An Experience Report
Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Computational Semantics (IWCS)
Proceedings of the 3rd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2004)
State of the Art in Ontology Engineering Methodologies
Semantic Query Routing in Unstructured Networks Using Social Metaphors
Distributed Engineering of Ontologies (DILIGENT)
Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management (PAKM 2004)
XAROP: A Midterm Report in Introducing a Decentralized Semantics-based Knowledge Sharing Application
WM 2005: Professional Knowledge Management - Experiences and Visions, Contributions to the 3rd Conference Professional Knowledge Management - Experiences and Visions, April 10-13, 2005, Kaiserslautern, Germany
On Ranking Peers in Semantic Overlay Networks
Im Rahmen des BMBF-Projektes "Notebook University" beschäftigte sich das Teilprojekt "Anwendungen mobiler Systeme im Umfeld universitären Lebens und Arbeitens" (AMSULA) der Notebook Universität Karlsruhe (NUKATH) mit der Frage, welche neuen Möglichkeiten sich durch die Verfügbarkeit verschiedener Arten von Funknetzen und mobiler Endgeräte für Studierende und Universitätsangehörige bieten. Dabei wurden in erster Linie Möglichkeiten zur Bereicherung der Lehre durch mobile Szenarien erforscht; gleichzeitig wurden jedoch auch Einsatzmöglichkeiten mobiler Technik im Umfeld der Universität berücksichtigt.
Mobiles Lernen an der Notebook Universität Karlsruhe
This paper describes a principled approach towards creating an IT-support environment for knowledge workers. Starting in the analysis phase our approach paves the way for putting an intelligent assistant to work within a typical business process environment. Thereby, this support intelligence is centred around the interdependencies between documents providing the background knowledge and business processes.
Knowledge Management and Organizational Memories
ID4.1 Specification of Semantic Structures for Knowledge Representation
D4.1 Report on aceMedia Semantic Structures and Application Domain Ontologies
Assigning semantics to logic programs via selector generated models (Schwarz 2002/2003) extends several semantics, like the stable, the inflationary, and the stable generated semantics, to programs with arbitrary formulae in rule heads and bodies. We study this approach by means of a unifying framework for characterizing different logic programming semantics using level mappings (Hitzler and Wendt 2005, Hitzler 2003), thereby supporting the claim that this framework is very flexible and applicable to very diversely defined semantics.
19th Workshop on (Constraint) Logic Programming, Ulm, Germany, February 2005
Level mapping characterizations of selector-generated models for logic programs
Part of the theory of logic programming and nonmonotonic reasoning concerns the study of fixed-point semantics for these paradigms. Several different semantics have been proposed during the last two decades, and some have been more successful and acknowledged than others. The rationales behind those various semantics have been manifold, depending on one's point of view, which may be that of a programmer or inspired by commonsense reasoning, and consequently the constructions which lead to these semantics are technically very diverse, and the exact relationships between them have not yet been fully understood. In this paper, we present a conceptually new method, based on level mappings, which allows to provide uniform characterizations of different semantics for logic programs. We will display our approach by giving new and uniform characterizations of some of the major semantics, more particular of the least model semantics for definite programs, of the Fitting semantics, and of the well-founded semantics. A novel characterization of the weakly perfect model semantics will also be provided.
Theory and Practice of Logic Programming
A uniform approach to logic programming semantics
CEPIS Workshop Proceedings eChallenges, 22 October 2003, Bologna, Italy
Building the Knowledge Economy: Issues, Applications, Case Studies
EPICS - market validation for pan-European Certification of Informatics Professionals
Praxis des Customer Relationship Management: Branchenlösungen und Erfahrungsberichte
Kundenmanagement in virtuellen Organisationen
Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Information Technology and Travel & Tourism, ENTER 2003, Helsinki, Finland, 29th-31st January 2003
Services on the Move - Towards P2P-Enabled Semantic Web Services
Proceedings of the Workshop on Mining for and from the Semantic Web at the 10th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD 2004)
Joint Session with WebKDD workshop. Reprinted in Proceedings of WebKDD 2004, LNCS 3932, Springer.
Proceedings of the 4th IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM 2004), 1-4 November 2004, Brighton, UK
Text Classification by Boosting Weak Learners based on Terms and Concepts
D4.5 Specification of Formal Models and Structures for Context Representation
Proceedings of the Workshop on Text-Based Information Retrieval (TIR-04) at the 27th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence (KI 2004), Ulm, Germany
In this paper we present an ontology based approach for dynamic integration of business partners on demand. ODAMY, an ontology-based methodology, is proposed allowing flexible partner integration on demand into existing or evolving dynamic business networks. The approach chosen takes focus on the “softer” but important strategic aspects to measure the strategic fit to discover and select business partners. It provides required mechanisms and methods to support trust building by supporting communication and increases transparency within the network. Network companies are represented by a kind of “fingerprint” describing their co-operation ability and requirements. First, the paper introduces into the scenario of dynamic business ecosystems. Then developments, trends and requirements of existing b2b integration concepts are discussed. ODAMY is described and the implementation is depicted to demonstrate how the methodology is put into practice.
Virtual Enterprises and Collaborative Networks
ODAMY Extending b2b Integration Technology Architecture
This deliverable provides the first set of guidelines for ontology engineering and application in SEKT: DILIGENT -- DIstributed, Loosely-controlled and evolvInG Engineering of oNTologies. It consists of several main building blocks: (i) a survey of relevant existing approaches, (ii) the DILIGENT process model and argumentation framework and (iii) first results from applying DILIGENT in the SEKT case studies. The DILIGENT process has already been evaluated in an in-situ experiment at the Institute AIFB, the argumentation framework is based on a thorough ex-post analysis in the biology domain.
Ontology Management and Evolution -- Survey, Methods and Prototype
Zeitschrift für das gesamte Kreditwesen
Einsatz des Libor-Marktmodells in der Zinsänderungsrisikosteuerung
Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization
A Multi-objective Approach to Integrated Risk Management
Proceedings zur 5. Konferenz Mobile Commerce Technologien und Anwendungen (MCTA 2005)
Anonymity by Design - Eine Architektur zur Gewährleistung von Kundenschutz im mobilen Marketing
State-of-the-art survey on Ontology Merging and Aligning V1
Proc. 1st International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Management
Self-organization of a Small World by Topic
Proc. 13th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2004) (Alternate Track Papers & Posters)
Semantic Resource Management for the Web: An ELearning Application
Proceedings of the IADIS International Conference e-commerce 2004
Tackling industrial complexity: the ideas that make a difference, Proceedings of the 2002 Conference of the Manufacturing Complexity Network, April 9-10 2002, University of Cambridge
Large grids and local information flow as a reason for high complexity
A Multidimensional Branch-and-Prune Method for Interval Global Optimization
The international workshop on Mining for and from the Semantic Web (MSW) at the KDD 2004 successfully brought together people from the communities Semantic Web and Knowledge Discovery. The goal of the workshop was to strengthen the communication and interaction between these communities as there is currently an agreement that both can benefit largely from each other. Overall the contributions and discussions showed that today mining for the semantic web is the primarily targeted research area. However, with a growing amount of available semantic web data also mining from the semantic web will be more prominent.
A Workshop Report: Mining for and from the Semantic Web at KDD 2004
Elektronische Geschäftsprozesse [Grundlagen - Sicherheitsaspekte - Realisierungen - Anwendungen]
Managing Modern Organizations with Information Technology
Economic Efficiency of Mobile Terminals in Hospitals
We present a new kind of heuristic guidance as an extension to the Population-based Ant Colony Optimization (P-ACO) implemented in hardware on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The heuristic information is obtained by transforming standard heuristic information into small time-scattered heuristic-vectors of favourable ant decisions. This approach is suited for heuristics which allow for an a priori calculation of the heuristics information. Using the proposed method, an ant can build-up a solution in quasi-linear time. Experimental studies measure the performance of the time-scattered heuristic. A comparison with the standard heuristic and candidate lists is also given.
