Glossary

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D

DL (abbr.)

Description logics

DLs are a family of knowledge representation languages which can be used to represent the terminological knowledge of an application domain in a structured and formally well-understood way. The name description logic refers, on the one hand, to concept descriptions used to describe a domain and, on the other hand, to the logic-based semantics which can be given by a translation into first-order predicate logic. Description logic was designed as an extension to frames and semantic networks, which were not equipped with formal logic-based semantics._More

Document Repository

A KIM component for storing, retrieving and indexing of annotated documents with semantic and full-text query support. KIM integrates and adapts different storage engines, like Oracle DB and Apache Lucene for that purpose.

F

FOL (abbr.)

First Order Logic

It is a system of deduction that extends propositional logic by allowing quantification over individuals of a given domain of discourse. For example, it can be stated in FOL "Every individual has the property P"._More

FTS (abbr.)

Full Text Search

Full text search refers to a technique for searching a computer-stored document or database. In a full text search, the search engine examines all of the words in every stored document as it tries to match search words supplied by the user. However, when the number of documents to search is potentially large or the quantity of search queries to perform is substantial the problem of full text search is often divided into two tasks: indexing and searching. The indexing stage will scan the text of all the documents and build a list of search terms, often called an index, but more correctly named a concordance. In the search stage, when performing a specific query, only the index is referenced rather than the text of the original documents.

H

Hypermedia

The use of text, data, graphics, audio and video as elements of an extended hypertext system in which all elements are linked so that the user can move between them at will.

J

JVM (abbr.)

Java Virtual Machine

(JVM) is a set of computer software programs and data structures which use a virtual machine model for the execution of other computer programs and scripts. The model used by a JVM accepts a form of computer intermediate language commonly referred to as Java bytecode.

K

KM (abbr.)

Knowledge Management

The process of capturing, organizing, and storing information and experiences of workers and groups within an organization and making it available to others. By collecting those artifacts in a central or distributed electronic environment (often in a database called a knowledge base), KM aims to help a company gain competitive advantage.

M

Markup Language

1. A way of depicting the logical structure or semantics of a document and providing instructions to computers on how to handle or display the contents of the file. HTML, XML and RDF are markup languages. Markup indicators are often called tags.
2. A language that has codes for indicating layout and styling (such as boldface, italics, paragraphs, placement of graphics, etc.) within a text file. Widely used markup languages include SGML (Standard General Markup Language) and HTML (Hypertext Markup Language).

N

NER (abbr.)

Named entity recognition

(also known as entity identification (EI) and entity extraction)

It is a subtask of information extraction that seeks to locate and classify atomic elements in text into predefined categories such as the names of persons, organizations, locations, expressions of times, quantities, monetary values, percentages, etc.

For example, a NER system producing MUC-style output might tag the sentence,

Jim bought 300 shares of Acme Corp. in 2006. <ENAMEX TYPE="PERSON">Jim</ENAMEX> bought <NUMEX TYPE="QUANTITY">300</NUMEX> shares of <ENAMEX TYPE="ORGANIZATION">Acme Corp.</ENAMEX> in <TIMEX TYPE="DATE">2006</TIMEX>.

NER systems have been created that use linguistic grammar-based techniques as well as statistical models. Hand-crafted grammar-based systems typically obtain better results, but at the cost of months of work by experienced linguists. Statistical NER systems typically require a large amount of manually annotated training data.

O

OEM (abbr.)

The Object Exchange Model (OEM) is a model for exchanging semi-structured data between object-oriented databases.

OIL (abbr.)

Ontology Inference Layer

OIL is a proposal for a web-based representation and inference layer for ontologies, which combines the widely used modelling primitives from frame-based languages with the formal semantics and reasoning services provided by description logics. It is compatible with RDF Schema (RDFS), and includes a precise semantics for describing term meanings (and thus also for describing implied information).

Ontology

ontology is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to define the domain. See more on Wikipedia ... See the user's guide about how KIM will help you deal with ontologies.

OWL (abbr.)

The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a semantic markup language for publishing and sharing ontologies on the World Wide Web. OWL is developed as a vocabulary extension of RDF (the Resource Description Framework) and is derived from the DAML+OIL Web Ontology Language.

Q

QName (abbr.)

