Techniques for organizational memory information systems

The KnowMore project aims at providing active support to humans working on knowledge-intensive tasks. To this end the knowledge available in the modeled business processes or their incarnations in specific workflows shall be used to improve information handling. We present a representation formalism for knowledge-intensive tasks and the specification of its object-oriented realization. An operational semantics is sketched by specifying the basic functionality of the Knowledge Agent which works on the knowledge intensive task representation. The Knowledge Agent uses a meta-level description of all information sources available in the Organizational Memory. We discuss the main dimensions that such a description scheme must be designed along, namely information content, structure, and context. On top of relational database management systems, we basically realize deductive object- oriented modeling with a comfortable annotation facility. The concrete knowledge descriptions are obtained by configuring the generic formalism with ontologies which describe the required modeling dimensions. To support the access to documents, data, and formal knowledge in an Organizational Memory an integrated domain ontology and thesaurus is proposed which can be constructed semi-automatically by combining document-analysis and knowledge engineering methods. Thereby the costs for up-front knowledge engineering and the need to consult domain experts can be considerably reduced. We present an automatic thesaurus generation tool and show how it can be applied to build and enhance an integrated ontology /thesaurus. A first evaluation shows that the proposed method does indeed facilitate knowledge acquisition and maintenance of an organizational memory

XDO2: An XML deductive object-oriented query language

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENC

INTEGRATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGIES TO SUPPORT CONSULTATION IN AN INFORMATION CENTER

This paper presents an approach for integrating different types of information systems technologies to support the functions of an Information Center (IC). A knowledge based system, Information Center Expert/Help Service (ICE/H), has been developed to provide support for the help services of an IC. A general process model to represent the consultation process in an IC is described. Based on this model, an architecture to support the consultation process has been developed. The architecture depicts the use of a knowledge management system, a data management system and a communication (E-mail) system to emulate the consultation process. The ICE/H system has been implemented using this architecture to support an IC with 5000 users

Access Control and Service-Oriented Architectures.

Access Control and Service-Oriented Architectures" investigates in which way logical access control can be achieved effectively, in particular in highly dynamic environments such as service-oriented architectures (SOA's). The author combines state-of-the-art best-practice and projects these onto the SOA. In doing so, he identifies strengths of current approaches, but also pinpoints weaknesses. These weaknesses are subsequently mitigated by introducing an innovative new framework called EFSOC. The framework is validated empirically and preliminary implementations are discussed.

Designing role-based view for object-relational databases

In a federated database system, a view mechanism is crucial since it is used to define exportable subsets of data ; to perform a virtual restructuring d ataset; and to construct the integrated schema. The view service in federated databa se systems must be capable of retaining as much semantic information as possible. The object-oriented ( 0 - 0 ) model was considered the suitable canonical data model since it meets the original criteria for canonical model selection. However, with the emergence of stronger object-relational (0 -R ) model, the re is a clear argument for using an 0 - R canonical model in the federation. Hence, research should now focus on th e development of semantically powerful view mechanism for th e newer model. Meanwhile, the availability of real 0 -R technologies offers researchers the opportunity to develop different forms of view mechanisms. The concept of roles has been widely studied in 0 - 0 modelling and development. The role model represents some characteristics that the traditional 0-0 model lacked, such as object migration, multiple occurrences and context-dependent access. While many forms of 0-0 views were designed for the 0-0 canonical model, one option was to extend the 0-0 model to incorporate a role model. In a role model, the real entity is modelled in the form of a role rather than an object. An object represents the permanent properties of an entity is a root object; and an object represents the temporary properties of an entity is a role object. The contribution of this research is to design a view system that employees the concept of roles for the 0 -R canonical model in a federated database system. In this thesis, an examination of the current 0 -R metamodel is provided first in order to provide an environment for recognising the roleview metadata and measuring the view performance; then a Roleview Definition Language (RDL) is introduced, along with the semantics for defining virtual classes and generating virtua l extents; finally, a working prototype is provided to prove th e role-based view system is implementable and the syntax is semantically correct

Access control and service-oriented architectures

Access Control and Service-Oriented Architectures" investigates in which way logical access control can be achieved effectively, in particular in highly dynamic environments such as service-oriented architectures (SOA's). The author combines state-of-the-art best-practice and projects these onto the SOA. In doing so, he identifies strengths of current approaches, but also pinpoints weaknesses. These weaknesses are subsequently mitigated by introducing an innovative new framework called EFSOC. The framework is validated empirically and preliminary implementations are discussed.