Ant colony Optimization and Swarm Intelligence. Proc. of the ANTS 2004 conference
Time-Scattered Heuristic for the Hardware Implementation of Population-based ACO
IEE Proceedings - Computers and Digital Techniques, special issue on reconfigurable systems
Dynamic Scheduling on Partially Reconfigurable FPGAs
Field-Programmable Logic and Applications
Task Rearrangement on Partially Reconfigurable FPGAs with Restricted Buffer
Distributed knowledge management systems (DKMS) have been suggested to meet the requirements of today's knowledge management. Peer-to-peer systems offer technical foundations for such distributed systems. To estimate the value of P2P-based knowledge management evaluation criteria that measure the performance of such DKMS are required. We suggest a concise framework for evaluation of such systems within different usage scenarios. Our approach is based on standard measures from the information retrieval and the databases community. These measures serve as input to a general evaluation function which is used to measure the efficiency of P2P-based KM systems. We describe test scenarios as well as the simulation software and data sets that can be used for that purpose.
Agent-mediated Knowledge Management - AMKM-2003, AAAI Spring Symposium 2003, Stanford, March 24-26
Towards Evaluation of Peer-to-Peer-based Distributed Information Management Systems
Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology (FPT)
Applications of Evolutionary Computing. Proceedings of the EvoHOT Workshop
Counter-based Ant Colony Optimization as a Hardware-oriented Meta-Heuristic
Online Proceedings of the Dagstuhl Seminar, Dynamically Reconfigurable Architectures
FPGA Implementation of Population based Ant Colony Optimization
Many real-world optimization problems involve multiple, typically conflicting objectives. Often, it is very difficult to weigh the different criteria exactly before alternatives are known. Evolutionary multi-objective optimization usually solves this predicament by searching for the whole Pareto-optimal front of solutions. However, often the user has at least a vague idea about what kind of solutions might be preferred. In this chapter, we argue that such knowledge should be used to focus the search on the most interesting (from a user's perspective) areas of the Pareto-optimal front. To this end, we present and compare two methods which allow to integrate vague user preferences into evolutionary multi-objective algorithms. As we show, such methods may speed up the search and yield a more fine-grained selection of alternatives in the most relevant parts of the Pareto-optimal front.
Knowledge Incorporation in Evolutionary Computation
Integrating user preferences into evolutionary multi-objective optimization
Definition of a common framework for characterizing alignment of heterogeneous information. This report describes various approaches towards this goal and shows the relations between them. It also provides a description of the alignment sructure and process.
Specification of a common framework for characterizing alignment
Fakultät Informatik, Technische Universität Dresden
Nichtmonotone, neuro-symbolische und begriffliche Wissensverarbeitung
Algorithms for spectral analysis of irregularly sampled time series
International Journal of Knowledge and Learning (IJKL)
Reengineering of Educational Material: A Systematic Approach
Most research in evolutionary computation focuses on optimization of static, non-changing problems. Many real-world optimization problems, however, are dynamic, and optimization methods are needed that are capable of continuously adapting the solution to a changing environment. If the optimization problem is dynamic, the goal is no longer to find the extrema, but to track their progression through the space as closely as possible. In this chapter, we suggest a classification of dynamic optimization problems, and survey and classify a number of the most widespread techniques that have been published in the literature so far to make evolutionary algorithms suitable for changing optimization problems. After this introduction to the basics, we will discuss in more detail two specific approaches, pointing out their deficiencies and potential. The first approach is based on memorization, the other one is uses a novel multi-population structure.
Theory and Application of Evolutionary Computation: Recent Trends
Designing evolutionary algorithms for dynamic optimization problems
A hybrid heuristic approach to discrete multi-objective optimization of credit portfolios
Parameterized and Exact Computation, First International Workshop, IWPEC 2004, Bergen, Norway, September 14 - 17, 2004, Proceedings
On decidability of MSO theories of representable matroids
Innovations in Classification, Data Science, and Information Systems. Proc. 27th. Annual GfKI Conference, University of cottbus, March 12 - 14, 2003
Discovery of risk-return efficient structures in middle-market portfolios
Applications of Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms
Financial applications of multi-objective evolutionary algorithms: recent development and future research directions
EASE – a software agent that extracts financial data from the SEC’s EDGAR database
Sequential sampling in noisy environments
Finding knees in multi-objective optimization
Evolving caching strategies for the internet
Distribution of Evolutionary Algorithms in Heterogeneous Networks
Workshop on Efficient and Experimental Algorithms
A heuristic for minimum-width graph layering with consideration of dummy nodes
Evolutionäre Algorithmen zur Standortplanung
Multi-swarm optimization in dynamic environments
Parallelizing multi-objective evolutionary algorithms: cone separation
Solving the Probabilistic TSP with Ant Colony Optimization
The Semantic Web aims to provide access to information for humans and machines. Practical implementations of Semantic Web technologies need to consider aspects such as scalability and reliability to be attractive for industrial practitioners. Our approach shows a portal infrastructure which benefits on the one hand from the access facilities provided by Semantic Web technologies and on the other hand from the applicability of current Web technologies for industrial strength applications. The main achievement of the approach is an up-and-running network of content-interchanging portals. Accompanying tools and methods are provided for setting up such networks from scratch or to put them on top of existing information sources. In the paper, special attention is given to the ontology-supported query refinement service that enables a user to find the relevant results even if his query does not match his information need ideally.
From Integrated Publication and Information Systems to Virtual Information and Knowledge Environments
Ontology-Based Query Refinement for Semantic Portals
Bibster is a semantics-based Peer-to-Peer system for exchanging bibliographic data among researchers. Bibster exploits ontologies in data storage, query formulation, query routing and answer presentation. While the original Bibster system assumed a globally shared domain ontology, we here describe extensions to the Bibster system, that allow to learn personalized ontologies from the local bibliographic metadata. These personal ontologies can not only be used for subsequently classifying the bibliographic metadata, but also for supporting an improved query refinement process.
Proceedings of the BTW-Workshop "WebDB Meets IR"
On Personalized Information Retrieval in Semantics-Based Peer-to-Peer Systems
Knowledge management solutions relying on central repositories sometime have not met expectations, since users often create knowledge ad-hoc using their individual vocabulary and using their own decentral IT infrastructure (e.g., their laptop). To improve knowledge management for such decentralized and individualized knowledge work, it is necessary to, first, provide a corresponding IT infrastructure and to, second, deal with the harmonization of different vocabularies/ontologies. In this paper, we briefly sketch the technical peer-to-peer platform that we have built, but then we focus on the harmonization of the participating ontologies. Thereby, the objective of this harmonization is to avoid the worst incongruencies by having users share a core ontology that they can expand for local use at their will and individual needs. The task that then needs to be solved is one of distributed, loosely-controlled and evolving engineering of ontologies. In this paper we present a corresponding process template and a case study.
Intelligent Learning Infrastructures for Knowledge Intensive Organisations: A Semantic Web Perspective
A caste study in supporting DIstributed, Loosely-controlled and evolvInG Engineering of oNTologies (DILIGENT)
Abstract. Recent work has shown improvements in text clustering and classification tasks by integrating conceptual features extracted from ontologies. In this paper we present text mining experiments in the medical domain in which the ontological structures used are acquired automatically in an unsupervised learning process from the text corpus in question. We compare results obtained using the automatically learned ontologies with those obtained using manually engineered ones. Our results show that both types of ontologies improve results on text clus- tering and classification tasks, whereby the automatically acquired ontologies yield an improvement competitive with the manually engineered ones.
From Data and Information Analysis to Knowledge Engineering: Proceedings of the 29th Annual Conference of the German Classification Society (GfKl 2005), Magdeburg, Germany, March 9-11, 2005
Studies in Classification, Data Analysis, and Knowledge Organization
Learning Ontologies to Improve Text Clustering and Classification
Turning the current Web into a Semantic Web requires automatic approaches for annotation of existing data since manual approaches will not scale in general. We here present an approach for automatic generation of F-Logic frames out of tables which subsequently supports the automatic population of ontologies from table-like structures. The approach consists of a methodology, an accompanying implementation and a thorough evaluation. It is based on a grounded cognitive table model which is stepwise instantiated by our methodology.
Selected Papers from the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) 2004, Hiroshima, Japan, 07-11 November 2004
Proceedings of the EKAW Workshop on the Application of Language and Semantic Technologies to support Knowledge Management Processes, at the 14th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management
Integrating Information Extraction, Ontology Learning and Semantic Browsing into Organizational Knowledge Processes
CREAting relational Metadata (CREAM) -- a framework for semantic annotation
Towards Semantic Middleware for Web Application Development
Mobile Business, oder: Wie macht man Mobiles zum Business
In [Hitzler and Wendt 2002, 2005], a new methodology has been proposed which allows to derive uniform characterizations of different declarative semantic for logic programs with negation. One result from this work is that the well-founded semantics can formally be understood as a stratified version of the Fitting (or Kripke-Kleene) semantics. The constructions leading to this result, however, show a certain asymmetry which is not readily understood. We will study this situation here with the result that we will obtain a coherent picture of relations between different semantics for normal logic programs.
