Ontologies and Fine-Grained Control Over Sharing of Engineering Modeling Knowledge in a Web Based Engineering Environment

Abstract

Within the knowledge modeling community the use of ontologies in the construction of knowledge intensive systems is now widespread. Ontologies are used to facilitate knowledge sharing, reuse, agent interoperability and knowledge acquisition. We have developed an ontology for representing and sharing engineering analysis modeling (EAM) knowledge in a web-based environment and implemented these ontologies into a computational knowledge base system, called ON-TEAM, using Prote´ge´1. In this paper we present new object-oriented methods that operate on the EAM knowledge base to perform specific tasks. One such method is the creation of a flat technical report that describes the properties or class relationships of an engineering modeling analysis class and/or the modeling knowledge involved in the development of a specific engineering analysis model. This method is a JAVA application that accesses the EAM knowledge base application using the Prote´ge´ application programming interface. It presents the user a graphical user interface for selecting the EAM class or specific analysis model instance and then exports the appropriate knowledge to a text file to form the basis of a technical report. Secondly, a method controlling knowledge access and sharing is under development which allocates permissions to portions of the knowledge base according to accessibility permissions. This method controls as efficiently as possible fine grain knowledge sharing. Both the methods acting together enable automatic generation of recipient-specific technical reports based on the recipient’s security permissions, customized knowledge viewing, and customized knowledge exporting through various knowledge exchange formats such as XML Walsh [1], RDF Klyne [2], etc. Finally, implementation of these methods and our EAM knowledge base application as components within commercial web-based distributed software architecture is presented.