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David Domeshek
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Jim Ong
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NIST AWARDS CONTRACT TO STOTTLER HENKE TO DEVELOP
ONTOLOGY TOOLS FOR SOFTWARE SYSTEMS INTEGRATION 

New technology will simplify use of artificial intelligent representations in enterprise systemsSAN MATEO, CA, Sept. 1, 2001 — Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. today announced the award of a two-year $300,000 Phase II contract by the U.S. Deparment of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop , an innovative, web-based tool that lets subject matter experts, not computer experts, develop ontologies to describe concepts and relationships in a subject area.  By simplifying the development of ontologies, companies and industry groups will be better able to develop interoperable computer systems that exchange complex data.

As ever more of industry and commerce moves onto computer networks, there is growing appreciation for how expressive general models of enterprise activities, such as design, manufacturing and procurement, can be useful for software system design and integration. By encoding concepts and relationships in  computer-readable form, ontologies can serve as a solid foundation for such models and facilitate more faithful and reliable exchange of complex data beween systems.

“The idea of ontologies as formalized agreements about the terms to be used to describe a domain comes from the artificial intelligence research community,” says Dr. Eric Domeshek, the project’s principle investigator.  “Unfortunately, most of the existing software tools that support ontology development were built by computer scientists for use by computer scientists. Experience with large-scale ontology development, however, makes it clear that much of the work in developing an ontology must be done by domain experts, rather than by AI experts,” continues Dr. Domeshek.

Stottler Henke will address this problem by developing DECODE (Domain Expert Collaborative Ontology Development Environment) that enable teams of subject matter experts develop their own ontologies collaboratively, over the web.  DECODE will apply Stottler Henke’s advanced design collaboration tool (ADCT) technologies to preserve the decision-making history and design rationale for the resulting ontologies,  to make them intelligible to future users and adaptable for future developers.

Founded in 1988, Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. applies artificial intelligence and other advanced software technologies to solve problems that defy solution using traditional approaches. The company delivers intelligent software solutions for education and training, planning and scheduling, knowledge management and discovery, decision support, and software development. Stottler Henke’s clients include manufacturers, retailers, educational media companies and government agencies.   Web: https://www.stottlerhenke.com/.