Towards a Systematic Account of Different Semantics for Logic Programs
Expert Update, Special Issue - Intelligent Services for The Knowledge Lifecycle
Mapping of ontologies generalizes a number of problems occurring in realistic semantic web applications such as the following ones: (I) Data integration is concerned with the use of data from different sources in one application. The data from the different sources needs to be presented to the user in a unified way. Typical scenarios include (a) the integration of relational databases into semantic web applications, where database schemas are first “lifted” to the ontology level and then mapped to the ontologies of the applications, and (b) the usage of different heterogeneous ontologies within semantic web applications (e.g. by reusing different domain ontologies). (II) Ontology evolution deals with the fact that in reality ontologies are typically not static entities but they rather evolve over time. This holds also for ontologies which participate in mappings to other ontologies. Therefore one can further distinguish between (a) evolving ontology mappings, (b) mapping different versions of multiple evolving ontology, and (c) mapping between versions of one ontology. To handle the increasing number of individual ontologies, but also for being able to create mappings on the fly, it becomes necessary to develop automatic approaches. In this paper, we determine mappings based on the similarity of the features of individual ontological entities. We show that mappings can be derived automatically and on the fly by encoding similarities into logical axioms and processing them with an inference engine. The advantages of this approach are obvious. Firstly, the axioms can easily be reused for mappings of arbitrary ontologies, no additional modeling effort is required. Secondly, the inference engine is the only mandatory technological infrastructure which means that no additional implementation effort is needed.
Semantic alignment between ontologies is a necessary precondition to establish interoperability between agents or services using different ontologies. Thus, in recent years different methods for automatic ontology alignment have been proposed to deal with this challenge. Thereby, the proposed methods were constricted to one of two different paradigms: Either, (i), proposals would include a manually predefined automatic method for proposing alignments, which would be used in the actual alignment process. They typically consist of a number of substrategies such as finding similar labels. Or, (ii), proposals would learn an automatic alignment method based on instance representations, e.g. bag-of-word models of documents. Both paradigms suffer from drawbacks. The first paradigm suffers from the problem that it is impossible, even for an expert knowledge engineer, to predict what strategy of aligning entities is most successful for a given pair of ontologies. This is especially the case with increasing complexity of ontology languages or increasing amounts of domain specific conventions. The second paradigm is often hurt by the lack of instances or instance descriptions. Also, knowledge encoded in the intensional descriptions of concepts and relations is only marginally exploited by this way. Hence, there remains the need to automatically combine multiple diverse and complementary alignment strategies of all indicators, i.e. extensional and intensional descriptions, in order to produce comprehensive, effective and efficient semi-automatic alignment methods. Such methods need to be flexible to cope with different strategies for various application scenarios, e.g. by using parameters. We call them “Parameterizable Alignment Methods” (PAM).We have developed a bootstrapping approach for acquiring the parameters that drive such a PAM. We call our approach APFEL for “Alignment Process Feature Estimation and Learning”.
Professional Knowledge Management: Third Biennial Conference, WM 2005
Specification of a benchmarking methodology for alignment techniques
6th IEEE International Workshop on Policies for Distributed Systems and Networks (POLICY 2005)
Approximating Service Utility from Policies and Value Function Patterns
Purpose - This paper proposes solutions to problems related to the maintenance and update of already existing e-learning courseware. Design/methodology/approach - A structured approach in form of a reference model for the re-engineering of existing educational material is presented. In this context, concepts already established in the area of aspect-oriented programming are applied to deal with crosscutting concerns in e-learning material. Finally, a software product line approach is proposed for the creation of new courseware using re-engineered components. Findings - It turns out that some aspects of the methodology developed for aspect-oriented programming can also be used to restructure the existing e-learning material in such a way that maintenance is eased and redundancy is significantly reduced. In addition, software product lines for e-learning material provide a global framework for coordinating the re-engineering and reuse of components. Practical implications - The advantage of the proposed approach is that existing e-learning standards and systems do not have to be modified or adapted. Originality/value - Usually, courseware evolves during a longer period of time and its development does not start every time from zero. There is a high incentive for re-engineering of existing courseware, since it constitutes in many cases the competitive advantage of companies or universities. However, up to now, little attention is paid to the maintenance and the efficient update of e-learning material which is already there.
The Learning Organization: An International Journal
Aspect-Oriented Reengineering of E-Learning Courseware
DLP &#8211; Description Logic Programs &#8211; is the name for the common language that is able to integrate knowledge bases described in Description Logic with Logic Programs. In this introduction, we offer a very short overview of DLP, the motivation for it, the benefits it offers and how to use it.
Without the proliferation of formal semantic annotations, the Semantic Web is certainly doomed to failure. In earlier work we presented a new paradigm to avoid this: the 'Self Annotating Web', in which globally available knowledge is used to annotate resources such as web pages. In particular, we presented a concrete method instantiating this paradigm, called PANKOW (Pattern-based ANnotation through Knowledge On the Web). In PANKOW, a named entity to be annotated is put into several linguistic patterns that convey competing semantic meanings. The patterns that are matched most often on the Web indicate the meaning of the named entity --- leading to automatic or semi-automatic annotation. In this paper we present C-PANKOW (Context-driven PANKOW), which alleviates several shortcomings of PANKOW. First, by downloading abstracts and processing them off-line, we avoid the generation of large number of linguistic patterns and correspondingly large number of Google queries. Second, by linguistically analyzing and normalizing the downloaded abstracts, we increase the coverage of our pattern matching mechanism and overcome several limitations of the earlier pattern generation process. Third, we use the annotation context in order to distinguish the significance of a pattern match for the given annotation task. Our experiments show that C-PANKOW inherits all the advantages of PANKOW (no training required etc.), but in addition it is far more efficient and effective.
Proceedings of the 14th World Wide Web Conference
Gimme The Context: Context-driven automatic semantic annotation with C-PANKOW
Multi-Konferenz Wirtschaftsinformatik 2002, E-Learning, Nürnberg, 9. - 11. September 2002
Erstellung von hypermedialen Kursen - ein Vorgehensmodell
Ontology merging describes the process of integrating two (or more) ontologies into a single one. How this is done best is a subject of ongoing research in the Semantic Web community. We propose a generic solution to the question, what the result of a merging should be in the ideal case. We will do this independent of a specific choice of ontology representation language, and thus provide a sort of blueprint for the development of algorithms applicable in practice. Our methods are taken from category theory. More precisely, we will argue that ontology merging is best captured by the notion of categorical pushout. Our paper is a first step towards the development of practically applicable algorithms.
Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Contexts and Ontologies: Theory, Practice and Applications (C&0). Workshop at the 20th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI-05, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 2005
What Is Ontology Merging? – A Category-Theoretical Perspective Using Pushouts
Knowledge representation using ontologies constitutes the heart of semantic technologies. Despite successful standardization efforts by the W3C, however, there are still numerous different ontology representation languages being used, and interoperability between them is in general not given. The problem is aggrevated by the fact that current standards lay foundations only and are well-known to be insufficient for the modelling of finer details. Thus, a plethora of extensions of the basic languages is being proposed, rendering the picture of ontology representation languages to be chaotic, to say the least. While semantic technologies start to become applicable and are being applied in adjacent areas of research and in research projects with industrial participation, and can soon be expected to become an integral part of industrial applications, the practitioner is faced with the difficult task of choosing his basic ontology representation paradigm. We will argue that the OWL subset known as Description Logic Programs constitutes a very reasonable choice.
1st Workshop on Formal Ontologies Meet Industry, FOMI'05, Verona, Italy, June 2005
Description Logic Programs: A Practical Choice For the Modelling of Ontologies
Second European Semantic Web Conference, (ESWC 2005)
An Argumentation Ontology for DIstributed, Loosely-controlled and evolvInG Engineering processes of oNTologies (DILIGENT)
The focus of research on representing and reasoning with knowledge traditionally has been on single specifications and appropriate inference paradigms to draw conclusions from such data. Accordingly, this is also an essential aspect of ontology research which has received much attention in recent years. But ontologies introduce another new challenge based on the distributed nature of most of their applications, which requires to relate heterogeneous ontological specifications and to integrate information from multiple sources. These problems have of course been recognized, but many current approaches still lack the deep formal backgrounds on which todays reasoning paradigms are already founded. Here we propose category theory as a well-explored and very extensive mathematical foundation for modelling distributed knowledge. A particular prospect is to derive conclusions from the structure of those distributed knowledge bases, as it is for example needed when merging ontologies.
