Ontology-based infrastructure for intelligent applications
Andreas Eberhart · 2003
Ontologies currently are a hot topic in the areas of knowledge management and enterprise application integration. In this thesis, we investigate how ontologies can also be used as an infrastructure for developing applications that intelligently support a user with various tasks. Based on recent developments in the area of the Semantic Web, we provide three major contributions. We introduce inference engines, which allow the execution of business logic that is speci ed in a declarative way, while putting strong emphasis on scalability and ease of use. Secondly, we suggest various solutions for interfacing applications that are developed under this new paradigm with existing IT infrastructure. This includes the rst running solution, to our knowledge, for combining the emerging areas of the Semantic Web and Web Services. Finally, we introduce a set of intelligent applications, which is built on top of ontologies and Semantic Web standards, providing a proof of concept that the engineering eort can largely be based on standard components.