Building an Interoperable and Reusable Generic Object Model (GenOM) for Software Computing

• Project Keywords: Object Modeling, Software Patterns, Ontology, Semantic Web, Intelligent Information Integration, Context-Awareness
   

• Project Members: Dr. Seok-Won Lee (PI), Deepak Yavagal (RA, MS student)
   

• Project Description: In designing and implementing any “intelligent” software application by using object-oriented technologies, it is essential to address the following three characteristics: 1) object modeling in its representation, 2) usage of objects in its application model, and 3) ability to aggregate evidence that supports the analysis of objects’ behaviors (through the associated properties and relationships between objects). The harmonization of these characteristics often determines the level of intelligence of the applications. When a software computing paradigm converges toward domain-independent interdisciplinary research, the objects (or models) used in each application model should be interoperable and reusable. In this research project, we build such an interoperable and reusable object computing environment called Generic Object Model (GenOM).

  GenOM inherits the theoretical foundation of frame representation in artificial intelligence and expands its architecture so that its hierarchical object model can be easily transformable and adaptable to other software design models in various domain applications by building domain-specific application layers on the GenOM foundation layer, while GenOM itself serves as an integrated environment to create, edit, browse, search and maintain objects.

  An embedded inference mechanism in GenOM can generate rules that describe objects and their structures in relating with other objects. Also, GenOM provides ways for mapping, merging and integrating domain-specific objects and thus serves as a knowledge base for building object-oriented software applications. A long term goal of GenOM is to assist users to build and configure a software application automatically based on their needs and purposes.

  We have identified challenging applications of GenOM in the following areas: unified access control model in ubiquitous/pervasive computing environment, UML model, software requirements quality assurance model, business workflow process model, intelligent web services, semantic web, knowledge model in bridging computer vision and virtual reality applications, and EDI object mapping and mediation.