Category Theory in Ontology Research: Concrete Gain from an Abstract Approach
Can you build the Semantic Web in one day? Most likely your answer would be "No, that’s impossible." Let’s look at a simpler question: Can you build the Web in one day? If you consider the Web in its entirety, your answer would also be "No." But what if you think of it as magnitudes smaller? You can build HTML pages in minutes and a simple Web shop in a few hours, including, for example, applying for Web space. All this in the same amount of time it takes your kids to set up a wireless LAN, install a Web server, and create a Web site for the home intranet to show family vacation pictures. You can realize a broad range of applications quite easily. To determine just how far Semantic Web technologies have come, we wanted to create a snapshot of what you could do by applying and assembling existing Semantic Web technologies — in one day. Our experiment’s main aim was to get a feel for the practical applicability of current research by integrating different technologies into something "up and running." As an added benefit, we learned a lot about the areas in which the Semantic Web’s many research directions intersect, such as knowledge representation, natural language processing, and peer-to-peer.
The Semantic Web: Research and Applications: Proceedings of the Second European Semantic Web Conference, ESWC 2005, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, May 29-June 1, 2005
Semantic Annotation of Images and Videos for Multimedia Analysis
Proceedings of the First European Semantic Web Symposium (ESWS 2004) held on Crete, Greece, in May 2004. 27 papers for the academic track and 6 papers for the industrial track span a wide range of topics from the Semantic Web area.
Proceedings of the First European Semantic Web Symposium (ESWS 2004)
Proceedings of the W3C Workshop on Rule Languages for Interoperability, Washington, D.C., USA
Bridging the Paradigm Gap with Rules for OWL
In this paper we present an application of the logic-based query refinement in the searching for information in an information portal. The refinement approach is based on discovering causal relationships between queries regarding the inclusion relation between the answers of these queries. We define a formal model for the query-answering pairs and use methods from inductive logic programming for the efficient calculation of a (lattice) order between them. In a case study regarding searching a bibliographic database we demonstrate the benefits of using our approach in the traditional information retrieval tasks, especially the combination of the free-text based querying and the logic-based query refinement.
5th International Conference on Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management
In this paper we present an approach for the interactive refinement of ontology-based queries. The approach is based on generating a lattice of the refinements, that enables a step-by-step tailoring of a query to the current information needs of a user. These needs are implicitly elicited by analysing the user’s behaviour during the searching process. The gap between a user’s need and his query is quantified by measuring several types of query ambiguities, that are used for ranking of the refinements. The main advantage of the approach is a more cooperative support in the refinement process: by exploiting the ontology background, the approach supports finding “similar” results and enables efficient relaxing of failing queries. Regarding an evaluation study, we discuss how a traditional on-line product catalog application can benefit from employing more formal, machine-readable semantics for describing its content, thus integrating such a catalog into the Semantic Web.
23rd International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER2004)
On Modelling Cooperative Retrieval Using an Ontology-based Query Refinement Process
Die Integration von Informationsverarbeitungsressourcen im Rahmen von Mergers & Acquisitions
Over the past few years, we have seen a growing interest in the potential of both Peer-to-Peer (P2P) computing and the use of more formal approaches to knowledge management, involving the development of ontologies. This penultimate chapter discusses possibilities that both approaches may offer for more effective and efficient knowledge management. In particular, we investigate how the two paradigms may be combined.
Ontology-based Knowledge Management: Exploiting the Semantic Web
IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence 2004
An approach for ontology-enhanced query refinement in information portals
IEEE International Conference on Data Mining ICDM 2004
A Logic-based Approach for Query Refinement in Ontology-based Information Retrieval Systems
Morphisms constitute a general tool for modelling complex relationships between mathematical objects on a large scale. In Formal Concept Analysis (FCA), morphisms can therefore be used for the study of structural properties of the knowledge represented in formal contexts, with applications to data transformation and merging. In this paper we present a comprehensive treatment of some of the most important morphisms in FCA and their relationships, which includes the study of dual bonds, scale measures, infomorphisms and their respective relations to Galois connections. We summarize our results in a concept lattice that displays all relationships between the considered morphisms. The purpose of this foundational work is to provide a basis for future applications of FCA in ontology research and similar areas, where morphisms provide a way to formalize the interplay between distributed knowledge bases.
Conceptual Structures: Common Semantics for Sharing Knowledge. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS '05, Kassel, Germany, July 2005
13th European Conference on Information Systems
We argue that the field of neural-symbolic integration is in need of identifying application scenarios for guiding further research. We furthermore argue that ontology learning - as occuring in the context of semantic technologies - provides such an application scenario with potential for success and high impact on neural-symbolic integration.
Proceedings of the IJCAI-05 Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning, NeSy
Ontology leaning as a use case for neural-symbolic integration
Significant advances have recently been made concerning the integration of symbolic knowledge representation with artificial neural networks (also called connectionist systems). However, while the integration with propositional paradigms has resulted in applicable systems, the case of first-order knowledge representation has so far hardly proceeded beyond theoretical studies which prove the existence of connectionist systems for approximating first-order logic programs up to any chosen precision. Advances were hindered severely by the lack of concrete algorithms for obtaining the approximating networks which were known to exist: the corresponding proofs are not constructive in that they do not yield concrete methods for building the systems. In this paper, we will make the required advance and show how to obtain the structure and the parameters for different kinds of connectionist systems approximating covered logic programs.
Integrating First Order Logic Programs and Connectionist Systems - A Constructive Approach
Artificial neural networks can be trained to perform excellently in many application areas. While they can learn from raw data to solve sophisticated recognition and analysis problems, the acquired knowledge remains hidden within the network architecture and is not readily accessible for analysis or further use: Trained networks are black boxes. Recent research efforts therefore investigate the possibility to extract symbolic knowledge from trained networks, in order to analyze, validate, and reuse the structural insights gained implicitly during the training process. In this paper, we will study how knowledge in form of propositional logic programs can be obtained in such a way that the programs are as simple as possible &#8212; where simple is being understood in some clearly defined and meaningful way.
In this paper we present Text2Onto, a framework for ontology learning from textual resources. Three main features distinguish Text2Onto from our earlier framework TextToOnto as well as other state-of-the-art ontology learning frameworks. First, by representing the learned knowledge at a meta-level in the form of instantiated modeling primitives within a so called Probabilistic Ontology Model (POM), we remain independent of a concrete target language while being able to translate the instantiated primitives into any (reasonably expressive) knowledge representation formalism. Second, user interaction is a core aspect of Text2Onto and the fact that the system calculates a confidence for each learned object allows to design sophisticated visualizations of the POM. Third, by incorporating strategies for data-driven change discovery, we avoid processing the whole corpus from scratch each time it changes, only selectively updating the POM according to the corpus changes instead. Besides increasing efficiency in this way, it also allows a user to trace the evolution of the ontology with respect to the changes in the underlying corpus.
Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems (NLDB)
Text2Onto - A Framework for Ontology Learning and Data-driven Change Discovery
Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Knowledge Management (I-KNOW 05), Graz, Austria, June 29 - July 1, 2005
Proc. 2. Konferenz Professionelles Wissensmanagement - Erfahrungen und Visionen
Entwicklung eines prozessbasierten Unternehmensportals zum dynamischen Wissensmanagement
EURODL - European Journal of Open and Distance Learning. Thematic issue "ICL2002"
37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-37 2004)
Process Management in Supply Chains - A New Petri-Net Based Approach
Beitragsband zum Studierenden-Programm bei der 9. Fachtagung "Datenbanksysteme in Büro, Technik und Wissenschaft
Modellierung von dokumentenbasierten Geschäftsprozessen mit XML-Netzen
Proc. 2nd IEEE Conference on e-Technology, e-Commerce and e-Services
Process-oriented Business Performance Management with Petri Nets
The general topic of this thesis is the investigation of various notions of morphisms between logical deductive systems, motivated by the intuition that additional (categorical) structure is needed to model the interrelations of formal specifications. This general task necessarily involves considerations in various mathematical disciplines, some of which might be interesting in their own right and which can be read independently. To find suitable morphisms, we review the relationships of formal logic, algebra, topology, domain theory, and formal concept analysis (FCA). This leads to a rather complete exposition of the representation theory of algebraic lattices, including some novel interpretations in terms of FCA and an explicit proof of the cartestian closedness of the emerging category. It also introduces the main concepts of «domain theory in logical form» for a particularly simple example. In order to incorporate morphisms from FCA, we embark on the study of various context morphisms and their relationships. The discovered connections are summarized in a hierarchy of context morphisms, which includes dual bonds, scale measures, and infomorphisms. Finally, we employ the well-known means of Stone duality to unify the topological and the FCA-based approach. A notion of logical consequence relation with a suggestive proof theoretical reading is introduced as a morphism between deductive systems, and special instances of these relations are identified with morphisms from topology, FCA, and lattice theory. Especially, scale measures are recognized as topologically continuous mappings, and infomorphisms are identified both with coherent maps and with Lindenbaum algebra homomorphisms.
