Semantic Technologies


Definitions

"service" versus "process"
“Services are the capabilities delivered by the technology infrastructure, and processes are what happens in the business infrastructure.”
(from looselycoupled.com)
Business Activity Monitoring
...relates to the analysis and presentation of relevant and timely information gathered from multiple sources within the organization.
(from WfMC.org PDF file, p.8).
Workflow
The automation of a business process, in whole or part, during which documents, information or tasks are passed from one participant (human or machine) to another for action, according to a set of procedural rules.
(from e-workflow.org, slightly altered)
Ontology
a hierarchy of concepts organized by the 'subclass' relation, plus other 'semantic relations' that specify how one concept is related to another.
(paraphrased from a more detailed description from Wikipedia)

Common Acronyms Decoded


Ontologies

PowerLoom
Ontology building tool plus inferencing engine. Long-term research project at USC Information Sciences Institute.
Protege
Ontology Editor from the Stanford Medical Informatics group.
OWL
The ontology language of choice for the Semantic Web.
Ontolingua
Ontology language from Stanford Knowledge Systems Lab.
KSL Ontology Editor
Ontology editor from Stanford Knowledge Systems Lab.
KIF: Knowledge Interchange Format
Ontology language intended to facilitate translation from one ontology language to another.
Cyc
An attempt by Cycorp, Inc. to build a large ontology encompassing common human knowledge.

BPM - Business Process Management

ebPML.org
Site covering BPM systems and languages.
Process Markup Languages
Good summary of Business Process languages.
Stefan Haberl - Business Process Description Languages
Overview of languages
BPEL4WS – Business Process Execution Language for Web Services
A leading candidate to become the standard BPM language for Web Services.
Loosely Coupled
Site covering Business Process Automation and Web Services. Good weblog (here).
Business Process Standards for Web Services
Article on competing standards for Web Services language (though somewhat out-of-date). Nice description of some basic concepts.
Business Process Trends
Site covering Business Process issues — articles, newsletters, white papers, etc.
Hyping BPM
Article on dangers of current over-hyping of BPM, analogy to past over-hyping of AI.
IBM BPEL support
Article on IBM support of BPEL.
the Insider's Guide to Business Integration - ebizQ
Site covering Business Integration.
PegaSystems, Inc.
Company selling products and services for addressing BPM with Business Rules.
Java Business Process Management
jBpm is an open source BPM tool implemented in Java.

Workflow

Workflow Reference Model
From WfMC, Workflow Management Coalition, a non-profit organization of workflow vendors, users, analysts, and research groups. Also, numerous docs.
Securities Settlement Case Study
Description of Workflow Automation project at Swiss Bank Corp.
Oak Grove Systems, Inc.
Produces workflow engine product called "Reactor"
Versata, Inc.
Java-based workflow automation software. Seem to straddle a number of categories.
Workflow Example
File written in XPDL

Data Integration

Data integration companies to watch for 2004
From Intelligent Enterprise — list of companies to watch in the Data Integration space.
Informatica, Inc.
A leading producer of data integration tools.
Ascential, Inc.
Producer of software and solutions for enterise data integration.
SeeBeyond, Inc.
Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) solutions.
Siperian, Inc.
Data Integration solution for enterprises.
MetaMatrix, Inc.
Enterprise Information Integration and Metadata Management tools.

Business Rules

ILOG, Inc.
Business Rules engine software products
RulesPower, Inc.
Rules-driven BPM software.
Corticon, Inc.
Rules Engine for decision managament, BPM.
FairIsaac, Inc.
Produces the "Blaze" business rules engine.
KPI - Knowledge Partners, Inc.
Business Rules consulting firm.

Report Languages

XBRL – eXtensible Business Reporting Language
XML-based open standard language for describing contents of financial business reports.

Last modified: Thu Jun 10 11:57:32 PDT 2004