Stanford Center for Information Technology (CIT) is developing the technology for smart catalogs as part of its efforts on CommerceNet. Stanford CIT is working with a small select group of companies to develop pilot smart catalogs. The CommerceNet Catalog Working Group has identified the following among its areas of interest.
CIT has produced these short papers on smart catalogs.
We envision a smart catalog to contain structured information that describes products and services, including parametric data. The organization of the catalog and the terms used in it are described an its ontology, which permits entries in the catalog to be described logically. Queries to a smart catalog are given in a logical language, such as a variant of SQL. The ontology is used to help search the structured information to obtain the entries that are the results of a user's query. The results can be returned in a structured form, such as ACL (Agent Communication Language) or can be used to generate HTML (hypertext markup language) for display on a WWW browser such as Mosaic. Text, graphics, audio, video, or other types of information to be presented to the user in the WWW browser are incorporated in the smart catalog for inclusion in the HTML.
We also envision shared ontologies that translate between the ontologies of the various catalogs. For example, a vendor may define translations between the PC, Macintosh, and Unix ontologies in order to market hardware products to all 3 communities. The combination of the shared ontologies for translation and the various catalogs allows queries expressed in a common language to be answered by the various catalogs that contain relevant information. Facilitators are used to translate queries and results among the various ontologies, as well as to determine which catalogs contain information relevant to a particular query.
As part of Stanford CIT's work on CommerceNet, the Knowledge Systems Laboratory (KSL) is focusing on the creation and management of ontologies, which are knowledge bases containing structured and free-form definitions of concepts (e.g., the concept of a "product"), along with the attributes and relations that give meaning to that concept. A software tool for creating ontologies is available for general use on the web. To get to it, the URL is http://www-ksl-svc.stanford.edu:5915/. You can log in anonymously or register as a new user. At the next window, answer the three questions and push the new session button. At the next window, click on the words "ontology editor." For first time users, there is a very nice guided tour.
Currently, Stanford CIT is working with IBM ISSC, Hewlett-Packard, and National Semiconductor to develop Smart Catalogs. Stanford CIT is soliciting partners for developing pilot virtual catalogs. Stanford CIT will work with each company to develop an ontology for a pilot smart or virtual catalog, and will assist the company in structuring the catalog. For smart catalogs, the company will populate its own catalog with guidance and assistance from Stanford CIT. For virtual catalogs, the company will work with Stanford CIT to create a structure for dynamically obtaining product data from smart catalogs. To participate, each company will be expected to fund the student working on its catalog and to be a member of the Stanford Computer Forum. Each company must also be a sponsoring member of CommerceNet. Stanford CIT is developing search engines and facilitators for individual and cross-catalog search. Please contact Arthur M. Keller at ark@cs.stanford.edu or 415/723-7683 if your company wants to participate in developing a pilot smart catalog or virtual catalog.
Arthur M. Keller ark@cs.stanford.edu