Master's thesis, Technische Universität Dresden
Morphisms in Logic, Topology, and Formal Concept Analysis
Proceedings of the CAiSE´05 WORKSHOPS
Ontology based Business Process Description
The combination of Semantic Web and Peer-to-Peer is highly innovative with prospective benefits to the the individualization of work views as well as to the facilitation of knowledge sharing between peers. SWAP will tackle the semantic challenges brought up by this novel combination such that knowledge finding and sharing is effectively possible.
4th European Workshop on Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services (WIAMIS'03), London
SWAP: ONTOLOGY-BASED KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT WITH PEER-TO-PEER
Das Fachportal io-port.net –Fachinformationssystem für die Informatik
Text2Onto - A Framework for Ontology Learning and Datadriven Change Discovery
WM2005: Professional Knowledge Management, Experiences and Visions
Einführung eines Wissensinformationssystems in ein KMU, mit Pilotprojekt
Large information repositories as digital libraries, online shops, etc. rely on a taxonomy of the objects under consideration to structure the vast contents and facilitate browsing and searching (e.g., ACM topic classification for computer science literature, Amazon product taxonomy, etc.). As in heterogenous communities users typically will use different parts of such an ontology with varying intensity, customization and personalization of the ontologies is desirable. Of particular interest for supporting users during the personalization are collaborative filtering systems which can produce personal recommendations by computing the similarity between own preferences and the one of other people. In this paper we adapt a collaborative filtering recommender system to assist users in the management and evolution of their personal ontology by providing detailed suggestions of ontology changes. Such a system has been implemented in the context of Bibster, a peer-to-peer based personal bibliography management tool. Finally, we report on an experiment with the Bibster community that shows the performance improvements over non-personalized recommendations.
Proceedings of the Second European Semantic Web Conference, Heraklion, Greece, 2005
Collaborative and Usage-driven Evolution of Personal Ontologies
Effektive Java-Grundausbildung unter Einsatz eines Learning Management Systems und spezieller Werkzeuge
Mobile Datenbanken: heute, morgen und in 20 Jahren. 8. Workshop des GI-Arbeitskreises "Mobile Datenbanken und Informationssysteme" im Rahmen der BTW 2005 in Karlsruhe
This paper presents a framework for ontology evolution tailored to Digital Libraries, which makes use of two different sources for change detection and propagation, the usage of ontologies by users and the changes of available data. After presenting the logical architecture of the evolution framework, we first illustrate how to deal with usage-driven changes, that is changes derived from the actual usage of ontologies. Second, we describe the generation of data-driven ontology changes based on the constant flow of documents coming into Digital Libraries. The proposed framework for ontology ontology evolution, which is currently applied and evaluated in case studies, significantly reduces the costs of ontology updates and improves the quality of the ontology with respect to the users’ requirements.
Workshop ontologiebasiertes Wissensmanagement, WM 2003, Lucern
Proceedings of the 12th Workshop on Automated Reasoning, ARW 2005, Edinburgh, UK, July 2005
dlpconvert converts the OWL/XML presentation or RDF/XML-Serialisation of a knowledgebase defined within DLP into the datalog representation.
dlpconvert - Converting OWL DLP statements to logic programs
The ontology engineering methodology DILIGENT is presented, a methodology focussing on the evolution of ontologies and in particular on users and their usage of the ontology instead of the initial design, thus recognizing that knowledge is a tangible and moving target.
We propose a new technique for approximate ABox reasoning with OWL DL ontologies. It comes as a side-product of recent research results on the relationship between OWL DL and disjunctive datalog [1–4]. Essentially, it relies on a new transformation of OWL DL ontologies into negation-free disjunctive datalog, and on the idea of performing standard resolution over disjunctive rules by treating them as if they were non-disjunctive ones. We analyse our reasoning approach by means of non-monotonic reasoning techniques, and present an implementation, called Screech.
Proceedings of the 4th International Semantic Web Conference, Galway, Ireland, November 2005
Resolution-Based Approximate Reasoning for OWL DL
This article provides an overview about the Semantic Web, its importance and history and an overview of recent Semantic Web Technologies which can be used to enhance Digital Libraries. The paper answers, at least partially, questions like 'What is the Semantic Web?', 'How could the Semantic Web look like?', 'Why is the Semantic Web important?', 'What are Ontologies?' and 'Where are we now?'. Several pointers to further literature and web sites complete the overview. We point out that Semantic Web Technologies are valuable add-ons for Digital Libraries. There already exist numerous academic and commercial tools which can be applied right now. The article is of particular value for newcomers in this area.
Semantic Web Technologies for Digital Libraries
Proceedings of the 7th IEEE International Conference on E-Commerce Technology 2005
sMart - A Semantic Matchmaking Portal for Electronic Markets
Python reached out to a wide and diverse audience in the last few years. During its evolution it combined a number of different paradigms under its hood: imperative, object-oriented, functional, listoriented, even aspect-oriented programming paradigms are allowed, but still remain true to the Python way of programming, thus retaining simplicity, readability and fun. OWL is a knowledge representation language for the definition of ontologies, standardised by the W3C. It reaps upon the power of Description Logics and allows both the definition of concepts and their interrelations as well as the description of instances. Being created as part of the notoriously known Semantic Web language stack, its dynamics and openness lends naturally to the ever evolving Python language. We will sketch the idea of an integration of OWL and Python, but not by simply suggesting an OWL library, but rather by introducing and motivating the benefits a really deep integration offers, how it can change programming, and make it even more fun.
1st International Workshop on Scripting for the Semantic Web SFSW 2005
Deep Integration of Scripting Languages and Semantic Web Technologies
6th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies
Specification of Access Control and Certification Policies for Semantic Web Services
In the last years, the main orientation of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) has turned from mathematics towards computer science. This article provides a review of this new orientation and analyzes why and how FCA and computer science attracted each other. It discusses FCA as a knowledge representation formalism using five knowledge representation principles provided by Davis, Shrobe, and Szolovits (1993). It then studies how and why mathematics-based researchers got attracted by computer science. We will argue for continuing this trend by integrating the two research areas FCA and Ontology Engineering.
Conceptual Structures: Integration and Interfaces, Proc. ICCS 2002
Formal Concept Analysis on its Way from Mathematics to Computer Science
Multidimensional dynamic logic programs are a paradigm which allows to express (partially) hierarchically ordered evolving knowledge bases through (partially) ordered multi sets of logic programs and allowing to solve contradictions among rules in different programs by allowing rules in more important programs to reject rules in less important ones. This class of programs extends the class of dynamic logic program that provides meaning and semantics to sequences of logic programs. Recently a semantics named refined stable model semantics has fixed some counterintuitive behaviour of previously existing semantics for dynamic logic programs. However, it is not possible to directly extend the definitions and concepts of the refined semantics to the multidimensional case and hence more sophisticated principles and techniques are in order. In this paper we face the problem of defining a proper semantics for multidimensional dynamic logic programs by extending the idea of well supported model to this class of programs and by showing that this concept alone is enough for univocally characterizing a proper semantics. We then show how the newly defined semantics coincides with the refined one when applied to sequences of programs.
Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning, 8th International Conference, LPNMR 2005, Diamante, Italy, September 5-8, 2005, Proceedings
The well-supported semantics for multidimensional dynamic logic programs
Wissen schafft Werte, Praktische Lösungsansätze zur Organisation von Wissen
Den Überblick behalten: Wissensprojekte in der ISB AG
Ontology Driven Architectures and Potential Uses of the Semantic Web in Software Engineering
Proceedings of the W3C Workshop on Frameworks for Semantics in Web Services
Semantic Management of Web Services using the Core Ontology of Services
Proceedings of the IJCAI-05 Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning, NeSy'05, Edinburgh, UK, August 2005
The ICT profession has high impact on employment, business and society. The competitiveness of the European industry increasingly depends on both the effective use of ICT in industry and business and the level of knowledge, skills and competences of existing and new employees. This workshop aimed to discuss the state of play and activities of current initiatives and to draw conclusions on the way forward. The workshop is promoting relevant stakeholders to work actively together and is contributing to the current debate by inviting high level speakers and linking ongoing initiatives and activities. CEPIS organised this workshop jointly with Cedefop, the European Union Agency for the Development of Vocational Training, which is based in Thessaloniki/Greece.
CEPIS Workshop Proceedings eChallenges, 28 October 2004, Vienna, Austria
The objective of our research project is to learn from an identified real life business case at hand in form of a running inter-organisational collaboration. The aim of the research task is to facilitate cross-organisational business processes (CBPs) under consideration of aspects of ergonomics in order to provide adequate work procedures for employees in SMEs. The chosen apporach addresses technical and human aspects, respectively. The latter are to cause severe tensions between entrepreneurs and employees working in inter-organisational settings e.g by intransparency of the whole value chain process and lack of shared vision and knowledge. Therefore, the goal is to design a holistic and interdisciplinary framework for research and to identify some leverage points for collaborational work. Starting point is the analysis of the business scenario at hand. The paper intends to present the chosen approach and wants to discuss hitherto existing lessons learned.
Innovation and the Knowledge Economy: Issues, Applications, Case Studies
Facilitate Successful Cross-Organisational Business Processes - A Business Case
e-Skills certification plays a crucial role implementing and promoting high standards among ICT professionals/ practitioners and ICT end users. CEPIS studied on behalf of Cedefop the situation of e-Skills Certification in Europe. The study identified voluntary approaches offered by widely applied e-skills certifications. The operational objective for this study has been the evaluation of issues of e-skills certification at the International and European level by analysing attitudes of stakeholders towards current and future European level activities and highlighting potential solutions and recommendations to perceived problems. Based on the achieved results and outcome of the conducted study, the authors propose and illustrate a possible path towards internationally agreed certifications and recognised qualifications throughout Europe.
Innovation and the Knowledge Economy: Issues, Applications, Case Studiese
e-Skills Certification in Europe Towards Harmonisation
Multiple certification programmes and systems are known in the ICT industries and other fields of application throughout Europe. Certification and quality standards in ICT education and training are extremely important for both employments in the ICT labour market and as a basis for a sustainable professional career. CEPIS studied and compared, on behalf of Cedefop, existing approaches to e-skills certification on European level. This European study compares and analyses e-skills certification systems. It wants to compare and categorise the identified systems, underlying models and approaches, providers and procedures. The survey investigates the whole range of approaches: public and private, commercial and voluntary standards for e-skills certification. The focus lies on most widely applied systems in the respondents’ countries on the one hand and takes into consideration their potential with regard to their possible contribution to convening and implementing standards throughout Europe.
CEPIS Workshop Proceedings eChallenges, 20 October 2005, Ljubljana, Slovenia - in progress
Promoting New Ways for Certification, Accreditation and Assessment
Formal Concept Analysis is an unsupervised learning technique for conceptual clustering. We introduce the notion of iceberg concept lattices and show their use in Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD). Iceberg lattices are designed for analyzing very large databases. In particular they serve as a condensed representation of frequent patterns as known from association rule mining. In order to show the interplay between Formal Concept Analysis and association rule mining, we discuss the algorithm Titanic. We show that iceberg concept lattices are a starting point for computing condensed sets of association rules without loss of information, and are a visualization method for the resulting rules.
Database and Expert Systems Applications. Proc. DEXA 2002
Efficient Data Mining Based on Formal Concept Analysis
Performance Performance Management of collaborative business processes refers to the modeling, analyzing and monitoring of interrelated production, logistics and information processes on an operational level. In this context it is essential to figure out how critical situations can be detected in time, and how important changes can be discovered as early as possible. In particular analyzing potential exceptional states of performance indicators and matching counter measures in target-oriented simulation scenarios before implementing collaborative business processes is not supported by the current approaches. In this paper, we present a process-oriented approach to performance management of collaborative business processes, based on high-level Petri nets. By employing Petri-nets performance management as a whole can be improved. We will also demonstrate the modules and basic functions of a Petri net-based, software prototype, called INCOME2010 designed to support the complete process life cycle of process-oriented Performance Management.
Proc. 16th Int. Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA'05)
A Petri-net based Approach to Performance Management of collaborative Business Processes
8th IASTED International Conference on Computers and Advanced Technology in Education (CATE 2005)
Management of E-Learning Processes with high-level Petri Nets
Structuring of text document knowledge frequently appears either by ontologies and metadata or by automatic (un-)unsupervised text categorization. This paper describes our integrated framework OTTO (OnTology-based Text mining framewOrk). OTTO uses text mining to learn the target ontology from text documents and uses then the same target ontology in order to improve the effectiveness of both supervised and unsupervised text categorization approaches.
LDV Forum - GLDV Journal for Computational Linguistics and Language Technology
An Ontology-based Framework for Text Mining
Proc. Int. Symposium on Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, ISoLA 2004, Paphos/Cyprus, Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, Technical Report
Workflow Services: A Petri Net-Based Approach to Web Services
EMISA 2004 - Informationssysteme im E-Business und E-Government
The specification of an information system should include a description of structural system aspects as well as a description of the system behavior. In this article, we show how this can be achieved by high-level Petri nets—namely, the so-called NR/T-nets (Nested-Relation/Transition Nets). In NR/T-nets, the structural part is modeled by nested relations, and the behavioral part is modeled by a novel Petri net formalism. Each place of a net represents a nested relation scheme, and the marking of each place is given as a nested relation of the respective type. Insert and delete operations in a nested relational database (NF2-database) are expressed by transitions in a net. These operations may operate not only on whole tuples of a given relation, but also on “subtuples” of existing tuples. The arcs of a net are inscribed with so-called Filter Tables, which allow (together with an optional logical expression as transition inscription) conditions to be formulated on the specified (sub-) tuples. The occurrence rule for NR/T-net transitions is defined by the operations union, intersection, and “negative” in lattices of nested relations. The structure of an NR/T-net, together with the occurrence rule, defines classes of possible information system procedures, i.e., sequences of (possibly concurrent) operations in an information system.
Information System Behavior Specification by High-Level Petri Nets
Dieser Beitrag beleuchtet Petri-Netze aus der Sicht der Angewandten Informatik und der Wirtschaftsinformatik. Grundprinzipien der Modellierung mit Petri-Netzen werden erläutert, verschiedene Klassen von Petri-Netzen werden vorgestellt, und Anwendungen bei der Modellierung betrieblicher Abläufe werden skizziert. In Analogie zur Datenmodellierung wird ein 3-Schichten-Modell für die Modellierung betrieblicher Abläufe vorgestellt, das durchgängig auf Petri-Netzen basiert.
Petri-Netze in der Angewandten Informatik - Einführung, Grundlagen und Perspektiven
An Integrated Approach for the Specification of Processes and Related Complex Structured Objects in Business Applications
Information Systems Technology and its Applications
Evolution of Petrinet Modeled Knowledge Intensive Processes
The Web Rule Language WRL is a rule-based ontology language for the Semantic Web. The language is located in the Semantic Web stack next to the Description Logic based Ontology language OWL. WRL defines three variants, namely Core, Flight and Full. The Core variant marks the common fragment between WRL and OWL. WRL-Flight is a Datalog-based rule language. WRL-Full is a full-fledged rule language with function symbols and negation under the Well-Founded Semantics.
In this paper, we report about the current state of ToscanaJ, the latest member of the family of Toscana programs, that have been used for conceptual data analysis and knowledge discovery. After presenting the tool itself, we shortly describe the planned Tockit framework surrounding ToscanaJ, that will provide an Open Source toolset for programs based on Formal Concept Analysis and the planning for future development.
