CODE4: Conceptually Oriented Description Environment

A System for Knowledge Management: Acquisition, Analysis, and Retrieval

• Introduction
• Features of Code4
• Typical Applications of CODE4 KMS Technology
• Requirements

Introduction

CODE4 (Conceptually Oriented Description Environment) is a general purpose knowledge management system intended for analysing, debugging, and delivering knowledge about some domain. It is designed to be easily adaptable to many applications, such as natural language processing, software specification and design, expert systems, general terminological analysis, or teaching subjects such as biology or Unix. It can be learned by non-computer people in a few days.

The system features a frame-based representation with a number of inheritance and inferencing modes, a very flexible graphic user interface with various graphing facilities, a hypertext mode of browsing, the ability to specify functional computation like in a spreadsheet, an optional simple restricted English-like syntax, and document scanning and lexicon management facilities. These features are all designed to assist a person in the semantic interpretation and conceptual analysis of knowledge (i.e. in knowledge entry), or in knowledge retrieval.

Features of CODE4

Object-oriented:

programmed in Smalltalk; runs on all major platforms

Highly graphic user interface:

• hypertext browsing
• draws taxonomies and various semantic networks on demand
• exports to publishing and other tools

Hybrid AI knowledge representation + hypertext:

several inheritance link types and associated inference mechanisms.

Database-like search:

answers queries in a knowledge base ("show me all X such that Y")

Knowledge debugging features:

• easy viewing of changes in property inheritance or comparision of concepts
• system warns of potential conflicts

User can build up knowledge bases and lexicons by scanning real documents

Lexicon management:

terms are stored as first-class concepts. Terms can have several meanings, and concepts can have several terms.

Typical Applications of CODE4 KMS Technology

• Design and requirements analysis (e.g. software development; o-o design)
• Technical documentation (e.g. airplanes or drugs)
• Government or military regulations (e.g. tax laws)
• Teaching technical material (e.g. physics, biology)
• Hypertext-like information retrieval (e.g. technical manuals)
• Knowledge acquisition for expert systems (CODE kbs can be converted into expert systems)
• Database conceptual design (extension of O-O and ER)
• Designing ontologies for natural language systems (defines lexical meanings)
• Terminological analysis and control (e.g. in large organizations; international standards like ISO)