Context


Tools Overview
Tools in Detail

Tools Overview:



Tools in Detail:

Ontology Management Tools





Name Ontolingua
Short Description
Provider Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Stanford University
URL http://www.ksl.stanford.edu/software/ontolingua/
Type Academic
Description Ontolingua provides a distributed collaborative environment to browse,create, edit, modify, and use ontologies. The server supports over 150 active users. A number of additional services such as a Webster gateway, CML model fragment editor, a multiple perspective data structure inspector, equation solving, automatic explanation of device behavior are also available. Ontolingua is available over the World Wide Web and can be accessed with astandard web browser.


Name WebOnto
Short Description
Provider Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University (United Kingdom)
URL http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/webonto/
Type Academic
Description WebOnto supports the collaborative browsing, creation and editing of ontologies. In particular, WebOnto provides a direct manipulation interface displaying ontological expressions using a rich medium. WebOnto was aimed to be easy-to-use, yet have facilities for scaling up to large ontologies.WebOnto's architecture is composed of a central server and clients writtenin Java.


Name Protégé2000
Short Description
Provider Stanford Medical Informatics, Stanford University
URL http://smi-web.stanford.edu/projects/protege/index.html
Type Academic
Description Protégé2000 is a tool, which allows the user to construct a domain ontology, customize knowledge-acquisition forms and enter domain knowledge. It is also a platform, which can be extended withgraphical widgets for tables, diagrams, animation components to access otherknowledge-based systems embedded applications. Finally it can serve as a library,which other applications can use to access and display knowledge bases.


Name Generic Knowledge Base Editor
Short Description
Provider Artificial Intelligence Center (AIC), SRI International
URL http://www.ai.sri.com/~gkb/
Type Academic
Description The GKB-Editor (Generic Knowledge Base Editor) is a tool for graphically browsing and editing knowledge bases across multiple Frame Representation Systems (FRSs) in a uniform manner. It offers an intuitive user interface,in which objects and data items are represented as nodes in a graph, with the relationships between them forming the edges. Users edit a KB through direct pictorial manipulation, using a mouse or pen. A sophisticated incremental browsing facility allows the user to selectively display only that region of a KB that is currently of interest, even as that region changes.


Name CO4 environment
Short Description
Provider INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique)
URL http://co4.inrialpes.fr/
Type Academic
Description CO4 is an environment enabling a group of geographically distributed users to build together a knowledge base accessible through the world wide web. Co4 depends upon a simple architecture of related knowledge basesand a formal protocol for submitting and discussing knowledge whichis freely inspired from those used in scientific journals. The principles of Co4 are as follows: Each researcher has a knowledge base (browsable through a knowledge server) from which knowledge can be isolated and submitted to the consensual knowledge base (called group base). The latter base will then contact the other members of the group for acceptation, rejection or comments on the submitted piece of knowledge.


Name Chimaera
Short Description
Provider Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Stanford University
URL http://www.ksl.stanford.edu/software/chimaera/
Type Academic
Description Chimaera is a software system that supports users in creating and maintaining distributed ontologies on the web. Two major functions it supports aremerging multiple ontologies together and diagnosing individual or multiple ontologies. It supports users in such tasks as loading knowledge basesin differing formats, reorganizing taxonomies, resolving name conflicts, browsing ontologies, editing terms, etc.


Name KADS22
Short Description
Provider University of Amsterdam
URL http://www.swi.psy.uva.nl/projects/kads22/
Type Academic
Description KADS22 is an interactive environment for the CommonKADS modelling languageCML2. KADS22 provides an interactive graphical interface with the following functionality: parsing of CML2 files, pretty-printing, hypertext browsing, generation of the graphical notation, search, glossary generation and HTML generation.


Name Ontobroker
Short Description
Provider Ontoprise GmbH
URL http://www.ontoprise.de/co_produ_tool4.htm
Type Commercial
Description Ontobroker exploits knowledge models and data fromdifferent sources to answer queries. For that purpose it evaluates axiomscontained in the knowledge models to derive new knowledge or to check theconsistency of the available knowledge. Ontobroker integrates a variety ofinformation sources and input formats like databases, index servers, searchengines, HTML wrappers. EXCEL sheets, Word documents, XML and RDF data andthus provides a homogeneous interface to a bunch of inhomogeneous data sources.Ontobroker is a pure Java application.


