This year we also have a “Call for Tool Presentations”. Watch out, the deadline for submissions is May 6, 2011.

Aims and Scope

Topics of Interest

Intended Audience

Submission Details

Important dates

Call for Tool Presentations

Organization

Workshop organizers

Program Committee

build_20070212_1445 pkluegl
* initial commit
* KWiki became KnowWE-Webapp

Before 2007, KnowWE started as an extension of the wiki clone TWiki, since it offered structured editing and multiple wiki webs. However, we quickly became acquainted to the pain of Perl and the bottlenecks when linking our existing Java implementation to the Perl libraries. Consequently, we refactored our code to the wiki clone JSPWiki, that already was implemented in Java, and offered a plugin facility for KnowWE.

Today, the development is still rapidly moving forward: In the last months, the run-time speed was dramatically improved by novel incremental knowledge compilation techniques, visual modeling of knowledge was introduced with the language DiaFlux, and a meta-engineering tool made tailored KE projects even more efficient.

The method is called CodeCity and was developed by Richard Wettel. The primary metaphor is the visualization of the source code as a “city” containing many different buildings.
Every building represents a class, whereas the size of the building is corresponding to the number of attributes; the height of the building visualizes the number of methods. The class LOC is displayed by a color: dark blue means a little LOC number, where lighter blue colors represent more LOCs.

d3web.Kernel (10.2010)

The buildings are painted in different colors, when a particular disharmony is detected for the corresponding class. I was surprised that for the d3web kernel the application yielded some charming results.

Footnote: Please note that the kernel only contains the very basic classes and features of d3web.

Altogether, most of the provided smells (e.g., brain class, brain method, feature envy, shotgun surgery) couldn’t be found at all. However, the algorithm detected four “god classes” (painted in red):

• KnowledgeBase (tall red in foreground)
• KnowledgeBaseManagement (very slim and tall red in the middle)
• DefaultBlackboard and DefaultInterview (both red on the right)

Based on the tasks of these classes, I can life with the results. Probably, we should consider to rework the class KnowledgeBase class some day. Hmm…
Also, two “data classes” were detected by the system, i.e., Score and PSConfig. Those are considered to be used as data containers, so I am still relaxed.

d3web.Kernel (10.2009)

Next I was interested in the recent evolution of the kernel. Thus, I imported the kernel code of 10.2009 (one year ago) and found… more skyscrapers and more color.
From first sight, the city looks larger, more complex, and less harmonious. In the middle, the red skyscraper represents D3WebCase, which was partitioned into some classes (among others, into the DefaultBlackboard and DefaultInterview from above). The class KnowledgeBase (taler red building on the left) remained in the new code, but XCLModel was refactored into a distinct project. The large, “fat” building in the back of the image is the “Property” class that recently was refactored dramatically. Just one small side note for all “insiders” of d3web: The orange building on the right is the MQDialogController…

All in all it looks like that we refactored the kernel into a relaxed and small village with only some large buildings…

Some weeks of heavy testing and bug fixing have passed and we are really happy with the result. After this preview release, the Beta (Moneypenny) is scheduled for December 2010, and the first release is planned for Spring 2011.

d3web/KnowWE is developed by the University Würzburg (Informatik VI, Prof. Dr. Puppe, ROKT group) and the denkbares GmbH.  The main developers are (alphabetically): Joachim Baumeister, Volker Belli, Johannes Dienst, Max Diez, Martina Freiberg, Markus Friedrich, Sebastian Furth, Reinhard Hatko, Fabian Haupt, Alexander Legler, Stefan Mark, Marc-Oliver Ochlast, Jochen Reutelshöfer, Albrecht Striffler, and Florian Ziegler.

The download link of the release will be published in the next few days.

Happy Knowledge Engineering!

1. The margins of the page are so large that a two-page printing reduces the size of the fonts extremely. Thus, I often print those papers not in the “greener” two-pages-on-one-side mode.
2. By default, no page numbers are given on the sheet, so I frequently have problems to sort the pages during reading. Yes, I am aware of the concept of staples, but…

Recently, I found a solution, that is platform-independent, free, and flexible (and also usable for non-Mac users not having these fantastic PDF tools already installed… ): I now use the pdfpages package of LaTeX to include the to-be-printed paper in a newly created PDF that resizes and numbers the included pages.

And here is the idea: Create a new LaTeX document with the name “croppedPaper.tex” having the following content:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{pdfpages}
\setlength{\footskip}{90pt} % position of the page number
\begin{document}
  \includepdf[pages=-,      % include all pages
      pagecommand={\thispagestyle{plain}}, % number pages
      scale=1.3]            % increase the text
      {paper}               % name of the paper to be included
\end{document}

Assuming, you have your to-be-printed paper renamed to “paper.pdf” you will end up with a new PDF “croppedPaper.pdf” after pdflatex-ing “croppedPaper”.

It is pretty simple, but efficient. For papers different from Springer you may adjust the margin of the page numbers (\setlength{\footskip}{90pt}), or you may remove the printing of the page numbers (then simple remove “pagecommand={\thispagestyle{plain}}”). The package pdfpages provides more wonderful configurations, just take a look at the documentation.

Happy reading and writing, joba

We selected seven contributions from the submissions and we think, it is gonna be an interesting event. We will start the workshop at lunch time, so that there will be a chance to visit one of the KI tutorials in the morning. Further, we are planning to have a social meeting the evening just before the workshop. So if you want to attend, then simply drop me a note.

