Ontology-based User Context Management: The Challenges of Dynamics and Imperfection

Andreas Schmidt:
Ontology-based User Context Management: The Challenges of Dynamics and Imperfection
In: Proceedings of International Conference on Ontologies, Databases and Applications of SEmantics (ODBASE 2006), On the Move Federated Conferences (OTM), Springer, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), vol. 4275, 2006, pp. 995-1011
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Abstract: Robust and scalable user context management is the key enabler for the emerging context- and situation-aware applications, and ontology-based approaches have shown their usefulness for capturing especially context information on a high level of abstraction. But so far the problem has not been approached as a data management problem, which is key to scalability and robustness. The specific challenges lie in the imperfection of high-level context information, its time-dependence and the variability in the dynamics between its different elements. The approach presented in this paper presents a layered data model which structures the problems and is geared towards flexible and efficient query processing in combination of relational database and logic-based techniques. The techniques have been successfully applied for context-aware corporate learning support.