Table of Contents

• Introduction to GNOWSYS
• Architecture
• Implementions
• Development Status
• Downloading GNOWSYS
• Documentation
• Mailing Lists/Newsgroups
• Feature Request
• Report a Bug
• Maintainer
• Contributors

Introduction to GNOWSYS

GNOWSYS is an acronym for Gnowledge Networking and Organizing SYStem. The 'G' in GNOWSYS is pronounced hard just as the 'G' in GNU. It provides a specification for a generic distributed knowledge base. Its current implementation is developed as a product of ZOPE (Zee Object Publishing Environment), a free web application framework. The latest development of GNOWSYS, we are migrating to PostgreSQL as storage. The specification is implemented currently in a versatile, full-featured object-oriented programming language Python. Its development is supported by Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR.

GNOWSYS is a GNU project (since December 2004).

License: GNOWSYS is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

All new implementations of GNOWSYS will be released under version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version

Features:

GNOWSYS is used for several years to provide content for websites, most notable is Gnowledge Portal, which is launched on 2nd February 2007.

• It is an object oriented database with each object provided by an unique URL
• It is a web-application server
• It can store both data and meta-data of objects
• Objects can be classified according to subclass/superclass relation, and also instantiation relation (class-instance). Polymorphism is possible.
• Objects and their classes (called ObjectTypes) can be related in terms of arbitrary relation names.
• Metatype (type of types) and relations among them can also be expressed. Please see the list of component classes of GNOWSYS from the architecture section below.
• Quantifiers and modalities can also be part of the persistent data. (under development)
• Data and meta-data of objects can be indexed in a catalogue for faster query.
• Optionally data can remain anywhere on the Internet keeping only the metadata in the database. This feature will be most useful for what is now becoming popular as semantic web.
• Surrogates of procedures (classes, functions, and system calls) can also be installed in the database as special objects. (Any procedure callable through Python is supported.) These procedures execute when invoked as web services.
• Using the above feature it is possible to design applications without writing program in any programming language: i.e., specifying the semantics of a program and mapping the elements of the program to the surrogates of procedures is sufficient for GNOWSYS to test the application design. This forms the foundation for semantic computing using GNOWSYS.
• It will also have a feature to store rules/constraints to facilitate inference and formal model building. (under development)
• Its data-exchange sub-system will provide translation to and from various standard knowledge representation schemes such as CL (common logic), PetriNets, KIF (knowledge interchange format, CG (concept graphs), OWL (web ontology language), XTM (XML Topic Maps), etc.
• Data can be accessed through HTTP, FTP, WebDav, XML-RPC protocols.
• GQL: Gnowledge Query Library is being developed for query, retrieval, and management of the DB. Presently it is implemented in XML-RPC.
• It is interoperable. Works in all the known operating systems where both Python and Zope are known to work.

What kind of use is envisaged for GNOWSYS?

Based on the features listed above it is very difficult to give an exhuastive list of applications that can be developed using GNOWSYS. We think that almost anything that can be done at the application layer of a computer can be implemented in GNOWSYS. We give here some special applciations that GNOWSYS fares better than other application frameworks. We will also provide links to demonstration sites, and deployed sites so that you may get a fairly good idea of what GNOWSYS can do for you. Broadly, if you are planning to implement a knowledge/data-driven application consider using GNOWSYS.

• As a web based hybrid database (as a file system, RDBMS, OODBMS, distributed DBMS) with querying and remote management. This ability will make it highly suitable for agent oriented computing solutions across the Internet.
• For building structured knowledge bases with a higher degree of expressiveness. This will help build AI based applications using GNOWSYS as a database. An example of a concept base of biology can be seen from here.
• For semantic web. Most semantic web solutions require the use of XML based representations like OWL, XTM etc. GNOWSYS is unique in its ability to provide semantic web without the use of XML, though using the data-exchange sub-system of GNOWSYS it is possible to export/import the content in XML or for that matter any other markup.
• Since GNOWSYS database is available as a web-server, dynamic web sites and web services can be made by employing the powerful ZPT, Python Script objects, and DTML templates available in ZOPE. Zope users need not use an external database, instead they can use GNOWSYS. Web sites built with GNOWSYS are "semantic web ready", for the structure of the data can be queried by software agents. Normal dynamic web sites conceal the database structure, while GNOWSYS sites don't.
• As an object sharing system for desktop systems like GNOME/KDE etc. This will save processing time since data files are stored in the database and not as XML files. This will make reusability of data across applications very efficient.
• As a digital encyclopedia, thesaurus, dictionary or glossaries can be made very easily. Even multi-lingual databases can be linked from one GNOWSYS instance to another since distributed relations between objects is possible.
• For building elearning applications. Lessons and concepts (learning resources) can be organized according to the standard metadata suggested by LOM/SCORM models. Learning paths, evaluation tracks, usage history etc can be persistantly stored and accessed by establishing networking relations and conditions among them.
• Using semantic computing feature of GNOWSYS, on line tutorials can be built for teaching procedural skills such as mathematics, programming languages.
• For building community portals, egovernment solutions, and several such applications that require the special features outlined above.

Architecture:

A comprehensive introduction to the concept, motivation, architecture and implementation details presented in the concept paper.

GNOWSYS is a tool to construct and store persistently a Gnowledge Base (GB). The GB consists of instances of the following three groups of constructor classes:

• Predicate Group: relationType, relation, functionType, function.
• Object Group: metaType, class, object (with provision to have classes and objects of declarative, procedural, encapsulated, temporal etc.)
• Structure Group: systemType, system, flowType, flow, processType, process.

