Modelling, automated population and collaborative maintenance

Ontology Management - Ontology Software

ITM: an ontology manager for formal representation of specialist reference material, representations of knowledge, catalogues and organisation of multimedia content

The main component of ITM software is the ontology manager, consisting of:

  • an ontology modelling module
  • web interfaces for managing ontologies in collaborative mode
  • ontology import and export modules
  • reporting and editing modules

The application is based on the OWL, RDF and SKOS standards.

Ontology modelling

  • Ontologies ensure great flexibility and richness for modelling the information to be managed: definition of fobject classes, attributes associated with each class, semantic relationships authorised between objects, constraints that must be respected (attribute value, cardinality of attributes and relationships)
  • Modelling may be edited and maintained within the ITM software by administrators, or imported (OWL) if it has been done using specific software: Protected, Swoop, etc.
  • ITM software enables several autonomous or complementary ontology models to be managed

Ontology organisation

Most ontologies are organised on several levels:

  • ontology modelling enabling classes to be defined for the managed objects
  • domain terminology enabling groups of concepts used in the domain to be defined and organised into lists, thesauri, classification schemes and taxonomies
  • named entities organised according to various object classes: products, people, organisations, events, places, components, etc. The named entities are described using the specialist terminology.

The ontology also includes all the semantic relationships that describe the relationships between terms or between named entities. The group of subjects described in the ontology, their relationships and indexed documentation resources constitute a real knowledge base for the domain.

Web interfaces for editing and maintaining the ontology by editors

The ontology editors have access to a collaborative web working environment enabling them to create and maintain the ontology:

  • Autonomous work space management to enable the various parts of the ontology to be managed by groups of specialist users (e.g.: space for modelling, space for specialist vocabulary, a space for specialist subjects and their relationships)
  • Creation and updating of subjects, their attributes and relationships
    • interfaces for managing thesauri, taxonomies
    • interfaces for managing knowledge bases and catalogues
  • Navigation within the ontology and graphical representation of semantic relationships
  • Searching by subject name
  • Multicriteria searching according to the value of attributes and semantic relationships
  • Historisation of searches
  • Basket function for storing search results and formulating reports
  • Creation of reports regarding the ontology content (HTML/PDF/XML/Excel)
  • Audit and traceability trails for all information in the ontology (source, user, date of update, status)
  • Management of user profiles and their rights within the various work spaces

Import and export processing

The ITM software has import processing functions to ensure the migration and updating of data from external applications. Import processing ensures merging with existing data and conformity checks on imported data. The ITM software has numerous formats for exporting the ontology content:

  • exporting the content of the knowledge base in RDF, XML or XML TopicMaps formats
  • exporting thesauri, taxonomies, reference material in RDF SKOS format
  • exporting ontology modelling in OWL format

Editing and reporting

The ITM software incorporates a module enabling data from the ontology to be edited in PDF, HTML and Excel form. A administration module enables configuration of the formatting for reports, the selection of data to be edited and the data calculation functions.


Other features

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> Semantic indexing of text, video, image and sound content

> Automated updating of a knowledge base/ontology

> Reasoning and Inference

> Management of Publication Taxonomies for faceted search

> Generating Publication indexes and tables

> Topic Maps

> API & Web Services: ITM as Reference materials server