In order to implement the vision of the KnowDive project, a set of distinct but complementary systems is being currently developed. The goal of these systems is to provide a set of technological tools to support the user in the creation, acquisition, adaptation, evolution, management, and sharing of knowledge and data within the global infrastructure of the emerging Web 2.0. At the moment these are the main sub-systems which are part of the KnowDive project:

* ClassDB builds up on top of the simple but commonly used data structures for encoding knowledge – classification hierarchies. While being seamlessly embedded into common practices of knowledge management, ClassDB adds a semantic layer by converting classifications into formal classifications which are suitable for the automation of many essential operations on classifications;
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* DocDB is a hybrid document management system which combines the benefits of three main approaches to information access: classification schemes, faceted classifications, and direct search. Apart from implementing the three technologies per se, DocDB adds explicit semantics at all the three layers, which allows for new and more meaningful ways to access and manipulate information and data;
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* SMatch resolves the problem of heterogeneity among (formal) classifications which inevitably arises when classifications are designed independently by different users. Particularly, SMatch allows it to find mappings among classification nodes taking into account the actual meaning of these nodes in the classification hierarchies. These mappings can then be used by humans and by automated computer agents to share, find, and adopt knowledge and data scattered in multiple distributed classifications;
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* SP2P develops a robust Peer-to-Peer technological infrastructure with the goal to support completely decentralized knowledge discovery and sharing, transient user participation and community building, as well as knowledge adaptation through semantic convergence of peer vocabularies. Unlike many other approaches, SP2P explicitly takes into account the semantics encoded into (formal) classifications, documents, and mappings, which allows for more meaningful and intelligent operations;
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* FilesDB provides a facility to store and handle any kind of document that a user has published. It implements a system to provide a simple collaborative modality on documents in which the users can acquire a lock on a specific document to perform an exclusive editing session as well as be informed about the user which is currently editing a document. The module provides a strong security layer which provides a full customized access control on documents for any user.
Contact: Marco Marasca (component manager)

* CV is a knowledge base platform which allows the users to create and customize different Controlled Vocabularies which provide the basic semantic information used to perform advanced semantic tasks in the system (e.g. semantic search, natural language processing etc). Based on the structure of WordNet allows to store information about the words, their synonyms and senses as well as the relations which may exists among the concepts expressed by each sense.
Contact: Marco Marasca (component manager)

* SWebNET is a middleware layer which provides a transparent layer to hide the distributed nature of the system to higher level components.  Given that the data processing components and the data may be distributed among different server the main goal of this module is to allow the automatic dereferencing of a SWeb URL to retrieve the actual object representation.
Contact: Marco Marasca (component manager)

As from above, the systems are being developed with the goal of meeting the vision of Web 2.0. We believe we are going in the right direction and below we provide a list of arguments which explain why we do so. In our argumentation we refer to the O’Reilly’s article as the reference for what Web 2.0 is about and for a discussion of the current trends of the Web which lead it to Web 2.0.

* The web as platform: in the KnowDive systems, data and operations on data are largely shifted from client machines to the Web following the paradigm of “thin client computing”;

* Data is the next Intel inside: the KnowDive systems are about users’ data, information, and knowledge and about their efficient and effective management, sharing, and reuse;

* The long tail: the target audience of the KnowDive systems is individual users, not big Internet companies or portals. We target the edges and not just the center of the Web, the long tail and not just the head;

* Architecture of participation: users share their data with other users following the P2P data sharing paradigm. This allows (yet other) users to discover and reuse knowledge and data in a meaningful, semantics-driven way. A key Web 2.0 principle is respected: the service automatically gets better the more people use it, users do add value!

For questions and suggestions about the KnowDive systems and/or about this page please contact Ilya Zaihrayeu (project manager).