Advances in Formal Concept Analysis for Knowledge Discovery in Databases. Proc. Workshop FCAKDD of the 15th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2002). Lyon, France, July 23, 2002
ToscanaJ: An Open Source Tool for Qualitative Data Analysis
Zur Wahl der Inferenzmaschine in SmartWeb
5th International Conference on Knowledge Management
A Genetic Algorithm Approach to Self-Organizing Knowledge Intensive Processes
Wikipedia is the biggest collaboratively created source of encyclopaedic knowledge. Growing beyond the borders of any traditional encyclopaedia, it is facing new problems of knowledge management: The current excessive usage of article lists and categories witnesses the fact that 19th century content organization technologies like inter-article references and indices are no longer sufficient for today's needs. Rather, it is necessary to allow knowledge processing in a computer assisted way, for example to intelligently query the knowledge base. To this end, we propose the introduction of typed links as an extremely simple and unintrusive way for rendering large parts of Wikipedia machine readable. We provide a detailed plan on how to achieve this goal in a way that hardly impacts usability and performance, propose an implementation plan, and discuss possible difficulties on Wikipedia's way to the semantic future of the World Wide Web. The possible gains of this endeavor are huge; we sketch them by considering some immediate applications that semantic technologies can provide to enhance browsing, searching, and editing Wikipedia.
Proceedings of Wikimania 2005 - The First International Wikimedia Conference
Wikipedia and the Semantic Web - The Missing Links
Proceedings of the ICML 2005 Workshop on Learning and Extending Lexical Ontologies with Machine Learning Methods
Learning Concept Hierarchies from Text with a Guided Agglomerative Clustering Algorithm
Proceedings of the ACL Workshop on Deep Lexical Acquisition
Automatically Learning Qualia Structures from the Web
Learning Taxonomic Relations from Heterogeneous Sources of Evidence
Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Knowledge Management (I-KNOW 05)
Personalized Information Retrieval in Bibster, a Semantics-Based Bibliographic Peer-to-Peer System
Advertising on mobile terminals is a consequential advancement of traditional methods of advertising. In this article we will discuss the special potentials and challenges of mobile advertising and introduce the MoMa-system as approach to enable personalized and context sensitive advertising while guaranteeing data protection, whereas context isn&#8217;t limited to just location.
Enabling Personalized and Context Sensitive Mobile Advertising while Guaranteeing Data Protection
Semantic Web Mining. Proc. of the Semantic Web Mining Workshop of the 13th Europ. Conf. on Machine Learning (ECML'02) / 6th Europ. Conf. on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (PKDD'02), Helsinki, August 19, 2002
Semantic Methods and Tools for Information Portals -- The SemIPort Project
Mobile terminals, such as cellular phones and PDAs, have an enormous advertising potential: they are extremely popular and most people carry such devices with them all day, enabling personalized advertising. However, there is a serious danger that the Spam wave, known from e-mail communication, will spillover to mobile devices. In addition, it is important to take protection of private data seriously, because mobile terminals are also used for personal communication. In this article we discuss the special features and challenges of mobile advertising and introduce the MoMa-system for mobile advertising. MoMa supports personalized advertising using context information while guaranteeing data protection. We also name criteria for the comparison of mobile advertising systems and apply them to compare MoMa to other approaches.
Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Mobile Commerce and Services (WMCS '05)
Comparison of Different Approaches for Mobile Advertising
Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on E-Business and Telecommunication Networks (ICETE 2005)
Kontextsensitive Werbung auf mobilen Endgeräten
MVNO - Aussichten des deutschen Mobilfunkmarktes
SEKT aims to integrate approaches from Machine Learning (ML), Human Language Technology (HLT) and Ontology and Metadata Management (OM). This deliverable is part of the SEKT bottom-up integration activities and lays the foundation for a number of deliverables (D6.6.x). It explores integration directions for these three research fields and reports on the ongoing and scheduled technical integration activities between the different software tool suites provided by the respective workpackages (WP1 - WP3).
D6.6.1 Report on the integration of ML, HLT and OM
OntoClean is a unique approach towards the formal evaluation of ontologies, as it analyses the intensional content of concepts. Although it is well documented in numerous publications, and its importance is widely acknowledged, it is still used rather infrequently due to the high costs for applying OntoClean, especially on tagging concepts with the correct meta-properties. In order to facilitate the use of OntoClean and to enable proper evaluation of it in real-world cases, we provide AEON, a tool which automatically tags concepts with appropriate OntoClean meta-properties. The implementation can be easily expanded to check the concepts for other abstract meta-properties, thus providing for the first time tool support in order to enable intensional ontology evaluation for concepts. Our main idea is using the web as an embodiment of objective world knowledge, where we search for patterns indicating concepts meta-properties. We get an automatic tagging of the ontology, thus reducing costs tremendously. Moreover, AEON lowers the risk of having subjective taggings. As part of the evaluation we report our experiences from creating a middle-sized OntoClean-tagged reference ontology.
Proceedings of the 4th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2005)
Automatic Evaluation of Ontologies (AEON)
We present a preliminary version of the approximate OWL reasoning system SCREECH. It builds on the KAON2 system and performs OWL ABox reasoning in an approximate manner. It trades soundness of reasoning for efficiency, with resulting polynomial worst-case data complexity. It has been developed for use in time-critical applications where quick response time is more important than a full guarantee of correctness of answers. The theoretical background for the system is explained in [Hitzler and Vrandecic, Proc. ISWC 2005].
The SCREECH OWL reasoner - Scalable approximate ABox reasoning for OWL
bstract: We present a novel approach to the automatic acquisition of taxonomies or concept hierarchies from a text corpus. The approach is based on Formal Concept Analysis (FCA), a method mainly used for the analysis of data, i.e. for investigating and processing explicitly given information. We follow Harris' distributional hypothesis and model the context of a certain term as a vector representing syntactic dependencies which are automatically acquired from the text corpus with a linguistic parser. On the basis of this context information, FCA produces a lattice that we convert into a special kind of partial order constituting a concept hierarchy. The approach is evaluated by comparing the resulting concept hierarchies with hand-crafted taxonomies for two domains: tourism and finance. We also directly compare our approach with hierarchical agglomerative clustering as well as with Bi-Section-KMeans as an instance of a divisive clustering algorithm. Furthermore, we investigate the impact of using different measures weighting the contribution of each attribute as well as of applying a particular smoothing technique to cope with data sparseness.
Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR)
Learning Concept Hierarchies from Text Corpora using Formal Concept Anaylsis
We Will Show Them: Essays in Honour of Dov Gabbay
Dimensions of neural-symbolic integration - a structured survey
Semantic Web Mining aims at combining the two fast-developing research areas Semantic Web and Web Mining. Web Mining aims at discovering insights about the meaning of Web resources and their usage. Given the primarily syntactical nature of data Web mining operates on, the discovery of meaning is impossible based on these data only. Therefore, formalizations of the semantics of Web resources and navigation behavior are increasingly being used. This fits exactly with the aims of the Semantic Web: the Semantic Web enriches the WWW by machine-processable information which supports the user in his tasks. In this paper, we discuss the interplay of the Semantic Web with Web Mining, with a specific focus on usage mining.
Next Generation Data Mining. Proc. NSF Workshop, Baltimore, Nov. 2002
Usage Mining for and on the Semantic Web
Im E-Learning-Umfeld haben sich Lernobjekte als eine spezielle Art von Komponenten herauskristallisiert, um Lerninhalte aller Art zu kapseln. Damit wird beabsichtigt, dass Lerninhalte strukturiert gespeichert, effizient wieder verwendet und flexibel zwischen verschiedenen E-Learning-Plattformen ausgetauscht werden können. Allerdings scheinen Lernobjekte im Hinblick auf technische, organisatorische und ökonomische Aspekte noch lange nicht so erfolgreich zu sein wie ursprünglich erhofft. Dieser Beitrag identifiziert einige der Gründe, indem Erkenntnisse aus dem Gebiet der komponentenbasierten Software-Entwicklung auf E-Learning und Lernobjekte übertragen werden.
9. Workshop Multimedia in Bildung und Wirtschaft
Lernobjekte im E-Learning - Eine kritische Beurteilung zugrunde liegender Konzepte anhand eines Vergleichs mit komponentenbasierter Software-Entwicklung
We present semantic management of Web Services as a paradigm that is located between the two extremes of current Web Services standards descriptions and tools, which we abbreviate by WS*, and Semantic Web Services. On the one hand, WS* does not have an integrated formal model incurring high costs for managing Web Services in a declarative, but mostly manual fashion. On the other hand, the latter aims at the formal modelling of Web Services such that full automation of Web Service discovery, composition, invocation, etc., becomes possible — thereby incurring unbearably high costs for modelling. Based on a set of use cases, we identify who benefits from what kind of semantic modelling of Web Services, when and for what purposes. We present how an ontology is used in an implemented prototype.
