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 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Semantic Web Conference, ISWC 2008, held in Karlsruhe, Germany, during October 26-30, 2008. The volume contains 43 revised full research papers selected from a total of 261 submissions, of which an additional 3 papers were referred to the semantic Web in-use track; 11 papers out of 26 submissions to the semantic Web in-use track, and 7 papers and 12 posters accepted out of 39 submissions to the doctorial consortium. The topics covered in the research track are ontology engineering; data management; software and service engineering; non-standard reasoning with ontologies; semantic retrieval; OWL; ontology alignment; description logics; user interfaces; Web data and knowledge; semantic Web services; semantic social networks; and rules and relatedness. The semantic Web in-use track covers knowledge management; business applications; applications from home to space; and services and infrastructure.

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.

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.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 3rd Asian Semantic Web Conference, ASWC 2008, held in Bankok, Thailand, in December 2008. The 37 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 118 submissions. The papers address the latest results in the research and applications of Semantic Web technologies and cover topics including: scalable reasoning and logic, ontology mapping, ontology modelling and management, ontologies and tags, human language technologies and machine learning, querying, semantic Web services and semantic Web applications.

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.

This excellently written monograph provides – for the first time ever - a thorough introduction and systematic overview of all aspects of intelligent data processing on the Web. It presents both the current state of research as well as application aspects. All major topics related to Web Intelligence which can have impact on future directions and developments are presented in detail. This book will be a valuable source of reference for years to all research and development professionals interested in Web Intelligence. Students will also appreciate the numerous illustrations and examples.

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.

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.

"This book brings together researchers, scientists, and representatives from different communities to study, understand, and explore the theory, tools, and applications of the semantic Web. It joins the semantic Web, ontologies, knowledge management, Web services, and Web processes into one fully comprehensive resource, serving as the platform for exchange of both practical technologies and research"--Provided by publisher.