Ontx is a tool for Business Knowledge Modeling, designed to permit non-technical users to define and maintain sophisticated models of real-world concepts. It allows companies to capture knowledge about key business objects--such as products, organizations, customers, channels, suppliers, or digital assets--that is not stored or cannot be stored in conventional corporate systems. Its advanced modeling capabilities allow the representation of the nature, attributes, and classification of business objects, as well as the definition of the relationships among them. When raw information is available in existing enterprise applications, Ontx offers facilities to identify new and changed information, create and initialize corresponding objects, and link them to the Ontx knowledge model.
Ontx consists of the following:
An entirely browser-based visual tool that allows definition and management of the class structures used in Ontx models. Concept Manager supports inheritance and polymorphism, and provides generalized semantic network support complete with user-defined connection semantics.
Manages the creation of hierarchies and the instantiation of container and data object instances. Domain Manager allows input and update of object property values. It provides the ability to specify relationships and connections among object instances. It is also completely visual and browser-based.
Provides for automated, unattended population and management of hierarchies that overlay enterprise data. It includes data extract, transformation, and aggregation capabilities. Its analysis step identifies new and changed data that drives the rules-driven classification system (see below). Output can load and update a classic star-schema data warehouse, if desired. Easy-to-use browser-based tools for data mapping and job management are included.
Tools for the definition of data classification rules and the association of rules with hierarchies are integrated into the Domain Manager component. The data classification engine, intended for unattended use, applies rules to the output of the Data Acquisition system, instantiates objects and sets their properties as required, and links them to the appropriate hierarchy container.
Also integrated with the Domain Manager, the Digital Asset Management tool provides the ability to manage digital content and link it to the object model. Digital Asset Manager provides extensive edition, revision, and version tracking; allows for the upload and storage of digital assets; and provides check-out, check-in, and locking capabilities.
The SQL API allows Ontx business knowledge models to be incorporated into corporate applications and Web content. The API is implemented through the facilities of the RDBMS -- views, stored procedures, user-defined functions, and triggers. It provides facilities that simplify queries and updates against the underlying knowledge model data (which, by the way, requires just seven relational tables).
The Asset Viewer API provides for Web access to assets stored in the Digital Asset Management system. Keywords drive the retrieval of specific editions or revisions of assets. Thumbnails for image assets can be generated on request. Zip files can be generated to allow the retrieval of multiple assets.
All browser-based applications in the Ontx product suite communicate with the server using an XML/SOAP Web services interface. That same interface is available to other applications that might wish to access or update Ontx business knowledge models. The Web services API includes over 50 calls that provide specific Ontx functionality, as well as general-purpose tools for accessing Ontx models.
