The development of ontologies which aims at capturing knowledge as a formal structural framework, is an important foundation for a wide range of applications. Since ontology development is usually a collaborative activity which may span a long period of time, it is critical to provide developers with a suitable development environment that supports collaboration in a flexible manner and that facilitates the building of robust and accurate ontologies. In this dissertation, the author focusses his effort on providing an easy-to-use collaborative ontology development environment that supports both synchronous and asynchronous collaborative activities. Two prototype systems were developed to reach the goal based on an extensive requirement study. The first prototype system servers numerous functions in supporting synchronized cooperation. A Java based application provides developers with several functions. For example, with the help of group-awareness and a locking mechanism, involved developers become aware of actions from other users, which enables them to work without conflict in terms of editing the same ontology resources. Based on the experiences gathered from implementing the first prototype system, the requirement of supporting asynchronous cooperation was studied. A version control system especially in the fields of coping with ontology data structure is a central component to satisfy the requirement. This second approach primarily supports local workspaces that can be synchronized with a central server-based ontology store and is capable of controlling versions on the level of individual ontology resources. Although working in their own workspace ontology developers can achieve a consensual shared ontology through committing, updating and merging activities. Each version of an ontology resource will be preserved in the form of a snapshot. The evolution of either a single ontology resource or the entire ontology can further be illustrated to developers in a

This book compiles a number of contributions originating from the KESE (Knowledge Engineering and Software Engineering) workshop series from 2005 to 2015. The idea behind the series was the realignment of the knowledge engineering discipline and its strong relation to software engineering, as well as to the classical aspects of artificial intelligence research. The book introduces symbiotic work combining these disciplines, such as aspect-oriented and agile engineering, using anti-patterns, and system refinement. Furthermore, it presents successful applications from different areas that were created by combining techniques from both areas.

The 2010 Asian Conference on Intelligent Information and Database Systems (ACIIDS) was the second event of the series of international scientific conferences for research and applications in the field of intelligent information and database systems. The aim of ACIIDS 2010 was to provide an international forum for scientific research in the technologies and applications of intelligent information, database systems and their applications. ACIIDS 2010 was co-organized by Hue University (Vietnam) and Wroclaw University of Technology (Poland) and took place in Hue city (Vietnam) during March 24–26, 2010. We received almost 330 papers from 35 countries. Each paper was peer reviewed by at least two members of the International Program Committee and International Reviewer Board. Only 96 best papers were selected for oral presentation and publi- tion in the two volumes of the ACIIDS 2010 proceedings. The papers included in the proceedings cover the following topics: artificial social systems, case studies and reports on deployments, collaborative learning, collaborative systems and applications, data warehousing and data mining, database management technologies, database models and query languages, database security and integrity,- business, e-commerce, e-finance, e-learning systems, information modeling and - quirements engineering, information retrieval systems, intelligent agents and mul- agent systems, intelligent information systems, intelligent internet systems, intelligent optimization techniques, object-relational DBMS, ontologies and information sharing, semi-structured and XML database systems, unified modeling language and unified processes, Web services and Semantic Web, computer networks and communication systems.

This unique volume explores cutting-edge management approaches to developing complex software that is efficient, scalable, sustainable, and suitable for distributed environments. Practical insights are offered by an international selection of pre-eminent authorities, including case studies, best practices, and balanced corporate analyses. Emphasis is placed on the use of the latest software technologies and frameworks for life-cycle methods, including the design, implementation and testing stages of software development. Topics and features: · Reviews approaches for reusability, cost and time estimation, and for functional size measurement of distributed software applications · Discusses the core characteristics of a large-scale defense system, and the design of software project management (SPM) as a service · Introduces the 3PR framework, research on crowdsourcing software development, and an innovative approach to modeling large-scale multi-agent software systems · Examines a system architecture for ambient assisted living, and an approach to cloud migration and management assessment · Describes a software error proneness mechanism, a novel Scrum process for use in the defense domain, and an ontology annotation for SPM in distributed environments · Investigates the benefits of agile project management for higher education institutions, and SPM that combines software and data engineering This important text/reference is essential reading for project managers and software engineers involved in developing software for distributed computing environments. Students and researchers interested in SPM technologies and frameworks will also find the work to be an invaluable resource. Prof. Zaigham Mahmood is a Senior Technology Consultant at Debesis Education UK and an Associate Lecturer (Research) at the University of Derby, UK. He also holds positions as Foreign Professor at NUST and IIU in Islamabad, Pakistan, and Professor Extraordinaire at the North West University Potchefstroom, South Africa.

Ontology Managememt provides an up-to-date, scientifically correct, concise and easy-to-read reference on this topic. The book includes relevant tasks, practical and theoretical challenges, limitations and methodologies, plus available tooling support. The editors discuss integrating the conceptual and technical dimensions with a business view on using ontologies, stressing the cost dimension of ontology engineering and offering guidance on how to derive ontologies semi-automatically from existing standards and specifications.

Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS) is the flagship conference of the International Association for Ontology and its Applications, a non-profit organization promoting interdisciplinary research and international collaboration at the intersection of philosophical ontology, linguistics, logic, cognitive science, and computer science. This book presents the 11 papers accepted for the 12th edition of FOIS. The conference was held from 13-17 September 2021 in Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, as a hybrid event with some participants attending on-site in Bolzano and others attending virtually online. The papers are divided into 3 sections and cover a wide range of topics: (1) Foundations, addressing fundamental issues; (2) Applications and Methods, presenting novel uses, systems, tools, and approaches; and (3) Domain Ontology, describing well-formed ontologies in particular subject areas.

As the world enters the era of big data, there is a serious need to give a semantic perspective to the data in order to find unseen patterns, derive meaningful information, and make intelligent decisions. Semantic technologies offer the richest machine-interpretable (rather than just machine-processable) and explicit semantics that are being extensively used in various domains and industries. These technologies reduce the problem of large semantic loss in the process of modelling knowledge, and provide sharable, reusable knowledge,and a common understanding of the knowledge. As a result, the interoperability and interconnectivity of the model make it priceless for addressing the issues of querying data. These technologies work with the concepts and relations that are very lose to the working of the human brain. They provide a semantic representation of any data format: unstructured or semi-structured. As a consequence, data becomes real-world entity rather than a string of characters. For these reasons, semantic technologies are highly valuable tools to simplify the existing problems of the industry leading to new opportunities. However, there are some challenges that need to be addressed to make industrial applications and machines smarter. This book aims to provide a roadmap for semantic technologies and highlights the role of these technologies in industry. The book also explores the present and future prospects of these semantic technologies along with providing answers to various questions like: Are semantic technologies useful for the next era (industry 4.0)? Why are semantic technologies so popular and extensively used in the industry? Can semantic technologies make intelligent industrial applications? Which type of problem requires the immediate attention of researchers? Why are semantic technologies very helpful in people’s future lives? This book will potentially serve as an important guide towards the latest industrial applications of semantic technologies for the upcoming generation, and thus becomes a unique resource for scholars, researchers, professionals and practitioners in the field.

The ATOP (Agent-Based Technologies and Applications for Enterprise Interoperability) workshop series focuses on technologies that support interoperability in networked organizations, on successful applications of these technologies, and on lessons learned. In particular, ATOP brings together research combining ideas from MDA and SOA with agent technologies. The ATOP 2009 and 2010 workshops were held at the AAMAS conferences in Budapest, Hungary, in May 2009, and in Toronto, Canada, in May 2010. The 11 papers presented here were carefully reviewed by three members of the international Program Committee and selected out of 25 contributions to the workshops. The topics covered are modeling interoperable systems; semantic approaches to enterprise interoperability; and interoperable business processes and business interactions. These papers are completed by an invited contribution reporting on OMG agent standardization. The main goal was to collect approaches for the application of agent technologies in these areas. Current trends in the development of agent technologies are compared with recent developments in service-oriented and model-driven system design, with respect to their ability to solve interoperability problems.

Collaboration among individuals – from users to developers – is central to modern software engineering. It takes many forms: joint activity to solve common problems, negotiation to resolve conflicts, creation of shared definitions, and both social and technical perspectives impacting all software development activity. The difficulties of collaboration are also well documented. The grand challenge is not only to ensure that developers in a team deliver effectively as individuals, but that the whole team delivers more than just the sum of its parts. The editors of this book have assembled an impressive selection of authors, who have contributed to an authoritative body of work tackling a wide range of issues in the field of collaborative software engineering. The resulting volume is divided into four parts, preceded by a general editorial chapter providing a more detailed review of the domain of collaborative software engineering. Part 1 is on "Characterizing Collaborative Software Engineering", Part 2 examines various "Tools and Techniques", Part 3 addresses organizational issues, and finally Part 4 contains four examples of "Emerging Issues in Collaborative Software Engineering". As a result, this book delivers a comprehensive state-of-the-art overview and empirical results for researchers in academia and industry in areas like software process management, empirical software engineering, and global software development. Practitioners working in this area will also appreciate the detailed descriptions and reports which can often be used as guidelines to improve their daily work.

Knowledge is considered as the most important asset in our modern society. It has now penetrated all facets of computing practice: from the rise of knowledge management to the Semantic Web and from the blog culture to the knowledge economy. This penetration has made proper knowledge engineering a most - quired feature. This volume contains the papers presented at the 16th International C- ference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW 2008) held in Acitrezza, Sicily, Italy, September 29 to October 3 2008. EKAW 2008 is concerned with all aspects of eliciting, acquiring, modelling and managing knowledge, and their role in the construction of knowledge-intensive systems and services for the Semantic Web, knowledge management, e-business, natural language processing, intelligent integration information, etc. This year we paid special attention to the topic of “knowledge patterns” that can be considered as good practice or models that are applied or reused throughout the knowledge engineering life cycle. Hence, beyond traditional t- icsofEKAW,wesolicitedpapersthatcoverresearchonhowtodescribe,classify, model, extract and apply knowledge patterns in the design of ontologies, app- cations and products. We have paid special attention to the description of ex- riences that involve the application and identi?cation of knowledge patterns in social network analysis, natural language processing, multimedia analysis, p- tern recognition, etc.