Home

Introduction to the IODE™

Syllabus

Overview:

This course is intended to acquaint the student with the Ontology Works Integrated Ontology Development Environment (IODE). This tool enables users to develop robust and high-fidelity ontologies and deploy them as database systems.

Audience:

This course is intended for anyone who will participate in the development of an ontology for deployment in an eXtensible Knowledge Server Family (XKS). The course is essential for ontology developers, and is also recommended for managers, programmers, and end-users who would like to get the most out of their product.

Structure:

This is a four-day workshop that includes both lecture and hands-on training. Almost half of this course will be spent in lab situations during which ontologies will actually be written and loaded.

Goal:

By the end of the course, students will be comfortable with reading and writing simple ontologies; loading, testing, and browsing ontologies in the IODE; and querying ontologies with the Questionator. Students who wish to independently develop complex ontologies should also take the Ontology and Logic workshop. This course is an application-independent, in-depth exploration of the principles of ontology development and formal languages.

Course Content:

  1. Introduction: the XKS and the IODE.

    A brief overview of the Ontology Works eXtensible Knowledge Server Family and the Integrated Ontology Development Environment.

  2. Ontology and data modeling.

    Students will learn about ontology and its role in producing domain-level data models. This section will include a discussion about the similarities and differences between traditional data modelling in a relational database environment and ontology development.

  3. The Language, KFL: Syntax and Semantics

    1. KFL: terms and formulas. Students will learn about the logical and non-logical terms of KFL, rules for constructing sentences, structure and meaning of basic terms and assertions in the formal language, KFL, with a more in-depth look at some of the terms in the Ontology Works upper level ontology that provide the foundation of specialized domain ontologies.
    2. Properties and Taxonomies: Learn about the difference between Universals and Particulars, and the instantiation and subsumption relations used to create the taxonomic structure of the ontology. Students will also learn about rigid and non-rigid properties.
    3. Relations: In this section, students will learn about some of the most commonly used relations, including event relations, mereological relations, and geospatial relations.

  4. Creating and representing a domain ontology.

    1. Contexts: A look at the contexts used to modularize ontologies. We will discuss data-driven and issue-driven ontology development and the modular structure of the ontology libraries that can be delivered with the IODE. We will review existing ontology contexts and become familiar with the context hierarchy in the upper level ontology.
    2. Exercises. Students will apply what they learned in sections II and III to specific domains. Exercises involve analyzing the domain; creating appropriate classes and placing them appropriately in the existing taxonomy; creating relations and functions as needed; loading ontology files; generating and loading test data and querying the resulting database system.

Tuition

Tuition is $2500 per student or, for groups of 5 or more, $2100 per student. No more than twelve students will be accepted per session. Minimum class size will be 3 students. Additional expenses are covered by the customer. Contact Ryan Kohl for on-site training.

Additional Information