Qualified Name

The full triples notation (in RDFs) requires that URI references to be written out completely, in angle brackets, which can result in very long lines on a page. For convenience, sometimes it is used a shorthand way of writing triples. This shorthand substitutes an XML qualified name (or QName) without angle brackets as an abbreviation for a full URI reference. A QName contains a prefix that has been assigned to a namespace URI, followed by a colon, and then a local name. The full URIref is formed from the QName by appending the local name to the namespace URI assigned to the prefix.

For example, if the QName prefix foo is assigned to the namespace URI http://example.org/somewhere, then the QNamefoo:bar is shorthand for the URIrefhttp://example.org/somewhere/bar.

R

RDBMS (abbr.)

Relational database management system

A relational database management system (RDBMS) is a program that lets you create, update, and administer a relational database. An RDBMS takes Structured Query Language (SQL) statements entered by a user or contained in an application program and creates, updates, or provides access to the database.

Relational database example

Here's a simple example of a relational database:

Your company needs a better way of keeping track of customers, products, and orders because your paper-based system just ain't cutting it anymore. One way of setting this up using the relational model is to create three tables: Customers, Products and Orders.

You can see that the Customer table doesn't care about orders or products, this keeps it focused on its objective - customers. Likewise, the Product table cares only about itself.The Order table uses the CustomerID and the ProductID to relate a product to a customer based on an order.

If you were to keep all this info in one spreadsheet you'd have difficulty trying to see subsets of information.How many widgits has Sally M. ordered over the last week; month; year? What is our most popular product? What points during the year are sales the highest?

The relational model has three major aspects:

• Structures - Structures are well-defined objects (such as tables, views, indexes, and so on) that store or access the data of a database. Structures and the data contained within them can be manipulated by operations.
• Operations - Operations are clearly defined actions that allow users to manipulate the data and structures of a database. The operations on a database must adhere to a predefined set of integrity rules.
• Integrity Rules - Integrity rules are the laws that govern which operations are allowed on the data and structures of a database. Integrity rules protect the data and the structure of a database.

RDF(abbr.)

Resource Description Framework

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a language for representing information about resources in the World Wide Web. It is particularly intended for representing metadata about Web resources, such as the title, author, and modification date of a Web page, copyright and licensing information about a Web document, or the availability schedule for some shared resource.

RDF is based on the idea of identifying things using Web identifiers (called Uniform Resource Identifiers, or URIs), and describing resources in terms of simple properties and property values. This enables RDF to represent simple statements about resources as a graph of nodes and arcs representing the resources, and their properties and values.

RMI (abbr.)

Java Remote Method Invocation (Java RMI) enables the programmer to create distributed Java technology-based to Java technology-based applications, in which the methods of remote Java objects can be invoked from other Java virtual machines, possibly on different hosts. RMI uses object serialization to marshal and unmarshal parameters and does not truncate types, supporting true object-oriented polymorphism. More on Sun's site ...

S

Semantic Repository

Semantic repositories are engines similar to the database management systems (DBMS) - they allow for storage, querying, and management of structured data. The major differences with the DBMS can be summarized as follows:

• they use ontologies as semantic schemata. This allows them to automatically reason about the data.
• they work with flexible and generic physical datamodels (e.g. graphs). This allows them to easily interpret and adopt "on the fly" new ontologies or metadata schemata.

SOAP (abbr.)

Simple Object Access Protocol

SOAP is a protocol for exchanging XML-based messages over computer networks, normally using HTTP/HTTPS. SOAP forms the foundation layer of the web services protocol stack providing a basic messaging framework upon which abstract layers can be built.

As a layman's example of how SOAP procedures can be used, a correctly formatted call could be sent to a Web Service enabled web site - for example, a house price database - with the data ranges needed for a search. The site could then return a formatted XML document with all the required results and associated data (prices, location, features, etc). These could then be integrated directly into a third-party site.

U

UI (abbr.)

User Interface

URI (abbr.)

Uniform Resource Identifier (URL, URN)

Compact string of characters used to identify or name a resource. The main purpose of this identification is to enable interaction with representations of the resource over a network, typically the World Wide Web, using specific protocols. URIs are defined in schemes defining a specific syntax and associated protocols.

Here's a URI example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Identifier A URI may be classified as a locator (URL) or a name (URN) or both.

A Uniform Resource Name (URN) is like a person's name, while a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is like their street address. The URN defines something's identity, while the URL provides a method for finding something. Essentially, "what" vs. "where".