KOLA: KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION LANGUAGE

The focus of this research is on a representation of knowledge that captures the structure of a domain into the computational model for efficient retrieval and reasoning. With this desideratum in mind, a concept-based knowledge representation system called KOLA (Knowledge Organization LAnguage) is described. KOLA extends the expressive capability of concept-based representation systems by allowing the distinction between definitional and nondefinitional necessary conditions. KOLA allows explicit declarations of properties of relations between concepts (roles or attributes) such as transitivity, symmetry, and so on. The explicit representation of knowledge about knowledge helps knowledge to be represented vividly, and reasoning to be performed efficiently. Furthermore, detailed filler references allow instance-specific information to be represented and manipulated effectively. In KOLA, the terminological reasoning is carried out in a way similar to other concept-based representation systems. The assertional reasoning is performed using an instance network which gets refined, as instances are created or modified. This allows some of assertional reasoning operations to be reduced to the simple graph searching operations.