1. www.knoodl.com Collaborative Vocabulary Management
Michael Lang
SICoP February 5, 2008

3. The Vocabulary & The Knowledgebase
A vocabulary is a machine readable, formal description of the meaning of “things” in a domain, to facilitate understanding and interoperability amongst systems, services, and participants.
Seriously engineered artifact!
No short-cuts!
Must enable query, not just search!
A knowledge base is a collection of facts that can be queried using any vocabulary.
The unique aspect of a knowledge base is that the facts are independent of any schema providing for extensibility and continual change.
Database = Facts + Schema
Knowledgebase = Facts queried thru any Vocabulary

4. Community Vocabulary Engineering
The meaning of “things” in a vocabulary must be established by a community
The purpose of the vocabulary is to operate at the level of a community
Community vocabularies facilitate
Interoperability
Integration
Federation
Cross-domain Analysis

5. Defining the Meaning of “things”
OWL / RDF / SPARQL
Extensible framework for adding any types of properties to “things”
Ability to rigorously constrain properties
Built-in properties for cross-vocabulary alignment
Equivalence
Sub-class
Disjoint

6. Tagging vs. Mark-up Tagging enables search Mark-up enables query
ISO 1179, Dublin Core, Taxonomies
Search for tags yields thousands of results
Lacks precision
Mark-up enables query
DAML + OIL
OWL + RDF
Query over an ontology produces targeted result sets
Can be used at run-time

7. Engineering Collaboration
1990 – Unix
HP UX, AT&T System 5, Berkely Unix, Solaris, IBM AIX
2000 – Linux
Global collaboration creates most widely used server operating system ever
Collaboration framework rudimentary at best
Engineered artifacts can be created in a collaborative framework

8. Best Practices
Start with a seed vocabulary before engaging the broader community
A seed vocabulary includes a starter number of terms
Linux started with a basic kernel
Determine the level of complexity needed in your engineering to achieve your mission(s)
Determine the process for incrementing change in the vocabulary
Set-up a Governance model

9. Knoodl Road-map Improving ontology modeling capabilities
Improving collaboration capabilities
Enabling knowledge base development by incorporating:
Scalable triple store
Scalable reasoners
Query/SPARQL wizard
Instance editing capabilities
SPARQL endpoint on the World Wide Web

10. Army Architecture Federation Pilot Demonstration
Brooke Stevenson
President & Semantic Architect
Spry Enterprises, Inc.