Hello readers, just a short note: The accepted papers and tool presentations of the KESE workshop (Knowledge Engineering and Software Engineering) are now online at https://ai.ia.agh.edu.pl/wiki/kese:kese2009.

This year the KESE Workshop is co-located with the 32nd German Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Paderborn (Sep 15th, 2009).

We selected seven contributions from the submissions and we think, it is gonna be an interesting event. We will start the workshop at lunch time, so that there will be a chance to visit one of the KI tutorials in the morning. Further, we are planning to have a social meeting the evening just before the workshop. So if you want to attend, then simply drop me a note.

Best wishes, joba

Dear All,

due to requests from the industry – there is now also a blog entry in addition to the announcement on the usual forums and mailing lists.

So, according to our 2-month release cycle version 1.9 of the semantic data mining environment VIKAMINE has been released on 23rd of July, 2009. See the download page for the new version. This release includes many bugfixes,  algorithmic improvements, and provides new exciting features for handling continuous target variables. Additionally, VIKAMINE can now directly be integrated with a data warehouse.

So, go and download VIKAMINE NOW at the project site: http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/vikamine
For more information, consult the web site at: http://vikamine.sourceforge.net

ROCKIT with VIKAMINE 1.9!

Martin

due to multiple requests we decided to extend the KESE deadline for submissions to July 1st, 2009.

The 5th workshop on “Knowledge Engineering and Software Engineering” will take place at the 32nd German Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Paderborn this year (Sep 15th, 2009).

We solicit interesting submissions regarding the intersecting field between knowledge engineering and software engineering. Further, we organize a special issue in the International Journal of Knowledge Engineering and Data Mining (IJKEDM) of selected and revised papers. The official call for papers is attached.

Yours, joba

++++++++++++++++++++++++

5th Workshop on
Knowledge Engineering and Software Engineering KESE 2009
at the 32nd German Conference on Artificial Intelligence

http://kese.ia.agh.edu.pl

… with Special Issue in the International Journal of Knowledge Engineering and Data Mining (IJKEDM) of selected and revised papers

Aims and Scope
==============
Intelligent systems have been successfully developed in various domains based on techniques and tools from the fields of knowledge engineering and software engineering. Thus, declarative software engineering techniques have been established in many areas, such as knowledge systems, logic programming, constraint programming, and lately in the context of the Semantic Web and business rules.

The fifth workshop on Knowledge Engineering and Software Engineering (KESE 2009) wants to bring together researchers and practitioners from fields of software engineering and artificial intelligence, as well as the Semantic Web community. The intention is to give ample space for exchanging latest research results as well as knowledge about practical experience. The previous KESE Workshops were annually organized at KI conferences.

Topics of Interest
==================
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
- Knowledge and software engineering for the Semantic Web
- Ontologies in practical knowledge and software engineering
- Business Rules design and management
- Knowledge representation, reasoning and management
- Practical knowledge representation and discovery techniques in software engineering
- Agent-oriented software engineering
- Database and knowledge base management in AI systems
- Evaluation and verification of intelligent systems
- Practical tools for intelligent systems
- Process models in AI applications
- Declarative, logic-based approaches
- Constraint programming approaches

Intended Audience
=================
We expect researchers and practitioners from the areas of knowledge and software engineering, and the Semantic Web. No limitation on the number of participants is planned.

Submission Details
==================
Papers should be formatted according to the Springer LNCS guidelines. The length of each paper should not exceed 12 pages for regular papers and 6 pages for short papers (including figures and references), see: ftp.springer.de/pub/tex/latex/llncs/latex2e/llncs2e.zip
All papers must be written in English and submitted in PDF format with the A4 paper size explicitly set in LaTeX. Submissions will be made via EasyChair (http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=kese2009).

Important dates
===============
Paper submission deadline:           July 01, 2009
Notification of paper acceptance:    July 15, 2009
Camera ready copy submission:       July 31, 2009

Call for Tool Presentations
===========================
This year we also strongly encourage the submission of tool presentation papers, i.e., system descriptions that clearly show the interaction between research and practice. Such papers could be shorter, and have to be explicitly identified as tool presentation.

Organization
============
The one-day workshop will be held with presentations of accepted papers. The submitted papers will be reviewed by at least two members of the program committee. A comfortable time slot for discussions will be given. The proceedings will be published as a technical report before the workshop, and as CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org) later on.
Selected papers will be invited to submit to a special issue on “Knowledge and Software Engineering for Intelligent Systems” to be published in the International Journal of Knowledge Engineering and Data Mining (IJKEDM).

Workshop Chairs
G. J. Nalepa, AGH UST Krakow <gjn@agh.edu.pl>
J. Baumeister, University Würzburg <joba@uni-wuerzburg.de>

Program Committee
K.-D. Althoff, University Hildesheim, Germany
J. Baumeister, University Würzburg, Germany
S. Bibi, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
J. Canadas, University of Almería, Spain
U. Geske, FhG FIRST, Berlin, Germany
A. Giurca, BTU Cottbus, Germany
R. Knauf, TU Ilmenau, Germany
G. J. Nalepa, AGH UST, Krakow, Poland
F. Puppe, University Würzburg, Germany
D. Seipel, University Würzburg, Germany
I. Stamelos, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki,Greece
G. Weiß, SCCH, Austria