Rupert Westenthaler

Towards an ontology-based distributed architecture for paid content

Business models on the basis of digital content require sophisticated descriptions of that content, as well as service-oriented carrier architectures that allow to negotiate and enforce contract and license schemes in heterogeneous digital application environments. We describe Knowledge Content Objects (KCO), that provide expressive semantic descriptions of digital content, based on an ontology of Information Objects, built under the DOLCE, DnS and Plan Ontologies (DDPO). In particular, we discuss how this structure supports business requirements within the context of paid content. Interactions between agents are embedded into digital infrastructures that are implemented on an advanced knowledge content carrier architecture (KCCA) that communicates via a dedicated protocol (KCTP). We show how this architecture allows to integrate existing digital repositories so that the content can be made available to a semantically rich digital environment.

A Management System for Distributed Knowledge and Content Objects

We present the results of a European research project which developed specifications for so-called knowledge content objects (KCO) and for an attendant infrastructure, the knowledge content carrier architecture (KCCA). The work addresses the problem that while there are many standards for content and for metadata, there is at present, no suitable framework that enables organizations to manage knowledge alongside content, in a coherent manner. Our approach postulates the KCO as a common structural entity which can be recognized and manipulated by a KCCA enabled system

Towards a Service-Oriented Architecture

Although hardware and networking infrastructures have evolved over the years and people are able to connect their devices to mobile networks and exchange information, we argue that the missing glue to enable the true potential of mobile information systems lies in the seamless integration of wireless infrastructures with existing wired infrastructures. In our paper, we present the service-oriented middleware Asomnia, which adapts traditional service-oriented concepts in order to cope with requirements arising from mobile computing challenges.

ASOMNIA: A service-oriented middleware for ambient information access

With the growing pervasiveness of information systems we are increasingly confronted with integrating heterogeneous end-user devices into existing information infrastructures. However, most existing middleware platforms either focus on plug & work functionalities or on multimedia streaming capabilities. Asomnia is a service-oriented middleware that combines the needs of plug & work infrastructures with the necessities of delivering multimedia contents. We describe Asomnia’s service-oriented architecture and show how it can be applied in different scenarios.