Integrating Information from Global Systems: Knowledge Representation and Reasoning in the Context Interchange System
Stuart E. Madnick,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
smadnick@mit.edu
Many online services access a large number of autonomous disparate data sources and at the same time need to meet different user requirements. It is essential to achieve semantic interoperability among these information exchange entities. In the presence of an increasing number of proprietary business processes, heterogeneous data standards, and diverse user requirements, it is critical that the services are implemented using adaptable, extensible, and scalable technology.
The Context Interchange (COIN) approach provides a robust solution. In this talk, it will be explained how COIN can be used to implement online services where semantic differences are reconciled dynamically. It is shown that COIN is flexible and scalable by comparing it with several conventional approaches.
With a given ontology, these semantic aspects are modeled as modifiers in a conceptual ontology; in most cases the number of conversions is linear with the number of modifiers, which is significantly smaller than traditional hard-wiring middleware approach where the number of conversion programs is usually quadratic to the number of sources and data receivers. In an example scenario that will be presented, the COIN approach needs only 5 sub-conversion segments to be defined while traditional approaches may require thousands of conversion programs. COIN achieves this scalability by automatically composing all the comprehensive conversions from a small number of declaratively defined sub-conversions.
Brief Bio
STUART E. MADNICK
John Norris Maguire Professor of Information Technology, Sloan School of Management
& Professor of Engineering Systems, School of Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Professor Stuart Madnick has been a faculty member at M.I.T. since 1972. He has served as the head of MIT's Information Technologies Group for more than twenty years. During that time the group has been consistently rated #1 in the nation among business school information technology programs (U.S. News & World Reports, BusinessWeek, and ComputerWorld). He has also been an affiliate member of MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science, a member of the research advisory committee of the International Financial Services Research Center, and a member of the executive committee of the Center for Information Systems Research.
Dr. Madnick is a prolific writer and is the author or co-author of over 250 books, articles, or reports including the classic textbook, Operating Systems (McGraw-Hill), and the book, The Dynamics of Software Development (Prentice-Hall). He has also contributed chapters to other books, such as Information Technology in Action (Prentice-Hall).
His current research interests include connectivity among disparate distributed information systems, database technology, software project management, and the strategic use of information technology. He is presently co-Director of the PROductivity From Information Technology (PROFIT) Initiative and co-Heads the Total Data Quality Management (TDQM) research program.
He has been the Principal Investigator of a large-scale DARPA-funded research effort on Context Interchange which involves the development of technology that helps organizations to work more cooperatively, coordinated, and collaboratively. As part of this effort, he is the co-inventor on the patents "Querying Heterogeneous Data Sources over a Network Using Context Interchange" and "Data Extraction from World Wide Web Pages."
He has been active in industry, making significant contributions as a key designer and developer of projects such as IBM's VM/370 operating system and Lockheed's DIALOG information retrieval system. He has served as a consultant to many major corporations, such as IBM, AT&T, and Citicorp. He has also been the founder or co-founder of several high-tech firms, including Intercomp (acquired by Logicon), Mitrol (acquired by General Electric's Information Systems Company), Cambridge Institute for Information Systems (subsequently re-named Cambridge Technology Group), iAggregate (acquired by ArsDigita which was subsequently acquired by Red Hat), and currently operates a hotel in the 14th century Langley Castle in England.
Dr. Madnick has degrees in Electrical Engineering (B.S. and M.S.), Management (M.S.), and Computer Science (Ph.D.) from MIT. He has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard University, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), University of Newcastle (England), Technion (Israel), and Victoria University (New Zealand).
|
