Main ITM use cases

ITM can be used in a variety of scenarios which make use of different ITM features. However, the functional basis that defines ITM is common to all them:

Web-based WYSIWYG editing

Collaboration, trace, and versioning

Merging and interlinking of related structures (e.g., alignment of multiple related thesauri)

Multilingual user environment and management of multilingual resources

Structured search within ITM

Management of ontology models

Ontology models represent knowledge as a network of concepts and form the basis of semantic knowledge management.

In addition to the core functionality described above, ITM provides the following features for managing ontology models:

Ability to manage multiple models within a single server installation

Import/Export of ontologies in standard formats such as XML Schema, OWL, and RDFS

Reasoning engine that applies inference and validation rules to automate ontology editing, maintenance, and quality control. The rules can be imported from and exported to other reasoning engines.

WYSIWYG rules editor

Knowledge Base management

Knowledge Bases are data bases that represent knowledge as a network, as opposed to a table or a hierarchy. Network representation is the most flexible one and also the one best adapted for the needs of data integration and analysis.

In addition to the core functionality described above, ITM provides the following features for knowledge base management:

Ability to manage multiple knowledge bases within a single ontology model

Import/Export of information in popular formats such as Excel, XML, RDF, and SKOS

Import candidate entries from other systems, such as data mining tools

Reasoning engine that applies inference and validation rules to automate knowledge base creation, maintenance, and quality control. The rules can be imported from and exported to other reasoning engines.

WYSIWYG rules editor

Terminology, Thesaurus, and Taxonomy management

Terminologies, thesauri, and taxonomies are a type of knowledge bases that are used to generate controlled value lists as well as uniform annotation and categorization.

In addition to the core functionality and the functionality for knowledge base management, ITM provides the following specific features:

Built-in flexible ontology models for multilingual terminologies, thesauri, and taxonomies

Built-in User Interface configurations for the management of terminologies, thesauri, and taxonomies

Data integration

ITM can serve as the centralized repository of reference knowledge or Master Data. Its flexible ontology-based knowledge representation allows to represent, merge, and interlink heterogeneous information in a consistent and unified fashion.

In addition to the core functionality described above, ITM provides the following features for data integration:

Creation and storage of alignment maps that merge and interlink related data sets

Automatic, semi-automatic, or manual alignment modes

Import/Export of information in popular formats such as Excel, XML, RDF, and SKOS

Information re-use

The same information can be used in multiple places and in multiple formats, which poses challenges for maintaining coherence and reducing translation costs.

In addition to the core functionality described above, ITM provides the following features for information re-use:

Data integration platform to centralize heterogeneous information in a single knowledge repository (see “Data integration” above)

Synchronization mechanism that automatically triggers exports of updated information to external systems

Export data as Linked Open Data

Information retrieval and discovery

ITM improves information retrieval and discovery when deployed in conjunction with search and navigation systems.

ITM enhances search engines by providing them

Query term expansion, autocompletion, and concept mapping based on predefined reference vocabularies

Equivalence terms for smarter indexing

Entities to be selected and highlighted in short search result summaries

Categories and terms for faceted browsing

Entity relationships to improve related item suggestions

ITM can be deployed in conjunction with navigation tools such as Graph Viewers or faceted navigators like Microsoft Pivot in order to navigate through knowledge bases.