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Glossary

Knowledge Base​

An independent producer and/or consumer of information.

Knowledge Network​

A set of Knowledge Bases that securely exchange knowledge about a clearly defined domain.

Knowledge Engine Runtime​

A single instance that is part of a Knowledge Network. It takes care of the communication between one (or more!) Knowledge Base(s) and the rest of the Knowledge Network.

Knowledge Directory​

A registry that keeps track of all Knowledge Bases (as represented by Smart Connectors), and specifically their knowledge needs and desires.

Smart Connector​

An entity (currently in the form of a Java object) that enables a Knowledge Base to connect to a Knowledge Network and exchange knowledge.

Knowledge Interaction​

A specification of knowledge that a Knowledge Base processes. A Knowledge Interaction is always one of the following four types: ASK, ANSWER, POST, REACT.

ASK​

A request for knowledge.

ANSWER​

Answer to a request for knowledge

POST​

A publication of knowledge.

REACT​

Reaction to the publication of knowledge

Graph Pattern​

A set of triples, separated by a dot (.), that describe the Knowledge that is processed with a Knowledge Interaction. Each triple consists of a subject, predicate, and object. Each of these can be either a variable (using a question mark ?var prefix), a URI (using the <https://...>) or a literal (using quotes "hello")

On the Expressibility of Graph Patterns​

Currently, the Knowledge Engine only supports Basic Graph Patterns. It does not yet support features such as the FILTER from SPARQL.

Binding Set​

A result of a Knowledge Interaction can have more than 1 match. These matches are collected in a BindingSet, which is simply a set of bindings.

Binding​

Describes a 'match' of a graph pattern. Essentially it maps (free) variables in a graph pattern to actual values. Variables can be identified in a graph pattern as they are always prefixed with ?.

Two important things should be noted:

  1. The keys of the bindings MUST correspond to the variable names in the graph pattern, and they must be complete (all variables must have a value bound to them). (This last restriction does not apply to the bindings given with ASK requests; they can be partial of even empty.)
  2. The values of the bindings MUST be valid IRIs (https://www.w3.org/TR/turtle/#sec-iri) (for now without prefixes, so full IRIs) or valid literals (https://www.w3.org/TR/turtle/#literals).