Name SymOntos
Short Description
Provider Laboratory for Enterprise Knowledge and Systems ofIASI-CNR
URL http://150.146.5.2/symontosIE.html
Type Academic
Description SymOntos (Symbolic Ontology System) is a software prototype for the definition and management of domain ontologies. The prototype’s functionalities include viewing, searching for, creating, deleting, editing, and validating ontologies or an ontology project.

Workflow Management Tools





Name TIB/InConcert Workflow
Short Description
Provider TIBCO Software Inc.
URL http://www.tibco.com/products/in_concert/
Type Commercial
Description A commercial workflow product that allows for dynamic workflow modification and ad-hoc routing. InConcert’s process model is quite simple, consisting of jobs (corresponding to processes) containing tasks. The process model is represented as abstract object classes with operations. The top level concept job describes a multi-person collaborative activity with some goal.The job consists of a task structure and a shared workspace, both mutable during process enactment. The task structure is captured by asimple hierarchically decomposed network of tasks and their dependencies. The shared workspace is represented by pointers to documents, being abstract data objects thatmay be manipulated as a unit at some chosen level of granularity determined by the application.


Name Domino Workflow
Short Description
Provider IBM Lotus Notes
URL http://www.lotus.com/products/domworkflow.nsf
Type Commercial
Description Commercial workflow tool by IBM’s Lotus Notes. It’s a Domino application leveraging Notes and Domino environment. Itincludes a graphical tool for designing business processes, a workflow engine(series of Domino databasesthat drive the workflow application processing) and a workflow viewer (separateWindows application showing users where aparticular piece of work is within the process definition). Processes aredrawn as a flowchart of activities and sub-processes. Each sub-processes isan independent process definition. Reusable process definitions through DesignRepository. It supports dynamic changes (reassignment of tasks and participants,deletion of a task, termination of the process) that affect only the particularinstance – no influenceon other instances or the process definition.


Name Dolphin
Short Description
Provider TeamWare
URL http://www.teamware.com/dolphin/
Type Commercial
Description Commercial ad-hoc workflow tool by TeamWARE. It includes a simplified server delivered with a Microsoft-based client. Easy-to-use userinterface combines in one window: a worklist, a process graphical design tool,a process graphical status area and the activity execution area for browsingattachments and activating forms. It is offered only in a client/server mode.Each process instance has its own copy of the process description. It canbe changed and detailed by sub-procesess at any time in the case’s life-cycle.These changes can be made from the normal participant user interface by usingsimple graphical and form-based tools. Dolphin’s target group is userswith no programming or development knowledge.


Name FORO
Short Description
Provider SEMA Group
URL http://www.sema.es/sp/productos/generales.htm (in Spanish)
Type Commercial
Description Workflow management system developed by Sema Group. The FORO Workflow model is based on three different views: Process model (incharge of reflecting what is to be done, in what order, with what information and for whom), information model (defines all the information elements (variables,forms, documents and dossiers) that are necessary for specifying a business process) and organisation model. The Process Designer tool provided with FORO allows the design of the business process of an organisation in agraphical way, without programming even a line. It is possible to import any model WfMC-compliant generated by other workflow vendor, or BPR tool. It is possible to define parallel flows, conditionals, time events, etc.


Name AIS Workware Demonstrator
Short Description
Provider Sintef
URL http://www.informatics.sintef.no/projects/ais/eksternweb/ (in Norwegian)
Type Academic
Description A prototype cooperation support system incorporating adaptive workflow developed in the AIS project. It includes task management and adaptive workflow support available through a web browser user interface. It covers unstructured and partly structured representation of work and allows dynamic modification of workflows during performance. In AIS a knowledge managementperspective is addressed through the constructive composition of models fromparts, where it provides a mixed-ontology graphical language for knowledgeexternalization. Knowledge combination is enhanced by supporting model templatesavailable from repositories as a basis for model composition.


Name Continuous Planning and Execution Framework
Short Description
Provider A research project funded by DARPA's JFACC program
URL http://www.ai.sri.com/~cpef/
Type Academic
Description CPEF provides several capabilities that support the view of plans as “living objects”. The planning process itself is open-ended: rather than attempting to generate a complete solution to aproblem, the planner produces a partial, approximate sketch that forms the initial basis for further development. In addition, the CPEF provides both planning-time and runtime adaptation of plans in response to changes in both the environment and user goals. It includes several plan revision technologies, ranging from correctness-preserving methods based on dependency-structure maintenance,to transformational methods that sacrifice guarantees of correctness for better performance characteristics. For runtime plan modifications, repair is possible in a range of modes, from loosely to tightly coupled interactions with the execution component.


