Abdel-Rahman H. Tawil

Modelling competence-based virtual organisations using the unified enterprise competence modelling language

Virtual organisations are non-conventional structures aiming at sharing the same goals, developing common practices or creating wealth in a collaborative manner. Accordingly, competence issues are important topics to be addressed in order to ensure coherence between the different objectives of entities taking part in a virtual organisation to guarantee an efficient use of available resources. This paper introduces the principles for modelling competence-based virtual organisations by using a unified enterprise competence modelling language (UECML). Our proposed modelling approach is inspired from previous related works mainly in competence-based enterprise modelling. The language provides a neutral interface to virtual organisation modelling based on competences, taking into account the several roles and entities participating in a virtual organisation. Therefore, providing constructs covering processes, resources, competences, and virtual organisation (VO) entities. A case study of the Swiss virtual network Virtuelle Fabrik with regards to the project Abfallhai is presented and discussed, showing how the developed modelling language is adapted to model virtual organisations.

Adaptive E-Learning System Using Ontology

This paper proposes an innovative ontological approach to design a personalised e-learning system which creates a tailored workflow for individual learner. Moreover, the learning content and sequencing logic is separated into content model and pedagogical model to increase the reusability and flexibility of the system.

An Ontology-Based Approach to Adaptive Home Careflows

In the healthcare domain, a profusion of workflows are utilised and lots of implicit knowledge is used by domain experts in their daily activities. Ontologies can facilitate the personalized construction of care workflows (care flows) and guide their management in contingency cases, thus allowing them to deviate from their standard prescribed static definition. In this paper we propose a formalization of workflow to automatically adapt the process of homecare for elderly people. We use an ontology of Business Process Modeling Notations(BPMN) associated with both Actor and Case Profile Ontologies to dynamically build flexible care flows capable of guiding the continuity of care.

Ontological Commitments for Multiple View Cooperation in a Distributed Heterogeneous Environment

We are currently investigating a methodology for achieving interoperability among heterogeneous and autonomous data sources in a framework of knowledge sharing and re-use, based on a multi-view architecture. In this paper we describe a novel approach for integrating a set of logically heterogeneous object oriented and/or relational databases.

A High Level Service-Based Approach to Software Component Integration

This paper motivates and sets out a framework for a high-level approach to software component integration. The framework builds on the concept of SaaS (Software as a Service) and uses a service ontology for the annotation of software components with formal specifications. The ontology is used to instruct interoperability between software components through a unified API interface. The impetus for this approach is to provision for smooth integration, management and scalability in a collaborative and distributed development environment.

Domain-Specific Metadata a Key for Building Semantically-Rich Schema Models

Providing integrated access to data from many diverse and heterogeneous Information Servers (ISs) requires deep knowledge, not only about the structure of the data represented at each server, but also about the commonly occurring differences in the intended semantics of this data. Unfortunately, very often there is a lacko f such knowledge and the local schemas, being semantically weakas a consequence of the limited expressiveness of traditional data models, do not help the acquisition of this knowledge. In this paper we propose domain-specific metadata as a key for upgrading the semantic level of the local ISs to which an integration system requires access, and for building semantically-rich schema models. We provide a frameworkf or enriching the individual IS schemas with semantic domain knowledge to make explicit the assumptions which may have been made by their designers, are of interest to the integrator (interpreter or user), and which may not be captured using the DDL language of their host servers. The enriched schema semantic knowledge is organised by levels of schematic granularity: database, schema, attribute and instance levels giving rise to semantically-rich schema models.

Discovering and Representing InterSchema Semantic Knowledge in a Cooperative Multi-Information Server Environment

Discovering interschema semantic knowledge between corresponding elements in a cooperating Multi-Information Server (MIS) environment requires deep knowledge, not only about the structure of the data represented in each server, but also about the commonly occurring differences in the intended semantics of this data. The same information could be represented in various incompatible structures, and more importantly the same structure could be used to represent data with many diverse and incompatible semantics. Interschema semantic knowledge can only be detected if both the structural and semantic properties of the schemas of these servers are made explicit and formally represented in a way that a computer system can process. Unfortunately, very often there is lack of such knowledge and the local schemas, being semantically weak as a consequence of the limited expressiveness of traditional data models, do not help the acquisition of this knowledge. The solution to overcome this limitation is primarily to upgrade the semantic level of the IS local schemas through a semantic enrichment process by augmenting these local schemas to semantically enriched schema models, then to use the enriched schema models in detecting and representing correspondences between classes belonging to different schemas. In this paper we investigate the possibility of using domain ontologies both for building semantically rich schema models, and for expressing interschema knowledge and reasoning about it. We believe that the use of domain ontologies in this setting has two important advantages. On the one hand, it enables a semantic approach for interschema knowledge specification, by concentrating on expressing conceptual and semantic correspondences between both the conceptual (intensional) definition and the set of instances (extension) of classes represented in different schemas. On the other hand, it is exactly this semantic nature of our approach that allows us to devise reasoning mechanisms for discovering and reusing interschema knowledge when the need arises to compare and combine it.