This paper is intended to serve as a comprehensive introduction to the emerging field concerned with the design and use of ontologies. We observe that disparate backgrounds, languages, tools and techniques are a major barrier to effective communication among people, organisations and/or software understanding (i.e. an “ontology”) in a given subject area, can improve such communication, which in turn, can give rise to greater reuse and sharing, inter-operability, and more reliable software. After motivating their need, we clarify just what ontologies are and what purpose they serve. We outline a methodology for developing and evaluating ontologies, first discussing informal techniques, concerning such issues as scoping, handling ambiguity, reaching agreement and producing definitions. We then consider the benefits and describe, a more formal approach. We re-visit the scoping phase, and discuss the role of formal languages and techniques in the specification, implementation and evalution of ontologies. Finally, we review the state of the art and practice in this emerging field, considering various case studies, software tools for ontology development, key research issues and future prospects.

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Ontologies: principles, methods and applications

Ontological Engineering: with examples from the areas of Knowledge Management, e-Commerce and the Semantic Web. (Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing)

If patterns are good ideas that can be re-applied to new situations, AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis looks at what goes wrong in software development, time and time again. This entertaining and often enlightening text defines what seasoned developers have long suspected: despite advances in software engineering, most software projects still fail to meet expectations--and about a third are cancelled altogether. The authors of AntiPatterns draw on extensive industry experience, their own and others, to help define what's wrong with software development today. They outline reasons why problem patterns develop (such as sloth, avarice, and greed) and proceed to outline several dozen patterns that can give you headaches or worse. Their deadliest hit list begins with the Blob, where one object does most of the work in a project, and Continuous Obsolescence, where technology changes so quickly that developers can't keep up. Some of the more entertaining antipatterns include the Poltergeist (where do-nothing classes add unnecessary overhead), the Boat Anchor (a white elephant piece of hardware or software bought at great cost) and the Golden Hammer (a single technology that is used for every conceivable programming problem). The authors then proceed to define antipatterns oriented toward management problems with software (including Death by Planning and Project Mismanagement, along with several miniature antipatterns, that help define why so many software projects are late and overbudget). The authors use several big vendors' technologies as examples of today's antipatterns. Luckily, they suggest ways to overcome antipatterns and improve software productivity in "refactored solutions" that can overcome some of these obstacles. However, this is a realistic book, a mix of "Dilbert" and software engineering. A clever antidote to getting too optimistic about software development, AntiPatterns should be required reading for any manager facing a large-scale development project. --Richard Dragan

AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis

Reusable ontologies are becoming increasingly important for tasks such as information integration, knowledge-level interoperation and knowledge-base development. We have developed a set of tools and services to support the process of achieving consensus on commonly shared ontologies by geographically distributed groups. These tools make use of the World Wide Web to enable wide access and provide users with the ability to publish, browse, create and edit ontologies stored on anontology server. Users can quickly assemble a new ontology from a library of modules. We discuss how our system was constructed, how it exploits existing protocols and browsing tools, and our experience supporting hundreds of users. We describe applications using our tools to achieve consensus on ontologies and to integrate information.The Ontolingua Server may be accessed through the URLhttp://ontolingua.stanford.edu

The Ontolingua Server

This thesis describes an investigation into the practical use of ontologies for the development of information systems. Ontologies are formal descriptions of shared knowledge in a domain. An ontology can be used as a specification of an information system because it specifies the knowledge that is required for the tasks the information system has to perform. Sharing and reuse of ontologies across different domains and applications can therefore improve information systems design. Ontologies have been a subject for a lot of research carried out in the artificial intelligence community. Although many ontologies have been developed, they fail to demonstrate that ontologies for large and complex domains can be developed that can be used and reused across different applications. There are three reasons for this: (i) many ontologies have not been used to develop a real-life application, (ii) many ontologies have not been reused for different applications in different domains and (iii)many ontologies are merely taxonomies of domain concepts and fail to capture meta-level and tacit background knowledge.

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Construction of Engineering Ontologies for Knowledge Sharing and Reuse

THE PRINCIPLES OF SYSTEMS INTEGRATION Standards Strategy An Introduction to CORBA Software Architecture Design Security THE PRACTICE OF SYSTEMS INTEGRATION Framework Examples In-Depth Example: The DISCUS Framework Object Wrapper Techniques Systems Integration Guidance Acronyms Appendix Bibliography Index.

Ron Zahavi

Papers

The Essential CORBA: Systems Integration Using Distributed Objects

System integration with minimal object wrappers