Name WorkBrain
Short Description
Provider Bavarian Research center for Knowledge-Based Systems (FORWISS)
URL http://www.wi1.uni-erlangen.de/veroeffentlichungen/workflow/HICSS-OMIS/HICSS98OMIS.html
Type Academic
Description WorkBrain is an OM-based workflow environment implemented as a HTTP-server generating HTML pages (eventually with Java applets) dynamically on top of the commercial workflow system FLEXWARE. WorkBrain aims at the improvementof workflow execution by learning in two learning loops based on the casebase of executed workflows and the general organizational knowledge base.Learning by doing increases planning and execution quality by modifying workflowsat run-time. Learning by supervision modifies workflows at built-time by analyzingand configuration. The knowledge management processes in thesystem, e.g.“Retrieval of suitable workflow cases”, support these goals. Theseprocesses are not explicit themselves but implemented in a case-based reasoningcomponent.


Name WIDE
Short Description
Provider ESPIRT
URL http://dis.sema.es/projects/WIDE/
Type Academic
Description WIDE is a distributed architecture for workflow management. WIDE uses enhanced database technology as the basis for its workflow management system and focuses on extended transaction management. It provides reactivity through the use of a decoupled rule execution model. Rule execution is divided into scheduling and interpretation of rules. Triggers inserted into the database management system cause events to be noticed. The scheduler inspects the eventdatabase and matches the event to the rules, which are then recorded in ato-execute list and interpreted for execution. WIDE is distinguished by itsexploration of distributed WFM, and its sophisticated transactional capabilities.It adopts a two-layered transactional model:the upper layer provides globaltransactions with loose semantics and the lower provides strict, more conventional,transactional semantics. The two layers are orthogonal, providing one possibleapproach to long-lived transactions.


Name ADEPTWorkflow
Short Description
Provider University of Ulm
URL http://www.informatik.uni-ulm.de/dbis/f&l/forschung/workflow/ftext-adept_e.html
Type Academic
Description An adaptive, process-oriented WfMS that supports the realization offlexible WF-based applications, which have to run stable and which are used by non-computer-experts. It includes a formal WF model that allows the validation of the correctness of a WF template prepared at build-time. It also supports ad-hoc changes of in-progress WF (add new steps, omit steps, changes the sequence, etc), while maintaining their correctness and consistency. The users are not burdened with the re-mapping of activity parameters and other actions required due to a dynamic change. They define a dynamic change at a high semantic level.

Ontology and Workflow Management Tools





Name Task-Based Process Management System
Short Description
Provider Artificial Intelligence Application Institute and Loughborough University
URL http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/tbpm/
Type Acaemic
Description TBPM system provides intelligent support for the management of complex, dynamic processes through the use of artificial intelligence techniquesto represent, and reason with, knowledge about the domain in which the workflowsystem is deployed. A key component of the TBPM system is a plan library,which maintains a database of process structures, relating each structure to the types of tasks for which it is a suitable method. Each plan specifies a set of tasks, together with the ordering constraints and object flows between them. Thus, a plan represents one possible way of achieving a given type oftask by breaking it down into a particular structure of sub-tasks. Central to the knowledge-based approach of TBPM is the development of a number of interrelated ontologies for structuring knowledge of the domain and processes of interest.


Name MILOS
Short Description
Provider University of Kaiserslautern and University of Calgary
URL http://sern.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~milos/
Type Academic
Description MILOS combines the active process guidance of workflow approaches with the flexibility and information access of project spaces. MILOS thus supports software development team members by providing to-do liststhat let developers access task-related documents and background information; by automating information flow between team members; and by automatically launching the right tools for individual tasks. MILOS gives project planners the flexibility to make on-the-fly changes. First, its workflow engine allows modifications to the process definition while executing it; the modifications are initiated by the plan changes made by the project’s planners. Second, the system has a built-in change management component to handle the effects of process changes, which prevents project inconsistencies that easily occur when team members are geographically dispersed.

BPM Approaches



Name ARIS
Short Description
Provider
URL
Type Commercial
Description
Name CommonKADS
Short Description
Provider
URL
Type Commercial
Description
Name IDEF
Short Description
Provider
URL
Type Commercial
Description
Name IUM
Short Description
Provider
URL
Type Commercial
Description
Name KODA
Short Description
Provider
URL
Type Commercial
Description

Intelligent Information Management Tools



Name Eule 2
Short Description
Provider
URL
Type Academic
Description
Name KnowMore
Short Description
Provider DFKI GmbH
URL
Type Academic
Description
Name Ontobroker
Short Description
Provider
URL
Type Commercial
Description