Knowledge model

I (Max Völkel) define a knowledge model as a superset of both documents and ontologies.

A document contains:

• a set of adressable information atoms (text, images, maybe even multimedia elements)
• a defined order to navigate through (linear)
• a strictly hierachical structure (sections, subsection)
• a visual layout (font sizes, italics)
• references (in-document and to other documents)

In contrast, an ontology contains:

• a set of adressable concepts
• relations between concepts
• typed concepts and relations
• a (not always) strict concept hierarchy
• labels for concepts
• often distinguishes between instances and types

A knowledge model thus is:

• a set of adressable information atoms (text, images, maybe even multimedia elements)
• relations between information atoms
• a hierarchy of relations (see CDS)
• four built-in relation types
  • the generic, directed link
  • annotations, to give the ability to type information atoms and relations, information atoms are used as types
  • ordering relations, to model linear navigation
  • hierachical relations, to model document and concept hierachies

Knowledge models can be stored in swecr.