All the type level constructors help a gnowledge engineer construct (specify) a model (the structure of the cognitive system), e.g., an ontology, structure of an artifact or a natural object like a human body. The epistemic value of this type layer is consistency, since these are conceptual in nature.

All the token level constructors help store the data about a given situation. The epistemic value of this token layer is truth. Each token level data is either true or false, because it represents a proposition.

Implementations of GNOWSYS

GNOWSYS is implemented to make a few structured content management systems acting as web sites.

• Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education's WebSite
• SELF Platform: A collaborative authoring system for elearning resources
• GNOWSYS Documentation Site
• gnowledge portal: a place to harvest, construct and distribute free knowledge

Development Status

GNOWSYS is currently heading for its first stable release version 1.0. This is expected to happen some time during April 2008. This version is fast, scalable and has inbuilt version control system for both data and metadata.

Currently the developers of GNOWSYS are testing and patching the bugs whenever found so that we manage to release it by April 2008. In terms of development our focus is now diverting to a GUI based management application so that GNOWSYS instances can be managed remotely. Some of the developers are also busy developing an xchange module for importing and exporting of structured documents.

GSoC 2008 Participation

Last summer (2007) the GNOWSYS project participated in the GSoC project successfully and the project is moving closer to a stable release from a developer only version.

Last year's project contributed a framework for and an implementation of a version control system. This eventually led to its implementation in selfplatform.eu, where GNOWSYS is used as a distributed knowledge base.

For 2008 we suggest the following projects, and we're looking forward to mentoring students who would like to work on them.

• Automated harvesting of free knowledge sources like TLDP, man pages (nroff/troff), texinfo, DocBook, ODF, wikisource, LaTeX, SCORM, IMSLD and other such structured document formats into the GNOWSYS knowledge base. (Good knowledge of XML and text parsing are prior requirements here.)
• Exporting the harvested knowledge (as well as the directly authored knowledge base) into other document formats (OWL, XTM, SCORM, LaTeX, DocBook), provided that these formats are free/open document standards. (As with the previous suggestion, good knowledge of XML and text parsing are prior requirements here.)
• GNU Emacs client integration. This might make use of Org-Mode, for example. (requires prior knowledge of working with Emacs and XMLRPC.)
• Collaborative authoring and organization of knowledge. Also graphical representation of the GNOWSYS knowledge base, using frameworks like pyGTK or Sugar (you should have some experience of these).

Downloading GNOWSYS

Though GNOWSYS is available at the ftp.gnu.org, please use the cvs repository till a stable version is uploaded at ftp.gnu.org. The current releases can be downloaded from http://savannah.gnu.org/download/gnowsys/

Documentation

The latest documentation of GNWSYS can be found at gnowledge project management site. Old version of GNOWSYS documentation can be found at a self documenting instance of GNOWSYS 0.62. This will also illustrate how GNOWSYS can be used for making a web based content management.

We are committed to providing documentation in the standards formats as a GNU project in texinfo, html, pdf, ps and tex formats. When they are ready you will find links to them from here.

Mailing Lists/Newsgroups

<gnowsys-help@gnu.org> and <gnowsys-bug@gnu.org>.

The main discussion list is <gnowsys-help@gnu.org>, and is used to discuss all aspects of GNOWSYS, including development and porting.

Announcements about GNOWSYS and most other GNU Software are made on <gnowsys-info@gnu.org>.

There is also a special list used for reporting bugs, <gnowsys-bug@gnu.org>. For details on submitting a bug report, please see the section Report a Bug below.

There is also a special list used for developers, which is the most often used list. The above lists exist, but seldom used. <gnowsys-dev@lists.gnowledge.org>. If you want to participate in the development of GNOWSYS, this is the list to join.

To subscribe to any GNOWSYS mailing list, please send an empty mail with a Subject: header line of just "subscribe" to the relevant -request list. For example, to subscribe yourself to the main list, you would send mail to <gnowsys-help-request@gnu.org> with no body and a Subject: header line of just "subscribe".

Feature Request

If you would like any new feature to be included in future versions of GNOWSYS, please send a request to <gnowsys-help@gnu.org>.

GNOWSYS development is currently supported by Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE), TIFR, and is mostly executed by undergraduate students as a part of their projects. Please remember that GNOWSYS is a GNU project and is dedicated to the free software community. If you like to be a volunteer, you can also contribute to its development. This project is managed from savannah site. You can place a request to be a developer from there. For information about contributing to other GNU Projects, please read How to help GNU.

Report a Bug

If you think you have found a bug in GNOWSYS, then you should send as complete a report as possible to <gnowsys-bug@gnu.org>.

Maintainer

GNOWSYS is currently being maintained by <nagarjun AT gnowledge DOT org>.

Contributors to GNOWSYS

GNOWSYS is concieved and authored by Nagarjuna G. Most of the code to GNOWSYS was a contribution by several students who worked under his guidance at Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR, Mumbai. Shashank Ashtikar, and Harshad Bahere were the initial contributors to the code and later on by Prasanta Boruah, Debarshi Ray, and Rakesh Pandit. We now have new members in the gnowledge lab, Bipin Apandkar, Rajiv Nair, Alpesh Gajbe, Dinesh Joshi, Vihan Pandey, Saurabh Shelar and Krishnakant Mane. Contributions made by students who did several prototype applications using GNOWSYS are available at the self-documenting site of GNOWSYS.

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