Service-Oriented Computing - ICSOC 2005: Third International Conference, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, December 12-15, 2005. Proceedings
One of the major problems of large scale, distributed and evolving ontologies is the potential introduction of inconsistencies. In this paper we survey four different approaches to handling inconsistency in DL-based ontologies: consistent ontology evolution, repairing inconsistencies, reasoning in the presence of inconsistencies and multi-version reasoning. We present a common formal basis for all of them, and use this common basis to compare these approaches. We discuss the different requirements for each of these methods, the conditions under which each of them is applicable, the knowledge requirements of the various methods, and the different usage scenarios to which they would apply.
Proceedings of the Fourth International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2005)
A Framework for Handling Inconsistency in Changing Ontologies
Proceedings of the International Conference on Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing (RANLP)
Towards large-scale, open-domain and ontology-based named entity classification
The world is constantly changing, and so does required and available knowledge, e.g. stored in Digital Libraries. Knowledge workers heavily rely on the availability and accessibility of knowledge contained in such libraries. The sheer mass of knowledge available today, however, requires sophisticated support for searching and, often considered as equally important, personalization. In SEKT we address these challenges by using ontologies. Ontologies by nature make implicit knowledge explicit, they describe relevant parts of the world and make them machine understandable and processable. To be effective, ontologies need to change possibly as fast as the parts of the world they describe. Change discovery aims at generating implicit requirements by inducing ontology changes from existing data. In this deliverable we focus on usage-driven change discovery. Usage data is a very valuable source of contextual information, based on which the ontology can be modified in order to reflect changes in the real world, We describe a framework, in which ontology evolution and discovering potentially useful changes can be formalized as an optimization problem. We introduce the notion of an evaluation function that allows to measure the quality of an ontology with respect to given criteria. We instantiate the framework for the task of ontology pruning based on usage data, and for the task of collaborative evolution in a multi-user scenario, in which users maintain personalized ontologies. A first case study based on the Bibster system shows very promising results.
Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2005
Towards a Framework for Improving the Design of Programming Exercises
Proceedings of the 4th International ILIAS Conference
Durchführung von Onlineklausuren mit ILIAS
The increasing popularity of e-learning has lead to the creation of an abundance of learning material. Very often, after the initial creation, the growing amount of content also leads to a more complicated content maintenance, since updates typically occur very often and the potential variability of modifications is not limited in advance. Moreover, commonalities between different parts of material are not exploited, which often leads to redundancy. The composition of content from different sources rarely produces satisfactory results. To help remedy this situation, this paper introduces the PROduct Lines for dIgital COntent (PROLICO) approach, which applies the concept of software product lines to digital content, and in particular, to educational material in e-learning. The PROLICO approach manages explicitly the commonalities in learning material by defining common requirements, limiting variability in advance, as well as planning and coordinating reuse.
The tremendous success of the World Wide Web is countervailed by efforts needed to search and find relevant information. For tabular structures embedded in HTML documents typical keyword or link-analysis based search fails. The Semantic Web relies on annotating resources such as documents by means of ontologies and aims to overcome the bottleneck of finding relevant information. Turning the current Web into a Semantic Web requires automatic approaches for annotation since manual approaches will not scale in general. Most efforts have been devoted to automatic generation of ontologies from text, but with quite limited success. However, tabular structures require additional efforts, mainly because understanding of table contents requires a table structures comprehension task and a semantic interpretation task, which exceeds in complexity the linguistic task. The focus of this paper is on automatic transformation and generation of semantic (F-Logic) frames from table-like structures. The presented work consists of a methodology, an accompanying implementation (called TARTAR) and a thorough evaluation. It is based on a grounded cognitive table model which is stepwise instantiated by the methodology. A typical application scenario is the automatic population of ontologies to enable query answering over arbitrary tables (e.g. HTML tables).
Transforming Arbitrary Tables into F-Logic Frames with TARTAR
We introduce the notion of iceberg concept lattices and show their use in Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD). Iceberg lattices are a conceptual clustering method, which is well suited for analyzing very large databases. They also serve as a condensed representation of frequent itemsets, as starting point for computing bases of association rules, and as a visualization method for association rules. Iceberg concept lattices are based on the theory of Formal Concept Analysis, a mathematical theory with applications in data analysis, information retrieval, and knowledge discovery. We present a new algorithm called Titanic for computing (iceberg) concept lattices. It is based on data mining techniques with a level-wise approach. In fact, Titanic can be used for a more general problem: Computing arbitrary closure systems when the closure operator comes along with a so-called weight function. Applications providing such a weight function include association rule mining, functional dependencies in databases, conceptual clustering, and ontology engineering. The algorithm is experimentally evaluated and compared with B. Ganter's Next-Closure algorithm. The evaluation shows an important gain in efficiency, especially for weakly correlated data.
Journal on Knowledge and Data Engineering (KDE)
International Workshop on Modeling Inter-Organizational Systems in conjunction with OnTheMove Federated Conferences, Agia Napa (Cyprus)
A Petri Net Based Approach For Process Model Driven Deduction Of BPEL Code
We discuss some of the recent controversies concerning the DLP fragment of OWL. We argue that it is a meaningful fragment and can serve as a basic interoperability layer between OWL and logic programming-based ontology languages.
Proceedings of the Workshop OWL - Experiences and Directions, Galway, Ireland
Online http://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-188/sub2.pdf
After 18 months of operation, cooperation and active participation on meetings in the research area of Knowledge Web is in place. In 2005 all WPs met at the Joint Knowledge Web Research meeting on 24th-25th January 2005 at Hannover, Germany and the Joint Knowledge Web Research meeting following the ESWC 2nd European Semantic Web Conference, ESWC 2005, in Heraklion, Crete 2nd-3rd May 2005. Before M12 the area managers had emphasized additionality instead of duplication of effort, and have encouraged cross collaboration between WPs, the SDK cluster, the WSMO projects and other activities. To strengthen the cross-WP-fertilization we introduced for both meetings in 2005 a new form in addition to regular WP meetings: so-called themed research meetings (aka. join sessions or concertation meetings). For each themed meeting the major topic of one research WP has been highlighted as theme, in January this had been "Web Services" and in May this had been "Language Extensions". Operationalization of a themed meeting consists of a series of bi-lateral meetings of the highlighted WP with all the remaining ones. In this deliverable we present a brief overview of the research advance achieved so far which consists of summaries of the results so far achieved in each research work package (WP2.1 Scalability, WP2.2 Heterogeneity, WP2.3 Scalability, WP2.4 Web Services and WP2.5 Language Extensions) and summaries of bi-lateral meetings among different work packages.
This deliverable presents T-REX, the program in Knowledge Web (KWeb) to support “Topic-oriented Research EXchange”, and gives an overview of the exchanges performed in 2004. The short-term goal of T-REX is to encourage, support and manage the exchange of researchers across KWeb members. The long-term goal of T-REX is to strengthen the European research area by establishing strong and lasting links across research organizations, e.g. visible by shared publications of KWeb members.
This deliverable provides an overview about the workshops and conferences organized under the umbrella of Knowledge Web by its partners. Support of events is organized along a well-defined set of criteria which enable different levels of support.
This deliverable shows examples about approximating symbolic inference engines in a Semantic Web environment. Approaches of language weakening, knowledge compilation, and approximated deduction are presented. The last one is evaluated in practical applications with mixed results.
Proceedings des 12. Workshops Algorithmen und Werkzeuge für Petrinetze (AWPN'05)
Proceedings of the Workshop on Contract Architectures and Languages (CoALa 2005), in conjunction with the 9th IEEE International Enterprise Computing Conference (EDOC 2005)
A Modeling Perspective on Web Service Contracting
Semantic Web Mining combines two fast-developing research areas: Semantic Web and Web Mining. In this connection, the intention is to improve, on the one hand, Web Mining methods by new formal semantics represented in the Web and to utilize Web Mining results, on the other hand, for building up the Semantic Web. We also present the SemIPort project, in which methods and tools for semantic information portals will be developed.
Proc. Arbeitskreistreffen Knowledge Discovery, Oldenburg, Sept. 2002
Semantic Web Mining for Building Information Portals (Position Paper)
Handbook on Knowledge Management. International Handbooks on Information Systems
Knowledge Processes and Meta Processes in Ontology-based Knowledge Management