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Media Contact:
David Domeshek
508.873.7068
Jim Ong
650.931.2710
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NIST AWARDS CONTRACT TO STOTTLER HENKE TO DEVELOP
ONTOLOGY TOOLS FOR SOFTWARE SYSTEMS INTEGRATION
New technology will simplify use of
artificial intelligent representations in enterprise systems
SAN MATEO, CA, Sept. 1, 2001 -- Stottler Henke Associates,
Inc. today announced the award of a two-year $300,000 Phase
II contract by the U.S. Deparment of Commerce's National Institute
of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop , an innovative,
web-based tool that lets subject matter experts, not computer
experts, develop ontologies to describe concepts and relationships
in a subject area. By simplifying the development of
ontologies, companies and industry groups will be better able
to develop interoperable computer systems that exchange complex
data.
As ever more of industry and commerce moves onto computer
networks, there is growing appreciation for how expressive
general models of enterprise activities, such as design, manufacturing
and procurement, can be useful for software system design
and integration. By encoding concepts and relationships in
computer-readable form, ontologies can serve as a solid foundation
for such models and facilitate more faithful and reliable
exchange of complex data beween systems.
"The idea of ontologies as formalized agreements about the
terms to be used to describe a domain comes from the artificial
intelligence research community," says Dr. Eric Domeshek, the project's
principle investigator.
"Unfortunately, most of the
existing software tools that support ontology development
were built by computer scientists for use by computer scientists.
Experience with large-scale ontology development, however,
makes it clear that much of the work in developing an ontology
must be done by domain experts, rather than by AI experts," continues Dr. Domeshek.
Stottler Henke will address this problem by developing DECODE
(Domain Expert Collaborative Ontology Development Environment)
that enable teams of subject matter experts develop their
own ontologies collaboratively, over the web. DECODE
will apply Stottler Henke's advanced design collaboration
tool (ADCT) technologies to preserve the decision-making history
and design rationale for the resulting ontologies, to
make them intelligible to future users and adaptable for future
developers.
Founded in 1988, Stottler Henke Associates, Inc.
applies artificial intelligence and other advanced software technologies
to solve problems that defy solution using traditional approaches.
The company delivers intelligent software solutions for education and training,
planning and scheduling, knowledge management and discovery, decision support,
and software development. Stottler Henke's clients include manufacturers,
retailers, educational media companies and government agencies.
Web: http://www.stottlerhenke.com.
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